AI The glass shattered before the first word left his mouth. Crystal shards skittered across the worn mahogany bar, ice cubes melting into a puddle of expensive Scotch. A stunned silence fell over The Raven’s Nest, broken only by the low hum of the green neon sign outside.
Silas didn’t flinch. He merely lifted a thick, grey-streaked eyebrow from behind the bar, his gaze shifting from the mess to the man who’d made it. “That’ll be forty-two quid off your tab, Evan. And my floor could use a mopping.”
Rory’s hand, which had been reaching for her own half-finished pint, froze mid-air. The voice was a ghost, a relic from a life she’d bricked over and left to rot in Cardiff. She didn’t need to turn. The air in the room changed, growing thick and heavy, tasting of copper and regret.
“Christ, Si. I’m… I’m sorry.” The voice was softer now, frayed at the edges, lacking the sharp, entitled bark she remembered. It was the apology that made her look . The Evan she knew never apologised. He assigned blame.
He was hunched on a stool, his broad shoulders slumped forward. The expensive cut of his jacket couldn’t hide how it hung on him, as if he’d shrunk inside his own skin. His knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the bar. He looked… diminished.
Silas tossed a bar towel onto the spill. “See to it.” His hazel eyes flickered to Rory, a silent question. *You alright?* She gave a minute, almost imperceptible nod. She was. She had to be.
Evan followed Silas’s glance. His eyes, once a bright, arrogant blue, now looked washed out and tired. They landed on her, scanned her face with a blank lack of recognition, then snapped back. A slow, dawning horror widened them. The colour drained from his face.
“Laila?”
The old name was a slap. No one called her that anymore. It belonged to a different girl, a girl who believed in grand gestures and empty promises.
“Rory,” she corrected, her voice steady, a flat calm she’d practised in the mirror for a year. “It’s Rory now.”
He stared, his mouth slightly agape. He looked her up and down, taking in the practical leather jacket, the worn jeans, the straight black hair she now kept ruthlessly out of her face. The girl he’d known favoured floral prints and spent hours curling her hair. That girl was gone .
“I… God. I didn’t… What are you doing in London?”
“Breathing the air. Mostly.” She took a deliberate sip of her beer. “You?”
“Work. Conference.” He gestured vaguely towards the door, towards the world outside Silas’s domain. “Staying round the corner.”
Silas had busied himself at the other end of the bar, polishing a glass with a intensity that suggested he could hear every word. The bar was his church, and this was a profane interruption.
Evan’s eyes dropped to her left hand, resting on the bar. They fixed on the small, pale crescent moon on her wrist. A childhood scar from a fall out of an apple tree. He used to trace it with his thumb, call it her lucky mark. His gaze lingered there, and for a moment, the ghost of the man she knew flickered behind his eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by a hollowed-out shame.
“You look …” he started, then faltered, clearly thinking better of whatever trite compliment he’d been about to offer. “Different.”
“So do you.”
It was an understatement. The boy who’d been all swagger and future was a man weighed down by his past. Lines etched the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there three years ago. He held himself with a new caution, as if the world had hurt him and he was still surprised by the pain.
“I heard you left Cardiff,” he said, the words careful, probing.
“I did.”
“Pre-Law. You were top of your class. Your dad…”
“My dad got over it.” She cut him off. Brendan Carter’s disappointment was a private matter, not a topic for this fractured reunion.
He nodded, swallowing hard. He couldn’t meet her eyes anymore, choosing instead to study the label on his new bottle of beer as if it held the secrets of the universe. “I looked for you. For a while.”
The admission hung between them, raw and uncomfortable.
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I know.” He finally looked up, his gaze pleading for something she couldn’t, wouldn’t, give. “I just… I needed to know you were okay.”
“I’m okay, Evan.” The words were flat, final. A door closing.
He flinched as if she’d struck him. The silence stretched, filled with the thousand things unsaid. The accusations, the apologies, the shattered phone, the locked bathroom door, the sound of her own heartbeat thudding in her ears as she packed a single bag in the dead of night. The weight of it all pressed down on the space between them.
He cleared his throat, a rough, nervous sound. “I’m… seeing someone. A therapist.”
Rory said nothing. She took another drink.
“It’s… it’s good. Helps. She says… she says the anger is a secondary emotion. A mask.” He was talking to his bottle again, the words tumbling out in a confessional rush. “It covers the shame. The fear. I’m… I’m learning to sit with that instead.”
She watched him, this stranger unspooling his recovery at a bar in Soho. This was the significant change. Not the new lines on his face, but this desperate, clumsy vulnerability . The old Evan would have rather chewed glass than admit to fear.
“Good for you,” she said, and meant it. She hoped he got better. She truly did. For the next girl. For himself. It just had nothing to do with her anymore.
He seemed to realise it too, that his catharsis was falling on barren ground. His shoulders slumped further. “You hate me.”
Rory considered the word. Hate was a fire. It required fuel, attention. It meant he still occupied a active, emotional space in her life.
“I don’t,” she said, and it was the truest thing she’d said all night. “I just don’t think about you.”
The finality of it landed like a guillotine. His face crumpled for a fraction of a second before he mastered it, rebuilding the mask of the chastened man. He nodded, accepting the sentence.
The pub door swung open, letting in a burst of cool night air and the distant wail of a siren. A group of laughing academics spilled in, heading for a booth in the back, their conversation a wave of noise that broke the terrible stillness between them.
Evan seized the interruption. He fumbled in his wallet, pulled out a fifty, and slid it across the bar towards Silas. “For the glass. The… everything.”
Silas gave a single, slow nod, pocketing the note without a word.
Evan stood up, the movement awkward, uncoordinated. He looked at Rory one last time, a look of profound , bewildered loss. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He just gave another jerky nod and turned, walking out of The Raven’s Nest without a backward glance.
The door sighed shut behind him. The low murmur of the pub returned. Silas came over and picked up her empty glass.
“Another?”
Rory shook her head, the motion feeling stiff. “I’m good, Si. Thanks.”
She stood, pulling her jacket tight. She could still feel the ghost of his stare, the weight of his unspoken regret clinging to her like a chill . She needed air that didn’t taste of his failure.
She pushed through the door, the neon green light washing over her, and stepped out into the damp London night. The pavement was slick from an earlier rain, reflecting the streetlights in long, distorted streaks. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the city’s familiar grime.
A movement caught her eye from across the street. A shadow detaching itself from a doorway.
It was Evan. He wasn’t leaving . He was just standing there, watching the entrance to the bar, watching her. And in his hand, glinting under the orange glow of a streetlamp, was not his phone or his keys, but a small, familiar flick-knife she’d last seen three years ago, pressed against her throat.