Page 57 of The Checklist
“Shut up. Do you have your wallet? Or were you gonna use mine too?”
Neale shrugged and reached for the door. “I’m just saying, for a retreat that almost went up in preserved-animal flames, it sure seems to have made you a new woman. Or turned you back into the old one. I’m not sure which yet.”
Letting out an exasperated sigh, Dylan walked through the door. “My grand transformation will never be at the hands of Tim Gunderson. Let’s go.”
“Definitely back into the old one,” Neale said, grinning.
Smells like mistakes,Dylan thought as the heavy door closed behind her with a whoosh of cold air. The Brick Heart was around the corner from Lenny’s, but it might as well have been the same place, down to a woman who looked suspiciously like Mrs.Claus working the door. The bar was primarily lit by neon signs advertising different beers, some of which had stopped being available to the public sometime in the early nineties. The cracked vinyl of black booths duct-taped together seemed to be a major feature of the decor. The sticky floors, however, were unintentional. Or at least Dylan thought they were. Glancing up, she noticed Stacy waving at them from a booth close to one of the windows, the red light from the neon above her head giving her hair a pink tinge.
“Come on, Neale,” Dylan said, looping her arm through her sister’s and pulling her toward the table.
“Hey, Delacroix. I was starting to wonder where you all were,” Stacy called, scooting farther into the booth to make room for Neale and eyeing Dylan as she carefully lowered herself across from them, trying not to howl in pain on the way down. “What happened to you?”
“Long story. It involved taxidermy and a ropes course. I need a drink before I tell it,” Dylan chuckled.
“Well, the good news is, we can fix that. And drinks are half-off. Although, Dylan, these are not the gold-laced martinis you tried to order at Lenny’s,” Stacy said, waiting for Neale to exit the booth before pushing herself off the sticky seat and landing on the floor with a bounce.
Dylan listened to the pair laugh as they made their way toward the bar, giving her a chance to lift herself out of the booth without anyone hearing her groan. By the time she managed to reach them, Neale was ordering while Stacy chatted animatedly with a guy who was obviously mistaking friendly for interested.
“Do you want a Rollercoaster or a Galactic martini?” Neale asked, eyeing her with that strange combination of expectation and judgment only a sister could level. The choice between amusement parks and space was an important one. Dylan needed to select carefully.
“Coaster.”
“Told you she had excellent taste,” Neale said, all smug smiles aimed at the bartender.
“You were right. With the sweater, I pegged her for a space drinker,” the bartender said to Neale before halting, one hand on the tap of whatever dispensed her drink. Looking at Dylan, he said, “You look familiar.”
Dylan tilted her head to the side, looking hard at the guy behind the bar. His baseball cap wasn’t helping her facial recognition much.
“Did we go to high school together?” Dylan asked, hoping the question would stall him long enough to give her mind time to retrieve his name. “Roosevelt?”
The guy nodded and stared at her. Dylan realized that he was tilting his head to mirror the way she held her own head. Glancing at Neale, who seemed bemused by the situation, she took a deep breath and prepared for the most charming apology she could manage in this den of regrets. He was Neale’s ... associate or friend or something, after all. “Honestly, I remember your—”
“Dylan? Neale, I didn’t know your sister went to high school with us!”
“Well, you and I technically didn’t go to school together. I’m younger than you,” Neale said, as if that explained everyone’s lapse in memory.
“It’s CJ. CJ Rodriguez.” He gestured to his barrel chest with both hands.
“Oh!” Dylan said. She vaguely remembered the name and had the sense that she hadn’t enjoyed his company in high school.
CJ, on the other hand, seemed genuinely excited to see her. “Neale talks about you all the time. You look different. When did you get to be so awesome?”
“She was always awesome. You just didn’t notice.”
Dylan recognized Mike’s voice before she turned around to face him. He smiled casually at CJ, his weight shifting slightly onto his right foot. The first thing Dylan noticed was his gray button-down, which fit a little snugly around the chest and was made of some soft material that looked both unfussy and warm. She wanted to touch that chest, then amended the thought. This was a science-project sort of urge. Dylan could never pull off intentionally wrinkled flannel bedsheets in shirt form, but Mike sure made it work. She just wanted to know how.
“Thank you.” Dylan took her Rollercoaster from CJ, grateful for the neon glow, which masked the heat in her cheeks. Hell, she was probably blushing all over.
“Hey, man, how’s it going?” CJ said, reaching a jovial hand out from behind the bar to shake Mike’s. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Mike’s gaze swept over Dylan, causing another flush that she was positive not even the neon glow could hide, before turning his smile toward CJ. The pair engaged in the complex man handshake Dylan never fully understood. Her handshake analysis wasn’t doing much for the flush, but it did take her mind off the fact that whatever was in a Rollercoaster tasted a lot like Pine-Sol smelled.
“I’m good. How you been?” Mike asked.
“You made it,” Stacy said, turning her attention away from the guy she was talking to and clapping her hands like a kid at a birthday party. The disappointed guy wandered away after taking one long look at Mike. Dylan couldn’t say she blamed him. The guy was not about to compete with someone that appealing, and if he had thought he could, Stacy’s reaction cleared that up real quick.
“Yeah, I was able to wrap up dinner with my brother early, so this worked out perfectly.” Mike’s deep voice rolled over whatever musicwas passing as a reference to the bar’s glory days. “Do any of you need a drink?” he asked, eyeing Dylan’s precariously full Rollercoaster and Neale’s surprisingly empty one.
