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“It’sfine.” Her voice cracked. She backed away, back through the swinging door. She turned and rushed through the kitchen, only stopping to pick up her purse and jacket from the hanging rack near the back door. She didn’t look back, so she didn’t know if he came after her.
She fled.
She practically ran down the back alleys of Shepherdstown. Then, she got to the area behind the Mecklenberg, and she went over and peered over the fence into the beer garden in the back there, which was full of stone tables and greenery. There were a few people sitting outside. It wasn’t an incredibly warm night, but it wasn’t incredibly cold either.
“Dahlia?” called a voice.
“Felix,” she said.
Felix Fioxe was a wizard who was always ready with a smile and was easy to talk to. He came over, clutching his beer bottle, and unlocked the gate to let her in. “Don’t tell Jeff I did this.”
“Is Jeff bartending?” she said, stepping in. “I’m, um, on my way to the Dev.”
“Oh, right,” said Felix. “Except the show’s a bust.”
“Oh?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“Yeah, what’s-his-face, the singer?”
“Kevin?”
“Eloise’s brother, right,” said Felix. “I guess he had an emergency and just walked off stage.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, in the middle of a song.”
“He’s always having emergencies,” said Dahlia, furrowing her brow. “Tommy’s always annoyed with him.”
“Yeah,” said Felix, laughing. “Anyway, no reason to go there. It’s just a clusterfuck of seventy thousand people, because everyone’s there, but there’s no music now, and it’s kind of a disaster.”
She nodded. “Right.”
“Get a drink here?” said Felix.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s a way better idea.” She grinned at him.
“I’m heading up myself,” he said.
The two walked together up through the Mecklenberg Inn garden (it was not actually an Inn, but it was one of two bars in town). They crossed through the room in the back and entered the bar area, where there was a stained-glass window and old pews set up around the tables.
Jeff was behind the bar. He looked her over. “Didn’t see you come in.”
“Well, I did,” she said. Technically, people were not supposed to come in through the back.
Jeff nodded. “Yeah, obviously. You talked to Tommy tonight?”
“You know, Tommy’s not my boyfriend,” she felt compelled to say for some strange reason.
“Oh,” said Jeff. “You guys live together, right?”
“I need a shot,” she said. “I need, like, a Fireball? And, um, a hard cider chaser. What’s on tap?”
“You got it,” said Jeff. He began working on the shot. “Sorry, I didn’t know you guys broke up.”
“We didn’t break up. We just… we’re just friends. Roommates. It’s not… there’s no… I don’t, like, belong to him or something.”
Jeff glanced at her appraisingly, shrugged, and went back to making the shot. “Okay.”
