My only concession to the present was my cell phone. I dug it out and jammed it in my back pocket. If Julian buzzed me, I would feel it. Then I put all thoughts of siblings from my head. I scoped the local talent while I racked for nine ball. Slim pickings, but it was early yet.
The old white guy on the end had a healthy overinterest in my solo game, but he either was twice my age or had lived hard enough to look it. He was as welcome to the view as any tourist, but I wasn’t going to take him home. Four stools down was a real prospect, a black guy, maybe forty, broad through the shoulders with his head shaved down to dark stubble. He was looking, so I looked back. Then he smiled, showing me the gap between his two front teeth. That blew it for me.
I kept one eye on the front door as I played against myself. I was overstriking, but it felt good, especially when I sank my shots. I liked that rebounding clatter, the balls landing in the pocket with a gunfire smack of sound. A regular I knew came in; we nodded to each other, but I wasn’t interested. He was someone I would likely see again. A young man came in the back. Cute, but clearly a fetus. Wes took his fake ID and sent him home to mother.
I was racking for my second game when a man with some potential walked in the front door. He was a white guy, very fair-skinned, with dark blond hair. He was maybe five ten in his boots, built slim and elegant. My age or close to it. He paused to scan the bar, and when he got to me, he smiled. A good smile. Like I was exactly what he’d been looking for.
He had a pretty-boy face I didn’t mind at all: narrow jaw, sculpted nose, high cheekbones. Add the rangy build, the fair skin, and the light eyes, and he was the opposite of all things Birdwinian. That alone put him ahead on points. I smiled back.
I lost sight of him while I broke, but when I lined up for a bank shot on the one ball, there he was. He’d taken a stool directly opposite my table. His back was to the bar so he could face me. He was giving me the sex eye, and I gave it back as I walked around the table for my next shot.
He wore a generic navy blazer over a plaid shirt with that yoke-shaped piping at the top that made it read vaguely western. He had on western-style boots as well, but he didn’t read to me like an outdoorsy kind of fellow. His pale hair was short enough to be corporate, worn brushed back from his temples.
I blew the angle, and the two ball went wandering off to sit behind the nine. He lifted his beer to me in a rueful little toast. I toasted back, and he took it as permission to come over. I liked the way he did it, too, a slow, unhurried stroll, directly to me.
“Kin I buy you a drank,” he said, his drawl so exaggerated that I laughed.
“That’s the worst fake southern accent I’ve ever heard,” I told him.
He grinned, and his teeth were perfect. Straight and even.
“Well, when in Georgia,” he said with no accent at all. He could be from anyplace, and I liked that, too. “How about it?”
“I have a drink,” I said. I nodded toward my beer, half-full, sitting on the bar rail behind me. “Want to play?”
“Sure,” he said, and reached for my cue. His hands were so well kept they looked almost manicured, nothing like Birdwine’s callused bear paws. He didn’t bother to rerack or restart, just looked to make the shot I’d bungled. I took it as a tacit understanding that neither of us gave a crap about winning at nine ball tonight. “What’s your name?”
“Lady at the Bar, right now,” I said. “But it could be Fond Memory.”
“I like that second option,” he said, flashing those white teeth again. He walked away around the table, talking soft to make me follow. “Would it hurt my chances if I said my name was”—he paused, sizing me up—“Cowboy Passing Through?”
“Nope. I didn’t come to find myself a husband.” I liked the honesty inherent in his chosen pseudonym. It said plainly that he was looking for a ships-in-the-night scenario, which made up for the costume feel of that shirt, those boots; I’d never seen a more unlikely cowboy. Accountant passing through, maybe. His ring finger was bare, but I checked anyway, saying, “I’m not looking for someone else’s husband, either.”
“I’m not married,” he said, but then amended it. “Well. Not anymore.”
Good enough. He shot, and I picked my beer up and drank deep, swallowing, feeling the cold of it warming as it came to my center. I watched the lean and sway of his chosen angles. He sank two before he whiffed and passed the cue back. As I bent to shoot, his gaze slid frankly up and down my body, a balm against the burn inside my chest.