Page 67 of Smoke and Glitter

I watch her go. For the first time all week, talk soon doesn't sound reassuring. It sounds like a clock counting down.

The duo starts another performance while Tony dumps fresh ice into the well beside me. Somebody at the rail pushes an empty glass forward, and I pick it up because my hands know what to do even if the rest of me doesn't.

"What can I get you?"

Chapter eleven

Chapter Eleven

Sam

By the next morning, I'm pissed off. Mostly at myself. Autumn gets some of it too. She could've called. The thought shows up while I'm making coffee and sticks around long enough to make the first sip taste like ash.

She knows me. She knew exactly who she was getting involved with. I never pretended to be a guy who could sit on a couch and pull the right words out of his ass because somebody needed them right then. We were good. We were more than good, and months of that got reduced to one conversation where I couldn't say what she wanted me to say.

Maybe that's bullshit. Doesn't make me any less angry.

Now she's leaving.

The thought hits ugly and familiar enough that I don't bother fighting it. I knew she'd leave eventually. Maybe not London. Maybe back to New York, another assignment, some job too big to turn down. But Autumn was always going somewhere. I knew that from the beginning.

It doesn't make it any easier.

She never even told me she was leaving. She told Summer, though. While I was sitting here with the Working. Talk soon text on my phone, stupid enough to believe it meant exactly that.

She could've told me.

The text to her is still sitting unsent on my phone beside me.

Can I see you?

I stare at the four words.

Then at the list of things I'm blaming Autumn for not doing.

"Fuck."

I lock the screen and leave the phone where it is.

The Detroit troupe cancels before I've finished my coffee. That, I know what to do with. Within a couple of days, I've replaced them with a group out of Milwaukee Bex has been trying to book for a year. Two of them were already coming to Chicago that weekend, one has a sister in Logan Square, and after a couple of calls I get the whole group for less than Detroit was costing us.

I can get six performers from Milwaukee to Chicago on forty-eight hours' notice. I can't send four fucking words to Autumn. Later, I eat lunch behind the bar with my phone beside my plate. Her thread is still close enough to the top that I don't have to look for it. I open it.

Can I see you? is gone because deleting something once wasn't enough. Now I type: I know you're busy. Can we talk before you leave? Better. More honest, at least. I read it twice. Then before you leave starts bothering me. It makes the whole thing real in a way I don't want it to be yet, so I delete those three words. I know you're busy. Can we talk? My thumb hovers over send. If she says yes, I have to do more than send a sentence. I erase the message. What I send instead is:

Me: Hope the tour stuff is going okay.

She reads it before I finish lunch. Nothing comes back. I leave my phone beside the plate for another ten minutes anyway. Still nothing. By the time I put it in my pocket, I'm pissed off again.

At her.

At me.

Mostly at the fact that I can't seem to keep those two things separate.

The next afternoon, I leave Vibes and walk to Autumn's building. There's no errand over there. Nobody I'm meeting. Nothing I need to pick up. I'm going to see her. That decision lasts all the way to the corner across from her building. Then I stop. Her front door is right there.

I've walked through it enough times. I know how long the elevator takes, which floorboard near her kitchen makes noise, where she throws her keys when she's tired.