Chapter 5: One Drink

I walked to the end of the bar and stopped on my side of the zinc.

"You broke the terms," I said.

"I know."

"No sending people. Stay out of my work. You're sitting in my work."

"The driver saw you go in at four." Elliot kept his hands flat on the bar.

"I asked him one question, where you were. I told him not to follow you."

"Why ask at all?"

"I needed to know you were safe."

"I'm safe."

"I can see that."

He looked at the apron, then at the room behind me, then at me again.

"Can I stay?" he said.

Jace had come up beside me without a sound, drying a glass.

"He's a paying customer," Jace said. "It's your bar tonight, Nina. Your call."

I should have said no.

I could feel the whole length of the room watching, and I could feel Elliot waiting, his shoulders braced for it.

"One drink," I said. "Not water. A real drink, and you sit there and you don't talk to me."

"All right."

"Not one word about the house or the thirty days or my father."

"All right."

"If I hear one, I'm taking the glass back."

"All right."

"What do you drink?"

He blinked at me.

I understood, with a small cold drop in my stomach, that I did not know.

In three years I had watched him order at dinners, and I could not have told anyone what he liked.

"Whiskey," Elliot said. "Anything. I drink what's put in front of me."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the true one."

I poured him a rye over one large cube and set it on a napkin.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Separated Rooms for Three Years, He Panicked After I Moved Out from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.