Page 104 of Smoke and Glitter

These flowers could have been sent by almost any man trying to fix almost any relationship.

That's what gets me. It isn't that I think they mean nothing to him. I know better than that now. Sending them probably took more from him than he would ever admit.

But money was never what I needed Sam to spend on me.

I wanted the part that cost him something else. I pick the card up again.

We weren't nothing.

He is closer. I can feel that. He still hasn't said it.

There's another part I can't quite ignore either. I asked him to let me get there, and for almost two weeks he did. The flowers don't demand an answer. There isn't a question on the card or a request that I call him.

But he still decided today was the day he would step back into the room.

Maybe he thought this didn't count.

Maybe it doesn't, exactly.

I still don't reply.

I put the card back in its envelope and slide it into my desk drawer. The flowers go into the kitchen because I'm not going to throw away perfectly good flowers to prove something to a man an ocean away. They aren't responsible for any of this.

Everyone enjoys them for the next several days.

By the end of the week, people have started taking pieces home until there isn't much left besides a few stems in one of the office jugs.

The card stays in my drawer.

Chapter twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-One

Sam

The first time I walk through Pilsen after the financing clears, the place feels different.

I've been inside before. I knew what I was trying to buy, knew the square footage and the condition of the bar, knew the owner had painted over wood that should've been left the hell alone. But every other time I stood in here, there was something between me and actually having it. Shit I should've taken care of years ago.

Now the agent unlocks the door and tells me the owner is ready whenever I am.

The room hasn't changed. The tin ceiling is still in decent shape, the old bar still runs down the left side, and sunlight through the front windows manages to make every bad paint choice more obvious. The difference is that I can finally look at all of it without doing the math on whether I'm allowed to want it yet.

I walk behind the bar while the agent talks about the repairs the owner agreed to handle before closing. I hear enough to answer when I need to, but most of my attention is on the room. The old bar top can be saved. The back bar can't. I'd move the taps farther down, keep the brick exposed and get rid of almost everything somebody added in the last twenty years.

I've had some version of this place in my head for years. Something smaller than Vibes. No stage, no dressing rooms, none of the machinery that comes with putting on a show every night. Just a bar where a slow night is allowed to be a slow night and I can know who's walking through the door before they sit down.

I look toward the far end of the bar and immediately know where Autumn would sit.

The thought is so ordinary that I almost keep going.

Her bag would be against the wall instead of hanging off the stool because she hates when people bump into it. She'd tell me she had one email left and still be there an hour later. At some point she'd take her shoes off, hook one foot over the bottom rung and complain when I told her somebody was eventually going to steal them.

I turn toward the front windows.

I can see her there too.

Laptop open at one of the tables while the doors are locked. Her coffee going cold because she forgot about it. Me working behind the bar while she works on whatever crisis somebody has paid her too much money to make disappear.