Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
“I like mine dead,” she says.
His eyes sharpen. He raises his glass in a small salute. “A woman who knows what she likes.”
“And what she doesn’t,” she returns.
I text one word to our group thread: fishing. It’s enough. Nobody rushes the rail. We let it breathe.
“Tell me,” he says, turning the charm up half a click, “what do you do when you are not correcting strangers at bars?”
Juno looks past him to the mirror and meets her own eyes like she’s reminding herself who she is. “I tell stories,” she says. “Sometimes they have monsters in them.”
“And sometimes the monsters are metaphors,” he says, delighted at his own cleverness. “I am Nico, by the way. Nicolas.”
“Juno,” she says.
“Like the goddess,” he says, which is one of those lines that works on ninety percent of rooms and hits the ten percent as a warning. Juno smiles like she’s heard it and survived.
“Arrow,” Ozzy says in my ear, his voice low: “He just unlocked his phone. Name confirmed. Contacts app language set to French. He scrolled fast—call log shows a ‘G.’ Could be Gray.”
“Copy,” I whisper, throat hot.
I stand, casual, and move to the corner where a brass coat tree offers me a new angle. My pen mic points past a decanter to catch the reflection of Nico’s mouth. I need him talking. I need sentences I can stitch to other nights.
“Tell me a story,” Nico says to Juno. “A short one. Two sentences.”
She acts like she’s thinking. She is. Her face is steel wrapped in velvet. “Okay,” she says. “Once there was a man who liked to call women bright girl because he thought it made him seem kind and not predatory. Turns out it made him easy to find.”
His smile doesn’t break. It shouldn’t; he’s been practicing it since prep school. But his grip tightens on the glass by a millimeter and Megan clocks it the way bartenders clock weather.
“Strong opening,” he says. “Weak ending.”
“Working on it,” she says. “It’s a draft.”
He laughs. He’s not nervous enough. That’s useful too.
“Do you come here often?” he asks. Asks it like a man doing a bit, which somehow makes it worse.
“Only when I’m stalking someone,” she says.
Another blink. He’s starting to respect her, which is dangerous.
I move back to A3 and drop into the chair, enough that I look like I arrived with a book and forgot it. Megan pivots and sets a water in front of me without asking, the silent bartender way of telling me to live long enough to pay my tab.
Nico glances at me, dismisses me as furniture—which is what I hoped. He turns his body to face Juno fully now. “Tell me your favorite drink,” he says.
“Free,” she says.
He’s having too much fun. The smartest thing he could do is leave. The second smartest is to make her feel safe enough to be careless. He chooses door number two.
“You remind me of someone,” he says. “A bright girl I used to sit with here. She laughed like she had secrets.”
Juno stills in that way you wouldn’t notice unless you know her pulse. I pinch the inside of my wrist hard enough to leave marks.
“She didn’t like your ring,” Juno says.
He looks at it, amused. “Everyone likes my ring.”
“She didn’t. She said it made you look like you belonged to something you couldn’t name.”
His eyes glitter. He takes the bait. “We all belong to things we can’t name.”
Render murmurs, “That’s practically a confession. Of pretension.”
“Hold,” I warn. “Let him monologue.”
“I do business,” he says, almost bored. “Imports, exports. Boats. Bored people with money who want their toys to feel like purpose. I facilitate purpose.”
“And do you facilitate funerals?” Juno asks, voice a hair softer than before. The pen mic trembles in my fingers with how much tension is in that whisper.
A beat. Then he smiles. “Only for old habits.”
Gage: “Got that. Clean. That line goes in the museum.”
“Etta replied,” Render says suddenly. “Two minutes ago. ‘You mean Nico A? He’s Gray’s friend. Old money. Don’t get tangled; he collects girls who like puzzles.’”
Collects. I taste copper.
Nico slides a card across the bar—unbranded, crisp, a number and a name that is absolutely a front. “You should tell me a longer story,” he says. “Sometimes the ending is better if you let it breathe.”
Juno looks at the card but doesn’t touch it. “I like to write my own endings.”
“You will,” he says, as if blessing a child. “If you stop trying to narrate other people’s.”
I stand. My body makes the choice my brain would veto. I walk to the bar and take the empty stool on Juno’s other side. Nico turns slightly; Juno remains still, but I feel her relax a millimeter because I am a predictable animal.
“Good evening,” Nico says, polite as a threat. “We are discussing literature.”
“Not my subject,” I say. “I do math.”