Pen Pal(12)

The moment I step inside, I spot Aidan Leighrite sitting in a booth in the corner.





8





He notices me right away. He was about to take a drink, but freezes with his glass of beer halfway to his mouth.

It’s too late to pretend I didn’t see him. So I send him a curt nod and walk over to the bar. I slide onto a stool and look in the opposite direction, examining the décor.

A lighted mirror behind the bar displays shelves of liquor. Red leather booths line one end of the room and the opposite wall. At the other end of the room, a pool table is brightly lit from above with a lamp bearing the Budweiser logo. The rest of the place is dark and smells like stale beer, french fries, and tobacco.

It could be any bar anywhere on the planet.

I find the ordinariness of it oddly comforting.

“What’ll you have?”

The bartender, a bespectacled hipster wearing suspenders with jeans and a knitted black beanie on his head, looks all of eighteen years old. It makes me feel ancient, and I hate him for it.

“Johnnie Walker Blue,” I tell him. “Three fingers. Neat.”

“Nice,” he says, nodding. As if I give a shit about his opinion.

Calm down, Kayla. He’s just doing his job. I send him a weak smile to make up for my unkind thoughts. He gives me a look like he’s worried I might be hitting on him, and quickly spins away, reaching for a bottle.

I prop my elbows on the bar, drop my head into my hands, and sigh.

From beside me, a low voice says, “You okay?”

My heart sinks. I don’t bother looking over. I already know who it is. “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that, Mr. Leighrite.”

“And that’s the fifth time you’ve called me by my father’s name. I didn’t like my father. Which is why I keep asking you to call me Aidan.”

When I lift my head and look at him, he’s leaning on the bar gazing down at me with those dark eyes. His expression is serious, bordering on intense, but I don’t think it’s about the name thing.

I think he’s worried about me.

That makes two of us.

“I apologize.”

“Accepted,” he says instantly. “What are you doing here?”

The hipster bartender sets my drink in front of me, then walks off to take care of another customer. I pick up the glass and hold it aloft. “Enjoying some exceptional Scottish whiskey.”

“Without your husband?”

I freeze. Then I remember how to breathe and take a swig of scotch. “How observant you are.”

He gazes at my profile with such unwavering focus, I want to ask him if he’s trying to memorize it so he can pick me out of a police lineup.

Then he slides onto the stool next to me.

Shit.

“No need to make that face. I don’t bite.”

“I’m not making any face. And the biting thing is debatable.”

“You don’t like me very much, do you?”

I exhale heavily, then take another swig of scotch. “This will sound cliché, but it’s not you. It’s me.”

“You’re right. It does sound cliché.”

“If I told you the reason, you’d understand.”

“So tell me the reason.”

He sits facing me with his thighs spread open so one of his legs is on either side of my stool. I’m not trapped—I can turn the other way on the stool and hop off—but somehow it feels as if I am.

I look at him from the corner of my eye. He’s in a black T-shirt and black leather jacket tonight, with jeans to match. Even his boots are black. He looks more like the founder of an underground fight club than ever.

“I…I’m going through kind of a rough time.”

“Your house,” he prompts.

I get the feeling he knows my rough time has nothing to do with my house. He just wants me to keep talking. I clear my throat, lick my lips, and debate how much to tell him.

“It’s more personal than that.”

A couple takes the two stools to my left. They’re laughing and talking about the movie they’ve just seen. The man slings an arm casually around the woman’s shoulders, pulling her in for a kiss. Watching them, I’m shot through the heart with an arrow of anguish.

The kiss. The companionship. The simple joy of being with someone you love, sharing a laugh and a drink.

Thinking you have all the time in the world until out of nowhere that clock stops ticking.

My throat closes. My eyes sting. I stand abruptly and set down my drink. In a strangled voice, I say, “I have to go.”

Without a word, Aidan picks up my glass, takes me gently by the arm, and steers me away toward the booth he was sitting at in the corner.

Struggling not to cry, I let him lead me over to it. I sit first. Instead of sitting across from me, he slides in beside me.

When I stiffen, he says, “You can cry if you need to. Nobody can see you from here.”

He’s right. His bulk blocks out the rest of the bar. It’s just the two of us, facing the wall with a framed copy of Dogs Playing Poker hanging on it.

I slouch down, lean my head back against the booth, and press my fingertips into my eye sockets.

We sit there like that for what seems like a long time, the jukebox playing in the background and the low hum of conversation and clinking glasses in the air. Eventually, I hear the sound of a glass sliding over the tabletop toward me.