The Last Call Confession (We Both Knew This Was Coming)

Ruth had been telling herself all week that Friday night was a bad idea. It was loud at The Back Room, the kind of packed where you waited twenty minutes for a glass of wine and nobody looked at anybody. Perfect cover, she figured. She could sit at the zinc bar, eat something with farro in it, sketch Tegan from memory instead of from the hallway, and go home.

That was the plan anyway. Six months of hallway hellos and she still only knew three things about her neighbor. Her name was Tegan. She was thirty-two. She worked here, and she smelled like rosemary half the time because the kitchen pumped it out the back door into the stairwell they shared.

Okay, four things.

The restaurant was in an old brick building with the windows fogged up from the open kitchen. Ruth pushed through the door at seven and the noise hit her like a wall. Forks, voices, the hiss of the pans, somebody laughing too hard at table six. The host stand was right there by the door and Tegan was behind it, white shirt crisp, sleeves rolled to the elbow, hair pinned back with what looked like two pencils. She was saying something into the walkie clipped to her hip and writing on a seating chart at the same time.

Ruth stopped dead in the doorway and forgot how legs worked.

Was Tegan even aware of what she looked like when she worked? Probably. A woman like that, running a room like a conductor, saying "Table nine, two minutes, I promise" to a man waving a menu like a flag? She knew exactly what she looked like. That was the entire problem, Ruth thought. Tegan was a person who knew things and Ruth was a person who sketched strangers in her notebook and then hid the notebook.

The host stand was empty for a second so Ruth wandered toward the bar and sat down on a stool that wobbled. A bartender with forearms like a rower slid her a water without asking.

"Are you eating or just drinking?" he asked.

"Um," Ruth said. Her brain was still back at the host stand. "The, uh. Whatever has the greens. And a glass of the red that isn't expensive."

"That is the entire left side of the menu, but sure." He winked and went off.

Ruth pulled her sketchbook out, out of habit more than anything, and pretended to study it. What she was actually doing was tracking Tegan across the room. Tegan seated a party of four. Tegan told a woman where the bathroom was without breaking stride. Tegan caught a falling water glass off a tray like she did it every night, which she probably did, and didn't even look at it after. Thirty-two years old and she moved like the room belonged to her, which, professionally speaking, it did.

Here was the thing Ruth had figured out months ago, in her apartment, staring at her own ceiling: Tegan spent all night telling people where to go and when to sit and how long they had. Ruth had watched her through the peephole some mornings, keys in hand, tired as anything, and still walked like the hallway was a runway she tolerated. What did a woman like that want on her one night off? Ruth had theories. Most of the theories were not polite.

A server bumped Ruth's elbow and she ordered again, some bread thing, and then Tegan appeared three tables away, clearing plates. Which was weird, wasn't it? Doesn't the host stay at the stand? Ruth's sculptor-brain kicked in, the part of her that observed things for a living, and she put it together. Somebody called in sick. Tegan was running the whole front alone on a Friday. That explained the pencil hair and the slight red at her cheeks and the way she moved faster than the room.

Tegan stacked two plates, wiped the table with one efficient swipe, and looked up.

Straight at Ruth.

Not past her, not the polite scan a host gives the whole room. At her. Ruth felt her face go hot and did the mature thing, which was to look at her sketchbook like it contained national secrets. It contained a half-finished drawing of a fire escape and, on the next page, three separate attempts at Tegan's jawline that she would die before showing anyone.

When Ruth finally risked a look back, Tegan was still watching. She set the plates down on her forearm, tilted her head a little, and one eyebrow went up. Not a frown. Something more like a question. Something more like, I see you, neighbor, sitting at my bar with your notebook, and I have eyes.

Then, because the universe was cruel, Tegan had to walk past Ruth's stool to get to the kitchen. She slowed. Just a little, just a half step, in a busy restaurant where slowing down was apparently a crime. She leaned in close enough that Ruth caught her perfume over the garlic and the crowd, and mouthed one word.

Wait.

Then she was gone, back through the swinging doors, and Ruth sat there with her heart doing something unprofessional in her chest.

Wait. Like wait how? Wait until the end of the shift? Wait until you finish your wine? Wait, stop drawing my jawline in a public establishment? Ruth looked down and, with the energy of a woman having a small crisis, flipped to a clean page and started drawing the water glass instead. Very normal. Very safe. Nobody has ever fallen for a woman because of a water glass drawing.

The food came. She ate maybe half of it. The red wine helped and hurt in equal amounts. Around her, the dinner rush crested and broke, the noise thinning out by degrees. Somewhere in there Tegan passed by two more times and each time her eyes snagged on Ruth for a second, a little touch of contact, like tapping someone on the shoulder without touching them.

Ruth paid her tab at about quarter to eleven, because staying felt too obvious and leaving felt impossible, so she compromised by standing near the door like an idiot, pretending to text her gallery contact about a delivery that did not exist.

At eleven the room was half empty. At eleven thirty the last big table got up, loud and happy, and the bartender started flipping chairs onto tables one by one, each flip a small closing sound. Tegan was at the host stand now, doing math on the seating chart, pencil between her teeth. The kitchen crew was mopping. The whole place was winding down into that soft after-hours light.

Ruth was still by the door.

"Hey," Tegan called across the room, casual as anything, like they did this all the time. "You going to stand there all night or are you going to sit down and have a drink with me? We close in twenty."

Ruth's mouth said "The second one" before her brain approved it.

Tegan laughed, that real laugh, not the hostess one, Ruth could tell the difference now, and pointed at a two-top by the brick wall. "Sit. I need ten minutes. I have to count a drawer and yell at Rex about the reservation book."

"Is Rex the walkie voice?"

"Rex is a lot of things." Tegan was already walking away, calling back over her shoulder, "Don't leave. I'll know."

So Ruth sat. She sat and she watched Tegan count out the drawer and hand the bag to the bartender and have a short, friendly argument with a dishwasher about a delivery that was coming Sunday instead of Saturday, and it was the most ordinary thing in the world, and Ruth could not remember the last time watching someone do paperwork had felt like this.

Tegan came over with two glasses of the cheap red and a plate of bread the kitchen was going to throw out anyway. She sat down across from Ruth with a full-body sigh, the kind you only let out when the last customer is gone, and kicked off one shoe under the table.

"God. Okay. Hi, Ruth!" She took a long drink. "You know you're the first person who's ever come to see me at work, right? Six months of hallway small talk about the mailbox and then you show up on my worst Friday of the month."

"I didn't want to bother you," Ruth said. "I was going to eat farro and leave."

"You ate the bread thing and stayed four hours." Tegan smiled at her over the rim of the glass. "So. Did you get what you needed?"

Ruth's stomach dropped somewhere near her shoes. "Which part of that question is the trap?"

"None of it. I saw you watching me all night. I saw the notebook." Tegan leaned forward on her elbows. "I'm not mad. I'm asking a real question."

Ruth put her wine down because her hands suddenly felt untrustworthy. The glass made a small clink on the table, way too loud in the empty room.

"I got what I needed," she said. "I got greens and a bread thing and a very good seat for watching you run the whole restaurant by yourself."

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

"Maybe I know it." Ruth looked at the brick wall for a second. There was a water stain up there shaped like nothing in particular. "Can I say something embarrassing first?"

"Oh, this is my favorite game. Yes!"

Ruth took a breath. "Our apartments share a wall. The stairwell one, obviously, that is the entire reason we know each other, besides the mailbox. And your music comes through. Whatever you play at nine o'clock, that old stuff, the kind with horns in it?"

"Billie," Tegan said. "Yes!"

"I listen to it. On purpose. I sit on my floor by the outlet and I listen to it, and I have decided things about you based on a wall. That's embarrassing. That's the embarrassing thing."

Tegan didn't laugh. Ruth had kind of hoped she would, because a laugh would have made it small and safe again. Instead Tegan turned her glass slowly on the table, one full turn, and looked at Ruth with those tired eyes that were somehow still hungry, like the shift had burned everything off her except that.

"You want to know something worse?" Tegan said. "I've seen every one of your balcony sculptures go up. You put them out in the morning and I check before I leave for work. There's that copper one shaped like a wave? I almost knocked on your door the day you put that one out. I had my shoes on. I talked myself out of it."

"Why?"

"Because I'm the one who says yes to people all night long. Table for four, yes. Can we push back the reservation, yes. Can you comp the dessert, yes." Tegan pushed her hair back, pencils and all, and one of them slid a little loose. "I handle people for a living. The thought of knocking on a stranger's door wanting something, that's the one thing I never do. So I checked your balcony like a weirdo for six months instead."

The kitchen guys were mopping their way toward the back now. The bartender had gone into the office with the drawer. The restaurant had gone quiet enough that Ruth could hear the freezer hum somewhere, and her own pulse, which was not being subtle.

"You're not a stranger," Ruth said. "You smell like rosemary half the time. I know your walkie voice and your real voice. I know you hum when you think nobody's listening."

"I do not hum."

"You hum. Through the wall. Badly."

Tegan kicked her other shoe off, which Ruth decided was a very good sign, and pulled her feet up under herself on the chair like she was settling in for a long night. "Okay. So we've both been weird about each other for six months. Very healthy. Very adult." She drank. "Now what?"

Now what. Ruth had imagined this moment, on and off, for months, and in every version of it she was smooth. In none of those versions did she spend a full minute staring at the bread plate working up her nerve.

"Now," Ruth said, and reached across the table, and put her fingers on Tegan's wrist.

That was all. Two fingers on the soft inside of the wrist, where you could feel a pulse if you were the kind of person who was counting, and Ruth was absolutely the kind of person who was counting. It was fast. Under all that calm hostess polish, Tegan's pulse was going like mad.

Tegan's breath caught. Ruth actually heard it catch, a small hiccup of air, and it was the most satisfying sound she had ever produced in her life, including the time she sold a sculpture.

"Oh," Tegan said.

"Yeah."

"That's... okay. Wow. Okay." Tegan looked down at Ruth's hand on her wrist like it was a museum piece. "You know what's funny? I say yes to people all night, and this is the first yes all week that's mine."

"Is it a yes?" Ruth asked. "Right now, this one?"

"Yes. God, yes." Tegan laughed, a shaky one this time, and turned her hand over so her fingers could close around Ruth's. "I just need a second. My whole shift is leaving my body. I've spent years seating other people."

"Fall slowly. I like you on this chair."

"Shut up." Tegan was grinning though. She laced her fingers through Ruth's properly now, testing it, like the handshake of a deal that had been six months in the making. "The kitchen guys leave at midnight. Rex locks the office and goes out the side. The bartender, Adrian, he's next, and then it's just me doing the lights and the alarm."

"So we have a countdown."

"We have a countdown." Tegan leaned in over the bread plate. Up close she smelled like rosemary and red wine and a long hard shift. "Here's my problem, Ruth. I want to