Air From a Tire

Lainey POV I made it all the way out the door before I let myself grin. I had a job. I had a trial run, which was almost a job. I stood on the sidewalk in the heat and smiled at nothing like an i***t, with my heart still going a little too fast. It was the glasses, I told myself. Anybody's heart would be going after that. One second it was a quiet, empty bar, and the next it sounded like the end of the world. It was not because the owner turned out to be the man from the road. Beck. He had a name now. He also had a voice, low and short on words, and a way of saying "no" like it was a complete sentence. He had gotten down on one knee to wipe up glass with a wet towel because I said so. And for one second, right at the end, he had almost been funny. It's my bar. I pressed my lips together. The grin came back anyway. I turned left, toward home. There was a woman across the street, sweeping the sidewalk in front of a shop I hadn't tried. She was older, with silver hair, and her sleeves rolled up and her broom going in slow, easy strokes. She wasn't looking at her sweeping. She was looking at me. She was smiling. It wasn't the nervous, stapled-on smile I had been getting all week. It was a small, warm, knowing one, like she had been waiting to see what my face would look like when I came out of that door, and now she had her answer. I had no idea what she thought she knew. I waved anyway. She lifted one hand off the broom and waved back. I walked home with my sandals slapping the pavement, past the diner with no sign in its window, past the man at the hardware store and his plastic flowers. I thought about closed shoes. I thought about whether I still remembered how to pour a beer without half of it being foam. I was all the way to Alder Lane before I noticed I was still smiling. I was nearly to my own front steps before I admitted that it didn't have much to do with the job. I took the porch steps two at a time. "Travis!" The screen door slapped behind me. "Travis, where are you?" "In here." He was on the couch with his feet up on a box marked LIVING ROOM and a beer in his hand. It wasn't the beer from that morning. There were two empties on the floor by his heel. "I got a job." "What?" He sat up. "Already?" "Already. I start tomorrow." "Lane!" He was off the couch before I had finished. He set his beer down on the box, caught me around the middle, and spun me in a full circle again. I laughed. I couldn't help it. For a second it was just us, and it was good. "Where?" he said, setting me down. "The bar. The Hollow, on Main Street. It's a trial run tomorrow, but I think it went well. It's four to close, Tuesday through…" "The bar. That's perfect. You were always great at that." He kissed my forehead, hard and happy. "See? I told you. This town is going to be good for us." He didn't ask who had hired me. He didn't ask how it had gone, or whether I was nervous, or how I felt about working nights. I had a whole story ready for him, about the glasses, and the casserole dishes, and a diner that took its sign out of the window while I was standing right there. "Hey," he said. "Why don't you cook us some dinner? Something nice. We'll celebrate." It went out of me. All of it, quietly, like air from a tire. I had walked the whole town in the heat. I had been told no by five different people before somebody said yes. And the way we were going to celebrate was for me to go and stand at a stove. I kept my face exactly where it was. I had always been good at that. "Yeah," I said. "Of course." He kissed me, quick, and dropped back onto the couch. He had his beer in his hand again before I was out of the room. I went into the kitchen and started opening boxes, looking for a pan. I did it without a word, like a wife. In eight years, he had never gotten around to asking me to be one.