AI The bourbon bottle slipped in Rory’s damp palm, she caught it by the neck before it shattered on the scarred oak bar. She’d scrubbed sesame oil and soy sauce from her skin an hour prior, after dropping the last of the Golden Empress’s dumpling orders in Camden, and the water had stripped her palms of their natural oils, leaving them sticky with the faint, sweet residue of the hand soap she’d stolen from the restaurant’s kitchen. She trundled down the back stairs of the Soho building that housed The Raven’s Nest on the ground floor and her tiny one-bed flat above, had bypassed the leftover pork dumplings in her fridge to beg a free drink off Silas, who owed her for covering his bar shift last weekend when his knee flared up.
The Nest hummed with the low murmur of three regulars nursing pints of mild in the back corner, the walls lined with frayed military maps and black and white photos of Prague street corners that Silas never talked about. The green neon sign above the front door bleeded pink through the smudged glass, painting the first stool at the bar in a faint, unearthly glow. Silas wiped down a pint glass with a threadbare tea towel, his silver signet ring catching the light as he moved, the faint limp in his left leg only visible when he shifted his weight to reach a stack of clean glasses on the back shelf.
The brass bell above the door jingled. Silas paused mid-wipe, his eyes narrowing, because he locked the front door to newcomers at 11pm, and it was 11:17. Rory turned, her bright blue eyes lifting from the bourbon bottle she’d just set on the bar, and froze.
The woman who stepped inside wore a sharp charcoal blazer over a plain white tee, her mousy brown childhood hair dyed a vivid, firetruck red and cut into a blunt chin-length bob, no chipped neon nail polish, no scuffed white trainers she’d worn through every summer of their teens. It was Eva. Eva Marlow, the girl who’d called Rory at 2am three years prior, screaming that she had to leave Cardiff, that Evan was outside her flat with a baseball bat, that she’d book her a train ticket and send her cash if she just ran. The friend she’d exchanged less than a dozen texts with in the time since, the last a silly corgi meme sent on her 24th birthday, no phone calls, no visits, no explanation for the radio silence .
Eva’s gaze locked on Rory, and she exhaled a breath she’d been holding, her shoulders slumping like she’d run a marathon. She crossed the bar, her block-heeled boots clicking on the worn linoleum, and leaned against the first stool.
Took me long enough to track you down.
I thought you were in Cardiff, Rory said, her voice thinner than she intended. Caring for your mum.
Eva laughed, a sharp, brittle sound that bore no resemblance to the snorting, unfiltered laugh that used to echo through the beach huts at Barry Island when they skipped school to drink cheap cider. She hooked her bag over the stool’s back and sat down, her fingers tapping the bar top once, twice, a nervous tic Rory remembered from their A-level maths exams.
Mum died 18 months ago. Lung cancer. She paused, licked her lips, and ordered a gin and tonic. Extra lime.
Rory grabbed the gin bottle from the shelf, poured a double measure into a clean glass, topped it with tonic, dropped a slice of lime into the liquid and pushed it across the bar. Her eyes caught the thin, white scar that sliced through Eva’s left cheekbone, cutting a clean line from the corner of her eye down to her jaw, a mark she’d never had before. She set the tonic bottle down, her palm flat against the wood.
What happened to your face.
Eva touched the scar with the tip of her index finger, her smile twisting into something that wasn’t a smile at all. Car door. Slammed it on me last winter. Clumsy as ever.
Silas tilted his head, his hazel eyes scanning Eva like he was cataloguing every lie in that sentence, then he nodded once at Rory, grabbed his stack of paperwork from the end of the bar, and retreated to the back of the room, his limp more pronounced as he walked. He pulled the oak bookshelf that hid the Nest’s secret meeting room closed behind him, leaving the two of them alone with the quiet hum of the regulars’ conversation in the corner.
You never called, Rory said, when the sound of Silas’s footsteps faded. Never told me she was sick. I would’ve come. I would’ve helped.
I couldn’t ask you to. Eva swirled her gin, the lime slice bobbing against the edge of the glass. You were just starting over. You’d left Evan, you had a job, a flat, I wasn’t going to drag all that Cardiff shit back to you. She paused, her voice dropping so low Rory had to lean forward to hear it. He came after me, after you left. Blamed me for you running. Beat me so bad I spent a week in hospital. I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want him to follow you here, too. I thought if I stayed quiet, he’d leave you alone.
Rory pulled her left sleeve up, baring the small crescent scar on her wrist, the one she’d got when they were 12, when they’d crashed their shared bike into a broken lager bottle on the way to the beach. Eva’s eyes fixed on it, the same scar she’d cleaned up with a bottle of bleach and a spare plaster from her mum’s handbag that day, carrying Rory three miles to the nearest A&E because they were too scared to tell their parents they’d snuck out to the coast.
You didn’t have to protect me alone, Rory said. We were supposed to do all that shit together. Remember? We said we’d move to London together, share a flat, get jobs, never stay in Cardiff longer than we had to. You just left me here to wait for you.
I was ashamed , Eva whispered, tears spilling over her cheeks and rolling down her face, smudging the black winged liner she’d painted on that morning. I was the one who told you to run, and I couldn’t even run with you. I let him trap me there. I sold mum’s house six months ago, paid off all dad’s gambling debts, moved to London, got a job at a law firm in the City. I drove past this place every day for two weeks, too scared to knock. I thought you’d hate me for disappearing. I thought you’d built a new life and didn’t need the old mess from Cardiff.
Rory rounded the end of the bar, crossed the three feet between them, and pulled Eva into a hug. The blazer was new, the haircut was new, the scar was new, but Eva still smelled like the same lavender shampoo she ’d used since they were 13, the one she’d stolen from Boots and shared with Rory for years. Eva sobbed into Rory’s shoulder, her hands fisting the back of Rory’s oversized black hoodie, and Rory rubbed her back, her own eyes burning. They stood like that for a minute, the weight of three years of unspoken regret lifting, just a little, the gap between the girls they’d been in Cardiff and the women they were now closing, if only for a second.
They pulled apart when they heard the bookshelf creak open behind them, Silas stepping back into the main bar, his signet ring glinting as he curled his hand into a fist at his side. The brass bell above the door jingled again.
Rory turned, her eyes locking on the man standing in the doorway. He was heavier than the last time she’d seen him, his brown hair receding at the temples, the same scuffed black leather jacket he’d worn every day for the five years they were together slung over his shoulders. Evan’s gaze scanned the bar, landed on her, then on Eva, and a slow, cruel smirk spread across his face. He stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind him, and his voice carried across the quiet bar, cutting through the murmur of the regulars’ conversation like a knife.
Found you both. Told you I’d hunt you to the ends of the earth.