The Exacting Appraisal

My dry spell had a birthday coming up. That sounds like a joke. It was not a joke.

Twelve years. Twelve years since anyone had touched me with intent. There had been one bad night at twenty-two, back in grad school, with a guy named Vic who read his email halfway through. Nothing since that had lit anything. I figured the wiring was just old.

Here's what I told people: I was happy. And mostly I was. Thirty-four, good job at the credit union, small apartment with a plant I hadn't killed yet. My life was quiet the way a library is quiet. Fine. Useful. Nobody's first choice for a Friday night.

So that Friday I went to The Overflow instead. Sticky floors. A long mahogany rail polished by twenty years of elbows. Dim enough that everyone looked better than they were.

I took a booth and ordered a beer and did my taxes in my head. Thrilling stuff. Then I looked up and saw him.

Dev. Dev from community college, from the study group that met at nineteen and accomplished nothing. He was taller than I remembered. Taller than anyone has a right to be. He was leaning at the bar talking to the bartender, and he was laughing at something, this big easy laugh, and something in my chest went oh. Hello. Are you still there?

I hadn't felt that in years. The wiring wasn't dead. It was just unplugged.

He turned. He saw me. His whole face changed.

"No way," he said, already walking over. "Darla? Darla the spreadsheet?"

"Dev the perpetually late," I said. "Sit down before you hit your head on something."

He slid into the booth across from me. The booth creaked. He filled the whole side of it. I noticed that. I noticed it more than I wanted to admit.

"You look exactly the same," he said.

"I'm thirty-four."

"So am I. That's what exactly the same means."

"Fair." I pushed my beer toward the center of the table as if offering a truce. "What are you doing in my bar?"

"Your bar. Sure. I'm doing a shift drop-off two blocks over. Warehouse job. Night freight. I came in for one beer before heading home."

"Very glamorous."

"Extremely. I drive a forklift. It's the most power I've ever had over anything."

I laughed. I hadn't laughed at a bar alone in a while. "Remember when you were going to be an architect?"

"I remember when you were going to be a professor."

"I became a loan officer instead. Dreams adjust. Like pants."

"You still owe me for that stats final," he said. "I carried you."

"You did not carry me. I got a B."

"I carried you to the B. There's a difference between walking and being carried. Ask any warehouse guy."

The waitress came by. Dev ordered another beer and looked at me with his eyebrows up, asking if I wanted one. I did. He ordered it. Small thing. I noticed that too.

We caught up. Sort of. There wasn't much to catch. He'd had a girlfriend for a bit around twenty-two, ended fine, nobody cried. I had Vic and his email. We agreed our twenties had been a low-effort production.

"And now?" he asked.

"Now I approve mortgages. I tell people whether their lives are structurally sound. You?"

"I move boxes so that other people can have box-related experiences. It's honest work. My back hates it."

"Your back should unionize."

"It has. I lost the vote."

He was easy to talk to. That was the part that snuck up on me. Easy, and big, and sitting three feet away, and I kept doing this thing where my eyes went to his hands wrapped around the beer glass and then back up like nothing happened.

Somewhere in my second beer I realized I was flirting. Actually flirting. Out loud. With intent. My dry spell looked at me across the table and raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, be honest," I said. "Do you remember anything real from our study group, or just the snacks?"

"I remember you correcting the professor's math under your breath. Every class. He could hear you. He chose to live."

"He was wrong weekly. Weekly."

"I also remember you had that blue jacket. With the pins."

"I loved that jacket."

"I know. You told the jacket."

* * *

The manager came out around eleven looking like a man with bad news and a mop budget. He flipped the deadbolt behind him, which was odd, because the bar was still half full.

"Listen up, folks," he called. "Pipe burst in the back. Water's everywhere. Health code says I can't serve and I can't have you wandering through it, so we're closed, and you're all staying till the plumber's done."

A guy at the rail groaned. Somebody else said the word plumber like a curse.

"How long?" Dev asked.

"Best case, two hours. Worst case, till morning. There's water in the wall."

People muttered and called rides and gave up on rides and settled in. The manager, in a show of guilt, left the pretzels out and unlocked the bathroom in the front hall.

Dev turned to me with the biggest grin I'd seen all night.

"So," he said. "Trapped with me till dawn. This is every romantic comedy ever made."

"This is a plumbing emergency."

"Same genre. Lower budget."

"I had plans tonight."

"You had taxes in your head. I watched you. You were doing itemized deductions with a beer."

"That was personal time."

He laughed that big laugh again and the whole booth shook a little. I swear the mahogany rail vibrated. I was annoyed at the pipe. I was not annoyed at him, which was the actual problem, because I had planned to go home at eleven and feel proud of myself for trying, and now trying was going to take all night, in a booth, across from a man whose shoulders did not quit.

The manager walked past with a flashlight. "Sorry, folks. Really."

"Any chance of a refund on atmosphere?" Dev called.

"Any chance you'll stop asking?" the manager said, and kept walking.

Dev raised his beer to the man's back. "Fair."

I looked at Dev. He looked at me. The lights were low and the floors were sticky and the pipe was hissing somewhere in the wall, and I thought, well. Here it is. The opening. Twelve years of nothing and the universe hands me a locked bar and a forklift driver.

"You okay with this?" he asked. Genuine question. He wasn't assuming anything. "I can move to the bar if you want your booth back."

"Stay," I said. Maybe too fast. "I mean. Stay. It's a long night. We should ration the pretzels."

"We should absolutely ration the pretzels."

He pushed the bowl toward me first. Small thing again. I noticed it again.

"So," I said, and took a pretzel. "Till morning, then."

Dev stood up to grab the next round, and that's when I actually saw him. Not glanced. Saw.

He was six foot five. Maybe more. I'm five foot two on a good day with inserts in my shoes. When he stood, my whole sightline changed. He had to duck his head coming around the little lamp over our booth. His shoulders went past the edges of my vision, both sides, like the booth had grown a roof.

"Another?" he said.

"Sure," I said, in a voice I'd like to disown.

He walked to the bar. I watched him walk to the bar. Broad. Easy in his body, even tired-looking, even in that warehouse hoodie. I've always been a person who did math on first impressions. This math was simple and I didn't like the total.

Twelve years of nothing, and my body picked now to raise its hand.

He came back with two bottles and sat down and the booth dipped a little with his weight. I took mine. Our fingers didn't even touch, which felt like a waste of a moment.

"So," he said. "Off the market, or just selective?"

"Why?"

"You checked my hands twice and my shoulders once. That's a woman with a spreadsheet."

"I'm a loan officer. Everything is a spreadsheet."

"That's not an answer."

I drank. What the hell. "Off the market. By choice. Twelve years."

His eyebrows went up. "Twelve years? By choice?"

"Mostly by choice. There were... offerings. I declined them."

"Offerings." He grinned. "Like tribute."

"Like a guy named Keith who talked about his truck for ninety minutes."

"Keith doesn't count."

"Keith counts. Keith counts against my total. The point is I chose the dry spell. It felt tidy. Controlled. You know what a bad night costs you? Sleep. Months of it."

"What was the bad night?"

"Vic. Age twenty-two. He read his email. During."

Dev put his beer down. "During?"

"Mid. He had one hand occupied and the other on his phone. I