Page 3 of Smoke and Glitter

Summer catches his eye and he tips his chin.

Suddenly I'm not wondering where the tattoos stop.

I'm wondering who the hell he is.

Summer says something to him over the noise, and he looks past her at me.

I have a line ready. Something about the marquee outside, something easy.

Gone.

I'm used to men looking at me. I know the quick once-over, the lingering one, the look that waits for me to notice before it turns into a smile.

Sam doesn't do any of that.

His eyes settle on mine, move over me once, then come back to my face. There's no little flash of satisfaction when I catch him doing it. No invitation. He just looks at me like he's already noticed something I haven't told him yet. By the time he turns back to the bottles, I'm still looking at him.

The room keeps moving around me. Green sequins. Someone laughing farther down the bar. Music coming up through the floor and into my feet. Meanwhile, my mind is blank. I have been rendered speechless twice in my life, and both times somebody had died.

I need to do something with my hands, so I put them flat on the bar.

Am I nervous?

I don't get nervous.

Then he reaches for a glass, and for one small, stupid moment, I feel better. A man reaching for a glass is a man about to ask what I want. I know this part. I know what I want. I've been ordering it so long I could say it in my sleep.

The glass lands in front of me before I get the word out.

Smoke reaches me first. Campfire, something sweet underneath, poured from a bottle nobody knows enough to ask for.

He sets it down and goes back to work like the decision was made before I ever reached the bar.

He's testing me. That's what this is. He's decided something about me and is waiting to see whether I'll cop to it.

My ears go hot.

I have been handed bourbon in every city I've ever worked, usually by men very pleased with themselves for guessing. I say thank you. I mean it. The wrong drink is easier than the conversation.

Bourbon neat. Sleeves rolled. One of the boys.

He looked at me once and skipped the entire performance.

I leave the glass where it is.

"I didn't order this."

"You didn't have to."

His voice is low and completely unbothered.

"That's a hell of a thing to say to a stranger."

"You're not a stranger. You're Summer's." He tips his chin toward the glass. "And you're a mezcal. I'd put the bar on it."

Then he goes back to work.

He isn't flirting with me. He says it like he might tell me the kitchen is closed, and then he's gone, like seeing me correctly wasn't difficult and he doesn't expect anything in return.