The House in the Pines(66)

The bar was narrow and smelled like IPA. Weezer played on the speakers. Three men looked up from their table as she entered. The men were about her age, Irish-looking, guys she might have gone to high school with. The only other customer was a ruddy man in his forties, sitting alone at the bar.

A chalkboard menu listed microbrews and a few small-batch whiskeys. “Hi there,” said the bartender, a local adopter of the man-bun.

“I’ll have the lager,” she said. The cheapest thing on the menu. She hadn’t been to work in over a week, had rent coming up, and couldn’t really afford this beer she didn’t plan to drink, but didn’t want to stand out any more than she already did as the only woman here. She gave the bartender her debit card.

The man sitting at the bar stared at her. He looked drunk, a defiant gleam in his unfocused eyes. Maya ignored him.

“Leave it open?”

“No, thanks.”

She took her pint to a table at the back and sat facing the door so she would see anyone who walked in. She tore the napkin around her beer to pieces as the drunk man at the bar continued to stare at her. She pretended not to notice. She looked at the names and quotes patrons had chalked onto the walls, the pile of board games on offer. The cozy, shabby-chic décor.

She looked down at the pictures shellacked to the table beneath her elbows and saw they were all of half-naked women. Women in lingerie, in bikinis; women cut out of magazines. Close-ups of body parts, airbrushed, shaved. Faces covered by the bodies of other women. Maya stared at it a moment, then looked up to see the man at the bar laughing at her.

A smile played across the bartender’s lips.

Maya could see why Frank liked this place. He must fit right in.

Her eyes flicked to the door as it swung open. A man in a dark, hooded jacket, his face in shadow. He nodded at the bartender, and the bartender nodded back, started pouring him a beer.

The hooded man sat at the bar, exchanged nods with the guy who’d laughed at her. The hooded man was Frank’s size, but his posture was wrong. This man was bent over, weary-looking, but he straightened a little as soon as he had a beer in his hand. He lowered his hood.

It was him.

Frank looked tired. Leaner. Old. Older than he should have—seeing him now, it was obvious to her that he’d lied about his age. He’d told Maya he was twenty, but the math didn’t work: this hollow-eyed, salt-and-pepper man was easily in his forties. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to meet her mom.

Maya had come here unsure if she could face him, afraid she’d lose her nerve if he actually showed up, but now that she saw him, a red-hot surge of anger rose and she thought of the knife in her purse. She thought of sinking it into his neck. This pathetic little man had ruined her life.

She reached into her purse. Hit the record button on her phone, then set her purse on the edge of the table.

She approached the bar. “Frank? Is that you?”

His eyes went wide as he turned and saw her. His face fell. This time he would have no story prepared.

“Wow!” She smiled. “It is you.”

“Maya! Good to see you. What are you doing here?”

“I’m in town for Christmas, felt like going out for a drink. Hey, want to join me?”

He stared at her. “You’re here alone?”

She nodded, then watched him read her, the seven years added to her face, the bags beneath her eyes, the pallor. She probably looked as haggard as he did.

“Sure,” he said.

Frank followed Maya to her table.

They sat across from each other. “Cheers,” she said.

“Been a long time.”

They clinked glasses, then fell silent, as if out of respect. The last time they saw each other was the day Aubrey died. In some ways Maya had never moved on from that day, stuck in her thick, foggy fear, but seeing him now, she understood that, in other ways, she’d become a different person. She was an adult, capable of seeing through the loser sitting across from her, desperate for love and thinking he needed to trick people in order to get it.

“You come here often?” she asked.

“Every once in a while.” He shrugged. “Where you visiting from?”

“Boston. I stayed after college.”

“Good for you.”

“Boston’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “And actually . . .” She let her expression grow pained. “The truth is I don’t live there anymore. I recently left my fiancé. We were living together, he kept the apartment, so . . . yeah. That’s the real reason I’m here. I’m staying with my mom.” She smiled sadly.

Frank softened. “I’m sorry to hear that. Why did you leave him?”

“Long story . . . But tell me about you. How have you been?”

Frank sipped his beer. “I’m in the same boat, believe it or not. Just got out of a long-term relationship.”

“Really? Wow, sorry to hear it.” She felt him studying her, but she gave nothing away. “What happened?”

“Long story.” A smile tugged at the edges of his lips.

“Must be going around,” she joked.

Frank laughed like someone whose girlfriend hadn’t just died, and for a moment looked like his old self again. Magnetic, fun. He took her in with his eyes. “Hard to believe it’s been seven years.”