AI The green neon of the sign bled onto the wet pavement, turning the rain-slicked soot of the alley into a smear of liquid emerald. Rory hauled the insulated bag onto the counter, the condensation from the containers leaving a damp ring on the worn wood. Silas was at the far end of the bar, his grey-streaked auburn head bent over a ledger, the silver of his signet ring catching the low light as he turned a page.
“Last delivery of the night,” she said, her voice flat with the fatigue of a twelve-hour shift. “Yu-Fei sends his regards. And the spare spring rolls.”
Silas looked up, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. “Man’s a saint. Put them in the back fridge, Rory. You want a drink on the house? You look like you could use one.”
“Just water. I’ve got to get up at six.”
She moved behind the bar, a space she navigated with the ease of long familiarity. The bar was quiet, a Thursday lull. A few regulars nursed pints in shadowed booths, their faces illuminated by phone screens or lost in thought. The air smelled of old wood, lemon polish, and the faint, yeasty ghost of spilled beer.
She was pulling a glass from the rack when the door opened, letting in a gust of damp London night and a figure that paused on the threshold, shaking a tailored umbrella. Water dripped from the hems of dark trousers, from the shoulders of a coat that was clearly not off a rack. He looked around the low-lit room with an air of polite appraisal, his gaze sweeping over the old maps and monochrome photographs that papered the walls until it snagged on her.
Rory’s hand stilled on the glass tap. The face was older, sharper around the jaw, the easy boyish grin replaced by a more controlled, careful smile. But the eyes were the same—a warm, cognac brown—and the way his eyebrows shot up in disbelief was achingly familiar .
“Rory? Rory Carter?”
Her throat went dry. She knew that voice, but it had been smoothed of its Cardiff lilt , polished into something neutral, posh even. “Marcus ,” she breathed. It was like saying a word from a dead language.
He crossed the floor in a few long strides, his expensive shoes making no sound on the old floorboards. He stopped on the other side of the bar, and for a moment, they just stared. The years between them yawned like a canyon.
“My God. What are you—?” He laughed, a short, incredulous sound. “You work here?”
“Part-time.” She finished filling her glass with water, her movements deliberate. “I live upstairs.”
Silas had been watching the exchange, his posture shifting from relaxed to subtly alert. He closed his ledger with a soft thud.
Marcus ’s gaze darted to Silas and back to her. “You live above a bar in Soho. Right.” He ran a hand through his hair, now a shade darker than she remembered, and meticulously styled. A sleek watch glinted on his wrist. “I was just looking for a quiet pint. Some place… not a chain. This seemed fitting.” He gestured vaguely at the decor. “All a bit mysterious.”
“The Raven’s Nest,” Silas supplied, his voice a low rumble from down the bar . “On the house for an old friend of Rory’s. Whiskey? Bourbon?”
“Bourbon would be perfect , thank you.” Marcus slid onto a stool, his coat billowing slightly before he arranged it neatly beside him. He looked back at Rory, his expression trying to recapture that initial spark of recognition, but now it was layered with something else—curiosity, or perhaps caution. “Eleven years. That’s… that’s got to be it. Since you vanished from Cardiff.”
“I didn’t vanish,” Rory said, the words sharper than she intended. She wiped down the already-clean counter in front of him. “I left.”
“Left. Right. One day you were there, the next your number was disconnected and Eva said you’d gone to London and that was all anyone knew.” He picked up the glass Silas slid to him, but didn’t drink. “We all wondered.”
“Did you?” The question slipped out, laced with an old, familiar bitterness she thought she’d purged.
Marcus flinched, a tiny tightening around his eyes. “Of course we did. I did. You were my friend, Rory.”
The word ‘friend’ landed between them, heavy and hollow. She remembered late nights studying constitutional law she hated, sharing cheap cider on the steps of the Students’ Union, him defending her in a moot court competition when her voice had failed her. He’d been a fixed point in the shifting chaos of university.
She looked at him now—the cut of his suit, the manicured nails wrapped around the heavy tumbler, the confidence that sat on his shoulders like a second skin. This wasn’t the boy who’d lived on instant noodles and dreamed of arguing before the Supreme Court. This was a man who looked like he already belonged there .
“You look… successful,” she offered, the word tasting bland .
“Corporate law. Mergers and acquisitions.” He took a sip, his eyes never leaving hers. “It pays. Keeps me in London, mostly. You? Delivery, and…?” He gestured to the bar, the flat above.
“Some things are stable,” she said, thinking of the steady rhythm of the restaurant, the silent agreement with Silas, the small, fiercely protected space she called hers. It wasn’t the life she’d mapped out, but it was hers. “It works.”
“Right. Right.” He nodded slowly , looking down into his drink. “You just… decided Cardiff wasn’t for you anymore.”
The silence stretched. The hum of the beer cooler, the distant clatter of a dish from the kitchen, the soft patter of rain against the front window. Rory could feel Silas’s quiet attention, a physical weight .
“It wasn’t a decision,” Rory said finally, her voice low . “It was a necessity.”
Marcus looked up sharply . “What does that mean?”
“It means I had to go.” She busied herself rearranging the bottles of bitters on the shelf behind her, lining up their labels.
“It was Evan, wasn’t it?” The name hung in the air , ugly and raw. Marcus ’s voice had lost its polished edge, dropping back into the softer consonants she remembered. “Things with him were… bad. Everyone knew.”
Rory’s left wrist tingled, a phantom ache where the old crescent scar sat. She’d never told anyone the full story of the accident, how she’d tripped on the stairs because he’d shoved her. “You didn’t know,” she corrected him, turning back. “You saw what he wanted you to see. What we all wanted to see.”
“I should have done more.” Marcus set his glass down too hard; a little whiskey sloshed over the rim. He stared at the dark stain spreading on the wood. “I told myself it wasn’t my business. That you were smart, you could handle it. That’s a coward’s excuse.”
Rory looked at him, really looked. The regret wasn’t a performance. It was etched into the faint lines bracketing his mouth, visible in the way his shoulders, so broad and assured a minute ago, now seemed to carry a subtle weight . He hadn’t just gotten a better suit and a nicer watch. He’d shed the skin of the person he was, but the memories had followed him.
“You were my friend,” she said again, this time a simple statement. The tension in her chest loosened, just a fraction. It didn’t excuse anything, but it acknowledged the loss. “That’s what mattered back then.”
“And now?” He met her gaze. “Are we strangers who used to know each other?”
“We’re two people in a bar,” she answered, which was both a truth and an evasion. She nodded toward his glass. “Are you going to finish that, or just baptize the counter?”
A ghost of the old smile touched his lips. “Fair enough.” He lifted the glass in a small, wry toast. “To necessities, then. And to finding solid ground.”
He drank, and Rory watched the column of his throat work. The easy camaraderie they’d shared at nineteen was gone , buried under a decade of unspoken choices, fear, and survival. But something else had emerged from the rubble—a stark , unadorned honesty that was more real than any shared joke or study session.
Silas drifted to the far end of the bar, giving them a semblance of privacy, his presence a reassuring sentinel .
Marcus placed his empty glass on the counter. The rain had picked up, drumming a steady rhythm on the roof. “I’m in town for two weeks. A case. It would be…” He paused, choosing the word with care. “It would be good to talk. To catch up, properly. Not behind a bar.”
Rory thought of her small flat, the books on criminology and foreign policy she read for pleasure now, the silence she craved at the end of a day. She thought of the boy who’d once known her favourite coffee order and the man before her who didn’t know her at all.
“I get off at eleven tomorrow,” she heard herself say. “If you’re still around.”
Marcus ’s face relaxed, the careful control giving way to something genuine and relieved. “I’ll be around.” He stood, pulling out his wallet.
“Silas said it was on the house,” Rory reminded him, jerking her chin toward the bartender.
“Right. Well.” Marcus tucked the wallet away, a flicker of discomfort crossing his features. He wasn’t used to not paying his way. He shrugged into his expensive coat, the transformation from casual old friend back to polished professional instantaneous. “Thank you. For the drink. And for…” He gestured vaguely between them. “For not throwing me out.”
“It’s a public bar, Marcus . You ordered a drink.”
He almost smiled. “Goodnight, Rory.”
“Goodnight.”
The bell above the door chimed as he left, letting in a swirl of damp air and the distant sound of traffic before closing him out into the night. Rory stared at the empty stool, at the ring of water left by his glass.
Silas materialized beside her, quietly clearing the tumbler. “Old university friend?” he asked, his voice neutral .
“From a lifetime ago.” She picked up her water, the glass cold against her palm. “We used to study together.”
“And now?” Silas prompted, his gaze perceptive .
Rory watched the neon sign reflected in a puddle across the street, the letters distorted, trembling. “Now we’re just two different people who remember the same ones.” She took a long drink of water, the cold shock of it grounding her. “Now we’re just trying to figure out if we remember how to talk to each other, or if all we have left are the ghosts.”