AI The green neon of The Raven’s Nest bleeds through rain-streaked glass, painting the bar’s scuffed Formica counter the color of unripe limes. Rory hauled her delivery jacket off, the waterproof fabric still dripping from the last run of the night, and slung it over the coat rack by the stairs leading up to her flat. Her left wrist caught on a rusted hook, the crescent scar there stinging for half a second—13 years old, she’d flown over the handlebars of a borrowed bike on Cardiff’s Penarth Promenade, Maeve screaming behind her as they’d both crashed into a rail, the metal slicing deep into Rory’s skin before they’d laughed so hard they cried into their 99p ice creams an hour later. She rubbed the scar flat, then crossed to the bar.
Silas didn’t look up from the pint glass he polished with a frayed linen cloth, just pushed a cold cider across the wood, the bottle condensing into dark rings on the Formica. His auburn hair, streaked with the same grey that laced his neatly trimmed beard, fell over his hazel eyes, and he shifted his weight , the faint limp from his old knee injury settling into his good leg as he leaned against the bar. It was 11:17 on a Tuesday, the Nest only half full, a handful of regulars huddled in the back booth playing cards, the jukebox humming a low Patti Smith track that cut through the rain lashing the windows.
The bell above the front door jingled.
A woman stumbled in, shaking rain off the shoulders of a frayed charcoal wool coat, her boots caked in the same Soho gutter sludge that coated Rory’s delivery van tires. She’d once had hair the color of summer wheat, long enough to sit on, the kind that turned gold if you left it out in the sun for ten minutes. Now it was cut to a sharp pixie, dyed the same jet black as Rory’s own, and a thin pale scar sliced through her left jaw, running from the corner of her mouth to her earlobe. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her coat, crossed to the bar in three quick strides, and leaned against the counter three seats down from Rory.
“Whiskey neat. Whatever’s the cheapest that doesn’t taste like paint thinner.”
Rory froze mid-sip of her cider. She’d know that voice anywhere, the rough Cardiff lilt that softened around the edges when she was tired , the way she bit the end of the first word of any order like she was scared someone would rush her. Maeve O’Connell. The girl she’d shared a flat with for three years in Cardiff, the girl who’d mapped their joint future on the back of their kitchen door in red marker: Rory passes bar, Maeve gets pupillage, buy a cottage in the Brecon Beacons, adopt two greyhounds, retire at 60 to write terrible romance novels. They’d spoken once, three years prior, a 47-second phone call where Rory had hung up mid-sentence, scared Evan was listening outside her hotel room, and she’d never reached out again. She’d thought Maeve was still in Cardiff, still arguing cases in the Crown Court, still living the life they’d planned.
Maeve waited for Silas to set the glass down in front of her, then lifted it to her mouth, and Rory said it, quiet enough that only she could hear.
“Maeve.”
The woman choked on her whiskey, coughing so hard her eyes watered, and she spun on the bar stool, her hand flying to the scar on her jaw like she was trying to hide it. When she saw Rory, her face went white, the freckles that used to dust her nose standing out against the pale skin.
“Rory?” She breathed the name like it was a curse, like she’d never thought she’d say it again. She stood up, took two steps forward, like she was going to hug her, then stopped, her hands falling to her sides, the tension between them thick enough to cut with the bar knife Silas kept by the tap handles. “What the fuck are you doing in London?”
Rory set her cider down, the bottle clinking loud enough that Silas glanced up, then went back to polishing glasses, giving them space. “I moved here three years ago. Right after I left Cardiff.” She nodded at the empty seat next to her. “Sit down. Please.”
Maeve hesitated, then grabbed her whiskey glass and crossed to the seat, dropping into it hard enough that the wood groaned. She set the glass down, and Rory saw her hands were shaking , the nails cracked and stained with ink, nothing like the perfectly manicured nails Maeve used to keep for court, the ones she’d paid 20 quid a month to get filled . “I thought you’d… I don’t know. I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Eva wouldn’t tell me shit. Said you asked her not to give anyone your address. I thought you hated me.”
Rory flinched. She’d never thought anyone would think that. “I didn’t hate you. I couldn’t—Evan found me once, outside the university library in Cardiff. He broke my phone, threatened to show up at your flat if I left him. I was scared he’d hurt anyone who knew where I was. I cut everyone off to keep you safe.” She lifted her left wrist, pushed the sleeve of her sweater up to show the crescent scar, then another one, a thin pale line that ran along her forearm, hidden under clothes most days. “He left that. The night before I left. I couldn’t let him find any of you.”
Maeve’s breath caught. She reached out, like she was going to touch the scar, then pulled her hand back, her knuckles white around her whiskey glass. “I didn’t know any of that. I thought you just bailed. On me, on us, on everything we planned.” She laughed, a rough, bitter sound, and gestured at her own face, at the scar on her jaw. “I quit the pupillage six months after you left. My mom got lung cancer. I moved to Liverpool to take care of her. Lived in a tiny flat above a corner shop, worked night shifts at a supermarket to pay her medical bills. She died last spring. I just moved to London last week. Got a job at a bookstore in Camden. Never touched a law book again.”
Rory stared at her. The Maeve she remembered would rather have died than quit law. She’d stayed up three nights straight studying for the bar exam, dragged Rory to mock trials, cried when she got the letter offering her the pupillage, the two of them drinking cheap prosecco on their kitchen floor at 2am. “You quit?”
“Didn’t have a choice. No one else to take care of her. And after she died, I couldn’t go back. The whole thing felt like a lie, like I was playing a part that wasn’t mine anymore.” Maeve nodded at Rory, at the delivery jacket crumpled by the door, at the Golden Emperor logo peeking out of the pocket of her sweater, the restaurant she worked for. “What about you? You ever take the bar? Deliver Chinese food now? That’s a far cry from the barrister your dad always wanted you to be.”
Rory picked at the label on her cider bottle, the paper peeling off in thin strips. “I never took the bar. Couldn’t stand the thought of all that rules, all that posturing, after everything Evan put me through. I work part time at the restaurant, live in the flat above this bar. It’s enough. It’s safe. That’s all I care about anymore.” She nodded at the old map of Cardiff that hung on the wall behind the bar, the one she’d found in a flea market a year after moving to London, the one she’d asked Silas to hang up so she could see it every day. “I still think about that kitchen door. The red marker. The cottage in the Brecon Beacons. I thought about it a lot when I was running , when I was scared . That was the first thing I ever had that felt like a future I got to choose.”
Silas moved down the bar to pour a beer for one of the regulars, giving them a minute of quiet, the jukebox switching to an old Cat Power track, the rain still lashing the windows. Maeve’s eyes filled with tears, the first one spilling over and running down her cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand, rough, like she was angry at herself for crying. “I thought about that too. I wrote it on the wall of my Liverpool flat. In the same red marker. Went out and bought a pack just to do it. I thought I was the only one who still cared.”
“I never stopped caring.” Rory reached across the bar, laid her hand on top of Maeve’s, and Maeve didn’t pull away. Her hand was calloused , warm, the same hand that had patched Rory up after the bike crash, that had held her hair back when she was sick after a bad first date, that had helped her pack the first time she tried to leave Evan. “I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I’m sorry I missed all of it. Your mom’s sickness, you moving, everything. I should have trusted you to have my back. I was just scared.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t look harder for you. I was angry . I thought you chose to leave me behind. I should have known you’d never do that.” Maeve squeezed her hand, the scar on her jaw glinting in the green neon light, and for a second Rory could see the 12-year-old girl she’d crashed bikes with, the 19-year-old girl she’d moved to Cardiff with, all the years in between layered on top of the woman sitting in front of her. “We got time to make it right, right? The cottage, the greyhounds, all of it? We’re not too old. We’re not too broken.”
Rory looked at the map of Cardiff pinned to the wall, at Silas wiping glasses in the corner, at Maeve’s hand under hers, and for the first time in three years she didn’t feel like she was running . She took a sip of her cider, the cold fizz burning down her throat, and nodded.
“We got time.”