Passing Through

by Alexa J. Day

  He folded his arms across his chest. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

  She stared at him for a moment. "Because of last night? You can't be serious." She waved off his reply. "Last night doesn't entitle you to anything."

  "So what am I to you, Gigi? What does last night make me?"

  She looked him in the eye, trying to make this just another conversation with just another employee. "The very first time anything happened between us, you said that night was that night. It doesn't change anything. Didn't you say that?"

  "So I'm just your employee who happens to be a good lay?"

  She did stand up then. She put her hands on the desk, her palms flat on the surface, feeling like she could shove it through the floor and straight to hell.

  "You are exactly what you said you were the very first time I met you. You are a man passing through on the way to another job." She let the silence hang between them for long seconds, and their proximity generated a different kind of electricity. "Now, if you're going to let this get in the way, if you need time to get straight with this, you let me know. I can sure arrange that for you. We can manage without you until you get yourself right."

  His eyes stayed locked to hers. "Don't worry, boss. I'm good."

  "Good." She sat back down. "They're waiting for you out there."

  He turned around, looked over his shoulder for a second, and then walked out.

  Her office felt cooler immediately, either because of the air coming through the hall or because he'd taken all that rage outside.

  Did he really think last night made them a thing?

  She scoffed at the iPad. Its screen still showed his contact info. She swiped it away, angry at the thought of him.

  This isn't really on him, though. Is it?

  The trouble had started the first time she'd acted on her attraction to him. She'd surrendered to the magnetic forces that existed between them, and she'd known it would end badly, and of course, it had. She hadn't predicted this particular ending for their story, but here it was anyway. It hadn't even taken very long.

  Shit. What if he walked out? People had walked out for less than this.

  That wasn't like Noah. He wasn't a quitter. That wasn't really what worried her.

  She already missed the sizzle that used to light the air between them. She hated to lose the man who met her needs so well in bed. He even ignited desires she hadn't known about.

  Worse yet, she found herself thinking more often of the moments they shared sitting next to each other, in a matched pair of Adirondack chairs or on the vintage couch in her living room.

  She wouldn't lose a barback, but she'd already lost a lover. Someone who might have been more.

  She put her hands over her face. She hadn't lost that. He hadn't ever been hers.

  Now she had to come to grips with the same reality she'd tried to push on Heather.

  Noah wasn't here to stay. Becoming more attached to him at this point would be a mistake.

  Chapter 7

  Waves slapped the shore on the far side of Low Tide Drive, where Noah knew the beach would be dark and deserted. He'd gone almost all summer without taking advantage of the view and the peaceful sound of the surf, but those sturdy chairs on the rear patio were a blessing for his battered muscles at the end of his shift. This wooden bench in front, bare and weather-beaten and designed to make customers long to be inside, wasn't much good for more than a few minutes. Already his back had begun to ache.

  He leaned back as best he could against the front wall of the building and tried to stretch. He glanced at his watch. Still very late. But thirty minutes earlier than he usually finished up in there.

  Closing up seemed to take much less time lately. He wanted to think that he'd become proficient enough with his routine that he managed to get done faster. At one point, he even wanted to blame the late summer and the reduction in crowds for a lighter than average workload. But he knew in his heart that the reason had nothing to do with efficiency, and everything to do with his boss.

  Even though he still spent hours within just a few feet of her, he found he missed Gigi. She spent the evening moving from table to table, greeting new customers, giving advice to tourists, and checking in with her many regulars. As the evening drifted on, her long curls would escape from her hairband and frame her face. He wanted his hands there, on that soft skin, in the silken mass of waves. He wanted to see the sun set fire to her dark brown eyes. He wanted her urgent whisper in his ear.

  The way her fingers had locked with his when they sat knee to knee on her couch. Those same fingers smoothing warm, fragrant oil into him, pushing the tightness out of his bone-weary limbs.

  He reached into the deep pocket of his pants for his phone. He couldn't have any of those things anymore. He'd made sure of that himself.

  He thumbed the display of his phone on. No calls. No messages. Damn.

  As he did every night, he ran down a mental checklist, making sure he'd done his part to put the bar to bed until the day drinkers arrived in time for lunch tomorrow. His regular task list had gotten longer as September approached. Now it included Miss Ruby Jean's newly fortified fence and the nearly complete repairs on the patio lighting upstairs. He'd have time to paint something for his landlady if he really applied himself, but he imagined she'd prefer to spend more time with him over tea and cookies. He found he shared her preference, even though he'd recently had to discourage her from setting him up with the surprising host of young women she knew.

  No one would measure up to his incomparable boss, and even if someone managed that impossible task, he could count on some defect in himself to wreck that relationship, too.

  The low rumble of a boat's motor distracted him. Lamont's boat would be bigger, no doubt, more like one of the big dinner cruisers that were so popular around here. Noah wondered if he'd get tired of the water, after spending so much time near the beach. People seemed naturally drawn to the water, the promise of peace in its hypnotic swells and salt-scented breezes. Now, he knew the sight of the waves would remind him of this place and the woman who ran it.

  How could he find peace there now?

  His body protested as he heaved himself off the bench. Nothing left to do now but lock up.

  The phone in his pocket vibrated. He answered it without enthusiasm.

  Lamont's cheerful voice rang out, loudly enough to make Noah hold the phone away from his ear. "I would not call anyone else in the world at this time of night. You keep some weird hours."

  "Yeah, that's the business." Noah grinned. "It's starting to feel normal now."

  "Good to know you're getting used to it. We pull some long days here, too."

  Something in Noah looked forward to it, even as the rest of him wanted more of what he had here.

  "So how is the bar business?" Lamont asked. "You having a good time?"

  "Yeah, it's been great."

  "You don't sound great, Monroe. You're still coming down, right?"

  "Oh, yeah. I guess… things are winding down." A heavy feeling settled in his chest. He resolved not to sigh into the phone. "They're not going to need me here much longer."

  "So you'll be forced to spend a few weeks on the beach, not working. Your life sucks. I can see why you sound so miserable." Lamont chuckled. "Is that why you wanted me to call you in the middle of the night? So you could tell me how much this sucks for you?"

  Noah took a deep breath. He'd actually practiced this part, for fear he wouldn't be able to go through with it.

  "Actually, I'm calling to see if you can take me a little early." Before he came to his senses, he added, "I can come down next Saturday morning, be there that Sunday."

  Lamont was quiet for a moment. "Why?"

  Shit. "No reason."

  "Bullshit. You never do anything without a reason. What's her name?"

  "She's not the reason," Noah lied.

  Another silence stretched through the connection. If Noah kept talking, Lamont would know he was lying. He p
robably wouldn't do anything about it, but once this was over and he went to Florida, Noah wouldn't want to talk about it anymore.

  "Well, I can take you whenever you get here. That's no problem. You just let me know when you get here, and I'll figure it out."

  "Okay. Thanks."

  "Sure. But seriously, Monroe, if something's wrong, don't rush. Take as much time as you need. I'm not in a hurry."

  Noah looked into the windows, where the light from Gigi's office spilled into the hallway.

  "No, everything's all right. I just need to get moving."

  He wanted to stand in the doorway and watch her for a moment, swiping at her iPad with that furrow of concentration between her brows. But with just the two of them in the place, she'd hear him coming down the hallway. She was looking up at the door when he entered.

  "All done?" she asked. She'd doused the spark inside her that made him melt. Civility was no match for it.

  "Yeah," he said. He came into her office. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

  Her apprehension snapped through the air. He'd forgotten for a moment how the question put people on their guard.

  But she gestured to the couch just inside the office door. The springs wheezed when he sat.

  He hadn't rehearsed this part. "I called my new boss to see if he can take me a little early."

  Her face betrayed nothing. Not even surprise that he'd asked. He wasn't sure what he'd get, but he'd thought she would respond somehow.

  "How early is a little early?" she asked. Even her voice was level. Like they were talking about some annoyance. The wrong napkins or a late delivery.

  "I'm going to leave the morning after the party." He folded his hands on his knee. "Should get there on Sunday."

  Like she cares. Once you're gone, you're gone.

  She put down the pen she'd been holding and sighed. "So about two weeks early."

  "Yeah." It was short notice, but no shorter than the summer staff usually provided.

  She nodded, and neither of them spoke. Not the result he'd dared to hope for.

  He knew he'd pushed her away hard enough that he didn't deserve any more from her. But damn, he wished things were different. Some response. Some indication that she was disappointed. Something.

  "Well, I'm glad you'll be here for the party. Heather really wants you here for that."

  Heather does. "Yeah, she told me. Couple of times."

  "Well, I'll let you break the news to her yourself. Don't wait until that night."

  "No, I'm not going to ruin her birthday."

  Gigi laughed, a hard, brittle sound he'd never heard from her. "It's not that. She won't be in any condition to recall specific conversations that night. So if you want her to remember the next day, I suggest you do it before the party."

  He wanted to go back in time to the afternoon he'd fucked everything up. He'd even take the time before their little consenting adults meeting. Or the time before he knew Inn Too Deep existed. Anything would be better than this.

  "I'll take care of it."

  "Okay, good. I'll have your last check for you before you go." She swiped at her iPad idly. "Anything else?"

  He rose slowly, resisting the urge to stretch again. "No, that's it. I'm just going to lock the front door."

  She looked down at the tablet. "Sounds good."

  The walk to the front door felt twice as long as usual. As hard as he'd known this would be, Noah was glad this was finally over. The end was in sight. It'd hurt like hell to leave.

  But getting involved had been his mistake to make.

  Chapter 8

  Gigi refused to say she was hiding in her office. Between the party the next night and her desire to join her employees in a much-deserved post-party day off, she had plenty of paperwork to keep her behind her desk. Her printer whirred and clicked one order form on top of another, and soon she'd be ready to move on to a couple of recommendation letters for the more promising members of her summer staff.

  She wasn't hiding. She had to be here.

  If she had been trying to hide from Noah, which she denied, Inn Too Deep did not provide any suitable hiding places. He was out there on the floor right now, moving smoothly and gracefully from kitchen to the bar. The storage room downstairs, once a cool refuge from the madness upstairs, haunted her now. She couldn't look at a box of Stoli without remembering the conversation that had started her and Noah on their journey toward each other. The back patio was definitely off limits. Noah's determination to fix the lights up there meant he spent most of his unoccupied time up there. On the one night she'd managed to get up there alone, she found that everything reminded her of him and of all the things they'd done together.

  Her office was no better. She'd been behind this desk when their relationship had died. Even now, the photo of her father handing over the keys tried to remind her that she had done the right thing.

  Don't throw it all away.

  Gigi sat up enough to reach the frame and pushed it face down onto her desk. The little bubble of familial disloyalty that arose with the gesture died quickly.

  The sound of rapidly advancing footsteps made Gigi look up to see Heather sweep through the doorway.

  "Aren't you going to stop him?"

  Gigi frowned. She'd seen him out there with Heather. Everything seemed normal between them. Heather stayed out of his way as he poured ice and carried dishes. "Stop him from what?"

  "From leaving, dammit."

  She tried to use her dad's de-escalation techniques again, folding her hands and taking a deep breath before speaking. "Well, we knew he was—"

  "Don't. Don't you say that."

  "It's only a little early," Gigi said. "His boss needs him down there."

  Heather strode to the front of her desk and put her hands on its worn surface, very near the photo Gigi had just turned over. "Don't you dare bullshit me," Heather said, her voice a ribbon of steel in the stillness of the office. "We had a long talk, Noah and I. That's why I'm only just hearing about it. He wanted to make sure he had time to tell me everything."

  Gigi pushed her chair back from the desk. "What did he say, exactly?"

  "You don't need to know it all. But he told me he was leaving because he's done here. He said we didn't need him anymore."

  Was that what he thought? "He made that out of this?" Suddenly unable to face her friend, Gigi looked into the corner of her office, the shadow beneath the edge of the couch. "I never said anything like that."

  Following Gigi's gaze, Heather dropped heavily onto the venerable couch. "Your dad said something to me once. It changed the way I work." She flattened her palms on her denim-clad thighs. "He said that no customer is impossible to please. He told me he had a guy who insisted his martini was too sweet. No matter what your dad did. Too sweet, too sweet."

  Gigi swallowed hard. She hadn't heard this story before. "What did he do?"

  Heather sighed. "He told me that, whether or not it was actually too sweet wasn't the point. The real question was simpler: why did this guy think it was too sweet?"

  Suddenly restless, Gigi stood and went to the doorway. The friendly noise and loud music grounded her as she let her mind gently gather up this memory of her dad.

  "So I'm looking around," Heather continued, "and I'm wondering… why does Noah think we don't need him? He's not done at all. Those lights upstairs will still burn the building down. The left-side sink is acting weird. And then there's you."

  Gigi leaned against the doorway and met Heather's eyes. "I'm not done?"

  Heather shook her head. "No. You're not. I can tell to look at the two of you that there's some kind of weird unfinished business between you." She stretched her arm out along the back of the couch. "So what is it? What did you do?"

  Gigi slowly pushed her office door shut, something she did so infrequently that the hinges creaked and protested with her effort. The miserable springs in the couch squeaked as she joined Heather there.

  "He came in here like you," Gigi said.
"Pissed off."

  "Okay." Heather's level expression reminded her of her father's list of de-escalation techniques, part of the amateur therapist aspect of bartender work. "Pissed off about what?"

  Gigi squeezed her hands together between her knees. "That I called you that morning. Like you said. He didn't tell you this?"

  "No. He has some A Few Good Men, Full Metal Jacket shit going on. I'm surprised he told me anything."

  Gigi frowned. "Aren't those the Marines?"

  "I'm glad you think this is the point." Heather beckoned impatiently. "Finish this story. What did you tell him?"

  "I said… I told him what I told you. I said we weren't a thing. I told him he was just passing through, like he said from the beginning."

  Heather pressed her hands to her temples and gazed up at the ceiling. "Oh, my God. See, this is some stupid-ass bullshit like I would have pulled before I was married."

  "The fuck?"

  "You called him unnecessary. It's the worst thing you could do to him." She pressed her palms together in her lap. "Shit, I only have him the last few minutes of the shift, and even I know better. He needs to be needed."

  "By whom? Us?"

  "Yes!" Heather gestured at the door. "You should see these guys when he comes in, looking like he's planning a direct frontal assault on happy hour. Checking the doors. Checking out the corners of the room. I swear he counts us to make sure we're all here. And they are relieved. Like, thank God Noah's here. That day he was late, they were all looking at the hallway every couple of minutes." She opened her hands. "They need him. I definitely need him. You want to know something else? You need him."

  "No." Gigi got off the couch and returned to her desk. "No, no, no. You want to talk about stuff my dad said? Here's what he told me. He said not to throw all this away over a man."

  Heather shrugged. "So don't. That's not what this is, anyway."

  "You don't know what he meant. He hired you because you were married."

  "That is not true." Heather's tone was measured. "Bruce helped, but I got the job on shandies and micheladas. Your dad just knew Bruce wouldn't get in the way. That's what he was trying to tell you."