AI The rain had turned Soho slick and reflective by the time Rory pushed open the door to The Raven's Nest, and the distinctive green neon sign above the entrance stuttered against the wet pavement, throwing a pale wash across the puddles.
She was still in her delivery jacket, the one with Golden Empress stitched in chipped gold thread across the back, her helmet tucked under her arm and her straight shoulder-length black hair damp at the ends and sticking to her collar. She'd done the last drop in Camden and cut straight back on the bike, meaning to go up the exterior stair to her flat and change, but the light was on in the bar and she could see Silas moving inside.
It was quiet for a Thursday. The dimly lit room smelled the way it always did, of old wood and lemon cleaner and beer that had soaked into the grain over years. The walls were crowded with old maps and black-and-white photographs in crooked frames, London streets that no longer existed, men in hats standing in front of shops that had been bombed out. Rory shook the rain off her shoulders and left a wet footprint trail toward the bar.
Silas looked up from where he was polishing a glass. At fifty-eight he still carried himself with that quiet authority that made people lower their voices around him without knowing why, his grey-streaked auburn hair combed back, his beard neatly trimmed to match. He favored his left leg as he moved, that slight limp from the old knee injury that he never talked about, and the silver signet ring on his right hand caught the low light when he set the glass down.
"You're soaked," he said. His hazel eyes flicked to her helmet. "Yu-Fei have you out in this?"
"Yu-Fei has me out in anything that doesn't actually kill me," Rory said. She set her helmet on the bar and pushed her hair back from her face. Her bright blue eyes were tired. "One more run to Pimlico and he said I could call it. I told him if he keeps routing me through the West End at rush hour I'm going to start eating the delivery myself."
Silas made a low sound that might have been a laugh and poured her a water without her asking. She wrapped her hands around it. The small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist showed pale against her skin when her sleeve rode up, and she tugged it down automatically, a childhood habit.
"You've got a customer," she said, nodding toward the far end of the bar.
She hadn't noticed the woman when she came in. She was sitting alone in the corner booth under a map of the Thames from 1892, a glass of wine in front of her that she hadn't touched. Dark coat folded neatly beside her, hair cut short and styled in a way that looked expensive, a watch that caught the light. She was turned half away, looking at the photographs, but there was something familiar in the line of her shoulders.
Rory felt it a half-second before recognition landed, a stupid lurch in her chest.
Silas followed her gaze. "Came in about twenty minutes ago. Asked if you still came in here."
Rory didn't answer. The woman turned then, as if she had felt herself being talked about, and her face came into full view.
Eva.
For a second Rory couldn't reconcile the person in the booth with the girl in her memory. The Eva she knew had been all noise and color, hair dyed a different shade every month, laughing too loud in their Cardiff kitchens, stealing Brendan Carter's expensive whiskey and spilling it. This Eva was contained , pressed, her makeup precise, her mouth set in a way that Rory had never seen before. She had lost weight . She looked older than twenty-five, or maybe just more tired in a different way than Rory was tired.
Eva's eyes widened . She stood up too fast and almost knocked her wine over.
"Rory?"
Rory's first instinct was to fix her hair, to hide the damp delivery jacket, to do something about the fact that she smelled faintly of fried noodles and rain. Her second was to run. Instead she stayed where she was, her hands still around the water glass, and managed, "You have got to be kidding me."
Eva crossed the bar in five quick steps. She smelled like perfume now, something clean and sharp, not the vanilla body spray she had drowned herself in at seventeen. She stopped a foot away, as if she wasn't sure whether she was allowed to come closer.
"You live here," Eva said. It wasn't a question. She glanced up at the ceiling, toward the flat above Silas' bar. "Silas said you live here. I didn't believe him. I thought he was winding me up."
"He doesn't wind people up. That's his whole thing," Rory said. Her voice came out thinner than she wanted it to. She set the glass down. "What are you doing in London?"
Eva let out a breath that could have been a laugh. "I work here now. I've been here eight months. Near Liverpool Street. Compliance. It's boring as hell."
"Compliance," Rory repeated.
"I know." Eva tucked a strand of her short hair behind her ear. Her hand shook a little. "It's very grown-up of me."
They stared at each other. The bar was too quiet. Silas had found something very interesting to do at the other end, wiping down the already clean taps, giving them space without making it obvious. The rain ticked against the windows.
Rory had not seen Eva in three years. Not since the week she had packed a single duffel bag in her room in Cardiff while Jennifer Carter née Ellis stood in the doorway crying and saying she didn't understand, and Brendan Carter kept saying calmly that she was throwing away her degree, and Eva had been the one on the phone saying just get on the train, just come, you can sleep on my floor. Rory had slept on that floor for two weeks and then Silas had offered her the flat because Eva had known Silas somehow, a friend of a friend, and then Eva had gotten a job in Bristol and moved and the texts had gotten shorter and then stopped for months at a time.
"You look different," Eva said finally.
"So do you," Rory said. She tried to make it sound light. It didn't.
"You cut your hair," Eva said, at the same time Rory said, "You cut your hair," and they both stopped, and Eva laughed for real this time, a short, surprised sound that for a second was exactly the old laugh.
"You first," Eva said.
Rory shrugged. Her shoulder-length black hair was still dripping . "Easier on the bike."
Eva nodded. She looked down at Rory's jacket, at the helmet, at the scar on Rory's wrist where the sleeve had ridden up again. "Are you still at uni?"
"No. I left. Properly left, this time. You knew that."
"I didn't know if you'd gone back."
Rory felt a familiar coolness settle over her, the quick, assessing calm that had always made her good at thinking her way out of corners. "I didn't. I'm doing deliveries. For Yu-Fei. The Golden Empress. It's part-time but it pays the rent."
Eva's face did something complicated. "Rory."
"What?"
"Nothing. I just— I thought you'd be—" She stopped herself. "I thought you'd be doing something else by now."
"Like Pre-Law," Rory said. It came out flatter than she meant it to. The words hung there. The unspoken part was: like you told me not to do. Like you helped me run away from.
Eva flinched. "That's not what I meant."
"I know."
"No, I mean it." Eva's voice dropped. She glanced toward Silas, then back. "I just remember you in Cardiff, you were always going to be the one who got out and did something big. You were the clever one. You were the one who was going to argue circles around everyone. And I was going to— I don't know. I was going to follow you and make a mess."
"You did get out," Rory said.
"Yeah, but differently." Eva wrapped her arms around herself. Her neat coat, her neat hair, her compliance job near Liverpool Street. She looked like someone who had been ironed flat. "I got good at being reliable. At showing up. At not drinking too much on weeknights."
Rory wanted to say something cruel or something kind and couldn't find either. The weight of the last few years sat between them, all the calls not returned, the time Rory had needed someone to talk her out of texting Evan again and had called and gotten voicemail, the time Eva had sent a long message about her dad being ill and Rory had replied three days later with a heart emoji because she didn't know what else to say.
"I should have visited," Eva said quietly. "When you first moved. I was only in Bristol. I kept thinking I'd come up for a weekend and then I just— didn't. And then it felt weird to just show up."
"You did show up," Rory said. "Once. You brought that terrible houseplant."
Eva smiled weakly. "It died, didn't it."
"Immediately."
Silas set two fresh glasses down a little way from them, not interrupting, just an offering. Rory noticed the way he watched them both, hazel eyes steady, his limp barely noticeable as he shifted his weight . He didn't ask questions. He never did.
Eva picked up one of the glasses. Her fingers were cold around it.
"I heard about Evan," she said, very carefully . "Through Catrin. That he tried to call you last year."
Rory's jaw tightened. She felt her pulse in her throat. "He did. I didn't pick up."
"Good." Eva said it fiercely, and for a second she sounded twenty again, furious on Rory's behalf in a way no one else had been. "Are you okay? Actually okay? Not just 'I'm fine, I'm paying rent' okay?"
Rory looked at her friend — her old friend — standing there in a bar that had become her home, under the green neon that made everyone look a little ghostly, and felt the years fold. She had been so angry for a while that Eva had changed, that she had become this polished stranger who worked in compliance and wore a watch that probably cost more than Rory's bike. Now she could see the effort it had taken, the same effort it took Rory to get up every morning and put on the delivery jacket and not think too much about Cardiff or Cardiff University or the life she had been supposed to have.
"I'm getting there," Rory said honestly. Her voice was low, so Silas wouldn't hear unless he was trying. "It's not big. But it's mine. The flat, the job. Silas lets me hide in the back room when I need to think. The one through the bookshelf. He pretends he doesn't notice."
Eva's eyes filled, fast and embarrassing. She blinked hard. "I missed you."
"I know," Rory said. "I missed you too. I didn't know how to say it without making it sound like you owed me something."
Eva let out a wet laugh and finally, after three years of hesitation, stepped forward and hugged her. Rory stiffened for half a second — she was still damp and cold — and then hugged back, hard, smelling that sharp perfume and underneath it something familiar , shampoo, rain.
Over Eva's shoulder Rory could see Silas give a small, approving nod before he turned away to give them privacy, his silver ring flashing as he lifted a glass to polish, the maps on the walls holding their old, quiet watch.