Chapter 20: Last Call, Dex

Dex's POV

I saw Gil in the booth, and Diana's face went white.

I put my hand flat on the bar between us.

"Go home," I said. "Emmett's driving you."

"I should talk to him."

"Not tonight. He came here to see how I'd run it." I tried to grin. "Let him see I don't run it badly."

She squeezed my fingers.

Then she kissed my cheek, out loud, in front of forty people and her father.

"I'm saying it," she said. "Don't make a face."

"I'm not making a face."

"You're making the face."

Emmett took her coat off the hook and walked her out.

The door closed, and the bar went back to its noise.

I picked up a rag and began wiping a counter that was clean.

This is the truth about Muldoon's.

I bought it at thirty-eight, the year my divorce came through, with the settlement and a loan from a man who has since died.

I live in the two rooms upstairs.

Nine hours a day, I stand here and make strangers feel known.

I remember whose kid is sick and who got laid off, and which regular wants the tall glass.

Nobody remembers what I take in my coffee.

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