The dive bar smelled like beer and history — the good kind of history, the kind where a place had been dim and sticky for so long that the dim-and-stickiness had become a feature.
Robby sat in a booth near the back, across from Jess, with a menu he’d been looking at for five minutes without seeing a single item.
The laminated cover advertised a burger called The Miller, which he assumed was Nick’s influence, and a nacho platter that had been on the menu since before any of them had moved to LA.
“You’re not reading that,” Jess said.
“I’m giving it a fair chance.”
“You’ve been staring at the appetizer section for four minutes.
The appetizer section has six items.
One of them is literally just a description of cheese.”
“Cheese deserves a fair hearing.”
“You’re avoiding the conversation.”
“I’m deeply committed to the cheese.”
“Robby.”
“Fine.
I’m avoiding the conversation.”
He set the menu down.
She was right, and admitting it out loud felt like setting down something heavy he hadn’t noticed carrying.
Not the conversation with her, specifically, but the conversation the whole week had become: every date, every text, every quiet moment between them bending back toward Tuesday and the lab result that would decide whether they had a future or a very particular funny story.
“Okay,” he said.
“New rule.
Ask me anything.
I’ll answer honestly, no menu, no deflection.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
“Are you scared?”
He considered lying, the case-manager reflex to smooth a hard question into something manageable.
He set that down too.
“A little.
Not about us.
About the part where I can’t do anything to speed it up.
I’m used to being able to do something.”
“That’s very you.”
“Is it a compliment?”
“It’s a fact.
Facts can be compliments if you squint.”
The bar was Nick’s turf in a way the loft would never be.
He’d seen them walk in from behind the counter and given a single nod, the kind that said I see you, I’m noting your presence, I haven’t decided what to do with the information, before returning to a glass he was polishing with unnecessary focus.
Robby had nodded back.
That was the full extent of their interaction so far, and it felt like enough.
He wasn’t here to win Nick over tonight.
He was here to eat nachos with Jess.
“You’re doing it again,” Jess said.
“Doing what?”
“Being very calm about something that’s very not calm.”
“I’m calm because there’s nothing productive to do until Tuesday.
Panicking won’t move the lab results faster.
I’ve tried.
I stood in my kitchen and panicked at a banana for ten minutes once.
Didn’t help the banana.
Didn’t help me.”
“That’s the strangest thing you’ve ever told me.”
“I have stranger.
I’m pacing myself.”
She smiled, and the smile was real, but it had a question mark riding along the edge of it.
“It’s worked so far.
I just keep waiting for the other shoe.
The loft is being careful around me.
Cece looks at me like I’m made of glass.
Schmidt made a second casserole and froze it.”
“A backup casserole.”
“A backup doom casserole.
It’s in the freezer, labeled Reserve, Pollack Contingency.
He dated it.
He signed it, like a legal document.”
“That’s either very thoughtful or very morbid.”
“Both.
It’s Schmidt.
It’s always both.”
“Does the label have a font choice?”
“A serif font.
Bolded.
He printed it twice in case one smeared in the freezer.”
“He printed a backup label for the backup casserole.”
“Redundancy is his love language.”
He turned the menu over in his hands, buying a second.
The laminate was peeling at one corner.
Someone had drawn a small mustache on the illustrated burger, and beneath it, in fading pen, someone else had written the miller approves.
“Here’s what I know,” he said.
“Tuesday gives us an answer.
Bad answer, we deal with it then.
Good answer, we wasted a week being scared of nothing.
Either way the week happens.
I’d rather spend it with you than alone in my apartment refreshing a lab portal I don’t have access to refresh.”
Jess considered this, turning her water glass a slow half-circle on the table.
“That’s a very mature way to handle uncertainty.”
“I’m a case manager.
I handle uncertainty for a living.
People call me at two in the morning because their housing fell through or their benefits got cut.
I can’t fix it right then.
I can be there, and help them make a plan for the morning.”
“And that’s the plan for us?
Make it to morning?”
“Make it to Tuesday.
Then make a new plan.”
“Okay.” She reached across and took his hand, fingers lacing through his, palm warm against his knuckles.
“Then here’s my plan for tonight.
We finish this date without talking about the test.
We talk about anything else.
Your job.
My job.
The fact that Schmidt notarized a casserole.”
“Anything?”
“Anything except the Pollack name.”
“Have you noticed Winston’s cat only blinks at half-speed when he’s judging someone?”
Jess laughed, a real one, surprised out of her loud enough that a guy two booths over glanced up.
“Ferguson blinks at half-speed constantly.
That’s his resting judgment face.”
“So I’m being judged at all times.”
“Constantly.
It’s not personal.
It’s a cat thing.”
“I’d like it on record that I’ve never been rude to that cat.”
“Noted.
Filed.
Ferguson remains unmoved.”
“What would it take?
A tribute?
A sacrifice of one of Schmidt’s good cheeses?”
“Ferguson doesn’t accept bribes.
He accepts tribute in the form of sitting very still and letting him win.”
“I can sit still.
I’m excellent at sitting still.”
“You’d think that.
He’d test you for weeks first.”
“I’ve survived Cece’s interview face for a week straight.
I can survive a cat.”
“Don’t say that near him.
He’ll take it as a challenge.”
At the counter, Nick poured a beer for a customer at the rail, not looking their way, but his shoulders had dropped a fraction, the tiniest release of a guard he’d been holding since they walked in.
Robby noticed and filed it, neutral, small, early, and let it go without reaching for it.
He wasn’t going to spend the night angling for a read from a guy pouring drinks twelve feet away.
Tonight had exactly one job, and the job was Jess, laughing at her own jokes before she finished telling them.
“Tell me about your class,” he said.
“The one with the kid who keeps trying to trade snacks for extra recess.”
Jess’s whole face lit.
“Marcus.
He’s escalated.
This week it was a stick of gum, a friendship bracelet, and a promise to water the class plant through summer, all for a five-minute homework extension.
I told him the plant was dead.
He said the promise still counted as good faith.”
“Did the extension happen?”
“Absolutely not.
But I gave him extra credit for the negotiation.
The kid’s going to run a union someday.”
“What’s the runner-up story?”
“Priya told the whole class my coffee was ‘sad brown water’ and now four kids won’t let me drink it in front of them without commentary.”
“Is it sad brown water?”
“It’s efficient brown water.
There’s a difference.”
“Does Priya know she’s a menace?”
“She knows exactly.
She’s eight and she’s already better at reading a room than most adults I’ve dated.”
“Should I be worried about Priya’s assessment of me?”
“Terrified.
She hasn’t met you yet, but she’s heard the DNA-test story secondhand and she has opinions.”
“What kind of opinions?”
“She thinks it’s romantic.
Her words.
‘Like a science wedding.’ I didn’t correct her.”
“A science wedding is a very specific mental image.”
“I know.
I’ve had it for three days now.
You’re welcome.”
By the time she finished, the burger called The Miller had stopped feeling like a territorial marker and started feeling like just another item on a menu.
They ordered the fried cheese.
They split the nachos, arguing amiably about jalapeños on top versus on the side, a debate that somehow lasted through two rounds of drinks and ended in a tie neither of them tried to break.
They talked until the bar got loud enough that they had to lean in to hear each other, and the leaning in was its own kind of answer.
When they got up to leave, Nick was still behind the counter.
He didn’t wave.
He didn’t not wave either, which for Nick Miller was practically a parade.
Outside, the night air was cool, and the streetlights did their LA thing, turning the sidewalk into something that looked staged.
Jess’s hand found his as they crossed toward the car, her fingers cold from the glass, and she was already mid-sentence about a mural down the block, gesturing with her free hand at a wall of paint he couldn’t quite make out in the dark, still talking when her shoulder bumped his and neither of them adjusted the distance back.
hey — quick one before you close the tab.
if the cliffhanger is killing you, the future already exists.
you just need a ticket through.
every chapter the second i finish writing it.
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P.S.
— in a parallel timeline, the rest of this story runs completely free on unwrittenrealm.com.
just saying.
that timeline also has more chapters.