Page 86 of Falling

30

BOOKER

“You’re gonna polish a hole in that.”

Seth’s voice startled me back to reality—the bar, the glass in my hand, and the way I’d been polishing it for... who knew how long.

I hadn’t even heard him come in.

“Hey,” I said.

I’d really, really meant it to sound enthusiastic, but it’d come out like I was greeting my executioner. Given that there was a non-zero chance Seth would kill me if Miles left, maybe I was.

That was on Seth, though. Me as the primary incentive for Miles—or anyone—to stay in Otter Bay had always been a plan doomed to failure.

I just wasn’t all that.

“Wow.” Seth pulled out a bar stool and sat down. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Talking about it wasn’t going to change anything. Miles was being offered his dream job—I knew he’d be offered it, who wouldn’t want him working in their library—and I couldn’t compete with it. Nothing anyone said was going to make a difference to that, least of all anything I said to Seth.

“Sorry, I phrased that like it was a question,” Seth said, putting both of his elbows on the bar and resting his chin in his hands. “You can occupy your hands by making me a mimosa while you tell me what’s up.”

“It’s…” I glanced at the clock, surprised to find the hour hand had crept almost a twelfth of the way around the face since the last time I looked. “Not even noon.”

“Mimosas are a breakfast food,” Seth countered.

“Brunch,” I argued, but I was already reaching into the fridge under the bar for the orange juice and prosecco. Arguing with Seth was a losing battle.

“Brunch is just an extension of breakfast,” Seth said. “And you’ve used up your quota of avoiding the subject. Is this about Alex? Because I think you should show up at the wedding with the world’s cutest librarian and show him that you’ve moved on to someone a whole lot better for you.”

I took the deepest breath my lungs would allow and let it out in one short huff, grabbing a tall glass and scooping ice into it. “Do you want a cherry in this?”

“Obviously,” Seth said. “So it’s not about Alex, or at least it’s not primarily about Alex. Which only leaves the bar, or Miles.”

I glanced at Seth. He’d inevitably wheedle it out of me, but I wondered if he’d be able to tell by… the set of my shoulders, or the twitch of my mouth, or something.

“But this is the wrong quality of misery for it to be about the bar. If it was about the bar, you’d be mad or grim, because whatever the problem was it’d be unjustified or accidental. This is just sad. So it’s Miles. What did you do?”

“I’m not sure it’s fair to assume this is on me,” I said, picking three cherries out of the jar in the fridge.

“Well the fact that you’re bribing me with extra cherries is suggestive,” Seth said as I poured orange juice over them, topping it off with a couple of mouthfuls of prosecco.

As expected, Seth said nothing about the ratio when I pushed the glass across the bar and started putting things away.

“No umbrella?” he asked.

I snorted. I’d had rainbow umbrellas for Pride this year—so many that by the end of the month I’d started putting them in glasses of water—but I’d run out, finally, in mid-August. The people of Otter Bay loved their little umbrellas, and the rainbow ones had been a hit. Seth had worn one behind his ear every time I’d seen him in June.

“Not until Halloween,” I said. I already had my eye on jack o’ lantern and spider web umbrellas for the season.

“What happened with Miles?” Seth asked.

I sighed, despite not meaning to. I wasn’t going to get around this, and I’d run out of distraction ideas.

“He got a job offer,” I said.