She was back.

It was the first thought I had when she breezed through the door, her dark hair like a storm around her from the wind outside. She had large, purple sunglasses on her face that she pushed up to hold back her hair when she saw me. She just stood in the doorway, smiling at me like she was happy to see me—why?—one hand on her backpack and the other held up in a wave. “Hello,” she said, and I briefly debated pretending I didn’t see her.

She was beautiful. Actually, the word itself didn’t suffice. But I wasn’t keen on admiring beautiful things at the moment, so her beauty was gratingly annoying, like nails down a chalkboard.

I looked down at the rag I was scrubbing the bar with as she approached and plopped herself onto a stool, which she spun around on for a moment before stopping. “It’s quiet,” she commented, looking around.

“It’s Sunday,” I replied flatly.

“Oh, right. Sorry, I’m a little discombobulated on my days since I’m not on a normal schedule right now.” She just smiled at me, all bright and bold, and I looked at her like the alien she was.

“Do you want a drink?”

She pursed her lips, leaning over the bar as she stared at the chalkboard signs above my head and tapped on her chin with one purple nail. “I suppose that’s the reason most people come into a bar, right?”

Even though she was obviously being sarcastic, I didn’t sense any kind of anger or annoyance in her tone. In fact, she was the absolute opposite—all sunshine and fucking rainbows, like I’d made her day just by being here. In my own damn pub.

“Some do,” I agreed. “But many come for the company.”

She laughed, that sound that made me set my jaw. Her presence was so very jarring—that tsunami of brightness she spun into a room was so against who I was.

It didn’t help that she reminded me so much of her. And just that brief, flicker of thought had me rubbing the cool metal of my ring with my thumb.

“People come here? For company?”

I narrowed my eyes on her. She didn’t move in the slightest. “Yes.”

She gave me that full-toothed smile and I wanted to ask her if she’d ever even touched any kind of unpleasantness in her life, because if she had, I didn’t know how she could smile like that—all bright, and gratingly inviting. “Well, that makes sense, because you’re so damned cheery. Calm down,” she said with a dramatic eye roll as she slung her backpack onto the bar and settled in. “Can I have a beer?” she asked sweetly.

Who was this creature? Completely unperturbed by my surliness, not the slightest bit put off by my attitude. I slapped a coaster on the bar and grabbed a pint glass, pulling the handle on the tap. I eyed her the whole time, watched as she pulled a purple-covered notebook out of her backpack and a purple, glittery pen, too. I found the juxtaposition of all that purple and her clothing interesting. In comparison to the purple, she was dressed rather plainly—in ripped blue jeans and a white, flowy top. The only purple on her was her fingernails and the sunglasses holding back her hair. I tried to remember what she’d been wearing the night before, when I’d met her, but all I could come up with was the way her face had looked when I’d held her over the side of Westminster Bridge.

Perhaps I resented her a little. I knew how devastating, how crippling, grief could be. And to see her sitting on my stool, practically radiating life, was more than a little jarring. I knew it wasn’t kind of me to think so, but because I wasn’t going out of my way to show her kindness, I didn’t mind one bit.

I hadn’t even asked her what kind of beer she’d wanted; I just poured her the one I favored. It was dark, and not a beer that most tourists—of the female variety especially—tried and liked. It gave me a little bit of excitement to imagine her tasting it and then wanting to spit it immediately out.

She uncapped her purple pen and tapped on the notebook as she looked around. I didn’t dare ask her what she was doing as to not encourage her into conversation.

Placing the beer on her coaster, I could hardly contain my anticipation of watching her absolutely fucking hate it.

But as if she knew I was waiting to see how badly she hated it, she let it sit there as she studied me. “How are you doing today, Ames?”

It unsettled me, hearing her say my name like that. Much as it had the night before. Truth was, the beer had loosened me a little bit then, enough to engage with her in light conversation. But I couldn’t explain why I’d chased her out of the pub and shoved her money back into her hands. Or even why I’d practically invited her back for a second visit.

So I couldn’t be too annoyed that she’d shown up, taking me up on my regretted words.

But I was annoyed. Because it wasn’t just the way she said my name that unsettled me. It was that annoying little hum, like an appliance turning on, reminding me how much Mila reminded me of Mahlon. My Mal.

I rubbed my finger over the ring again, a habit I did so often that I had a light callous right where finger met palm. “What are you doing?” I blurted out.

She pulled the beer away from her mouth and raised one eyebrow. “I’m drinking a beer in your bar.”

“Pub.”

“Right.” She tapped her pen on the notebook, scribbled something. “What’s with the name?” she asked as she traced the logo on her napkin.

“That’s a story for Asher.”

“Asher?”

“My father-in-law.”

Her gaze darted to my hand, which I held atop the bar—no shame in showing what I wore on my left hand. “Oh,” she said softly, nodding. “It makes sense.” She gave me a rueful smile and wrote something else before closing the cover on the notebook and setting it aside.

“What makes sense?”

Before she could answer, the door opened and Sam walked through, shaking his head like a wet dog. Water splattered all over the place, but he just grinned at me. “Ames,” he said in his loud, boisterous voice. “Good to see you.”

I gritted my teeth. “Sam.” I nodded at him and started pouring the same beer I’d poured for Mila, a beer I knew he favored. I snuck glances at her, but she was looking at Sam with great interest. There was something sharp about the way she observed people, like she wasn’t just listening, but sorting them out—their quirks, their mannerisms.

“Well, hello again,” Sam said, reaching toward her for a handshake. “You’re back?”

“Yes,” she looked briefly at me, “I am. He didn’t scare me away, surprisingly.”

I placed Sam’s beer on the bar with less finesse than usual, and foam spilled up over the top and onto his napkin.

“The fuck, A?” Sam shook his hand, which was covered in foam and gave me a strange look.

“Sorry.” I rubbed my hands on the towel tucked in my waist as Sam returned his attention to Mila.

“You’re drinking a beer this time?”

Nodding, she dipped her finger just barely into the glass and pulled it back out. “Wine’s for when the sun goes down.”

“Is that so?” Sam leaned in toward her, and I knew immediately what he was doing. He was a terrible flirt, but had seemed almost immune to Mila the night before. Now, he was practically a bloody peacock, preening for her attention.

“Well, sure.” She ran her hands over the curved corners of the coaster—and why the fuck was I staring at her hands? I could do with a distraction. “Wine at night sets the mood.”

“And what mood’s that?” he asked, leaning in further toward her.

She gave him a little smile, and her hair slipped over her shoulder just so. “Whatever mood you’re after, I suppose.” I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but that delicate voice of hers took on a lower, more melodic note. And furthermore, I wasn’t sure why I was so damn interested in their conversation. I moved to the other end of the bar top, and wiped at an invisible stain, forcing their voices from my mind.

Objectively, I could say Sam was probably an attractive fellow, with his dark blond hair in a little bun—one I’d often threatened cutting off. When we used to do pub crawls, Sam was often trailed by a bevy of women willing to sacrifice their evening to him. I never envied that kind of attention, because I had Mal. And perhaps because I didn’t have that now, I could rationalize a kind of jealousy for how easily Sam captured attention.

By the time I could no longer realistically pretend that the bar was as filthy as I made it seem, I moved back toward them and did my best to ignore them.

Loudly, as if he was trying to get my attention, Sam said, “Ah, I like you!” Sam wagged a finger at her and looked at me. “She’s interesting, isn’t she?”

I gave no comment, just returned to running my rag down the bar.

“This is a good little bar,” she said, sipping her beer—which, to my surprise, was nearly gone already.

“Pub,” I corrected her. Both Sam and Mila looked at me, and I busied myself with refilling the snack bowls before making a show of giving Sam one of them—and disregarding Mila completely.

Sam noticed, the arse. He pushed his bowl between he and Mila and leaned toward her. “Looks like Ames is fresh out—of pretzels or manners, no way to know for sure, but you can share with me, if you’d like.”

“That’d be lovely,” she purred, dipping her hand in the bowl at the same time that Sam did. I did my best to glare at him too, but realized too late that there was no reason for me to be glaring. She was just some American tourist—I’d never see her again. If she fell off any other bridges, she’d be someone else’s problem; not mine.

But it did bother me to see Sam flirting with her, and it bothered me even more to see Mila reciprocating. I stepped away, roughly wiping down the end of the bar I’d already wiped down, my ear open to their conversation despite my best efforts to pretend I was deaf to it.

“How do you know Ames?”

“Went to primary school with him, actually. Friends most of our lives, except for the bits he traveled the world.”

“Funny, he doesn’t strike me as a guy who would travel the world,” she said. I felt her looking at me and forced myself not to tense.

“If you’d known him even eight years ago, you wouldn’t think he was the sort of guy to run a pub, either.”

“What do you do, Sam?” she asked, swiping her tongue over her top lip, capturing the little droplets of beer that clung to it after her sip.

Why the fuck was I watching her lips?

I scrubbed harder across the bar, its gleaming surface mocking me in my annoyance. I moved a couple inches closer to them, busying myself with unnecessarily polishing of the keg handles.

“I’m an artist. Paintings, mostly, but some pottery too, to work my muscles.” He held his hands out for her inspection.

My jaw ached from clenching it, as I watched her take his hands in her tiny ones, and lean closer to examine them. “Wow. Your hands are a hundred different colors.” The fact that she actually sounded awed by that pissed me off. “What do you paint? Landscapes? People?”

“Nudes.”

I expected Mila to blush, or laugh, or do anything except the exact fucking thing she did, which was, “That’s brilliant,” with a softness in her voice that I hadn’t heard yet.

“It’s something,” I muttered, but my voice carried across the near-empty pub and they both turned to look at me.

“What’d you mean by that?” Sam asked. Both appeared riveted by my answer.

Fucking Sam. He knew I thought he was talented. Perhaps I didn’t say it in so many words, but it didn’t take an art critic to see the skill that he possessed when holding a paintbrush. And he knew that I admired his talent, but he was putting me on the spot for a show in front of Mila. Arse.

I motioned a hand at him. “You’re talented, you know it. You hardly need me to stroke your ego.”

Sam pressed a fist to his chest and his eyes softened. The affection of his look was ruined when he opened his mouth and said in his most sarcastic tone, “Wow, A. Really hit me in the feels with that compliment.”

I had half a mind to toss my dirty rag at him, but I knew I needed to calm myself.

Mila did not affect me.

Maybe if I told myself enough times, I’d actually believe it myself.

Shrugging, I said, “What do I know about art, right?”

“Well, I’d love to see your work.” Mila sipped her beer and seemed more animated than before.

“Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”

“I’d like that. Have you seen his nudes?” she asked me.

I wasn’t one to feel embarrassment—but something about the way she asked it, so casually, with that voice all soft and innocent, made my neck go warm.

Damn Sam. I wished he would shut his bloody mouth, and he bloody well knew my thoughts based on the grin he gave me.

“He hasn’t—I think he might be a little bit of a prude.” I glared at Sam for the remark, who then added, “He’s a good guy—if a bit daft sometimes. What do you do?”

If I hadn’t been standing a meter away, listening to their conversation, I wouldn’t have believed what I heard—but there it was. Mila, speaking in a French accent, said, “I’m here working, actually. For a month or so.”

Sam did a double take—mirroring the reaction I’d had the night before, when she’d slipped into the English accent. Sam looked at me like he wasn’t entirely sure he had heard her correctly. Nodding, I tilted my head toward her and mouthed, “She’s mad.”

“She’s French?” Sam asked me, loud enough for her to hear.

Mila just laughed, and then wiggled in her seat like she could hardly contain the glee that wracked her body. “Oh my God,” she trilled. “I fooled you both! You don’t know how happy that makes me.”

Sam shook his head. “Or are you American?”

“Mad, I tell you.”

“I’m not mad.” She laughed. “I’m a voice actress. Well, an aspiring one. I’ve done some small gigs, but nothing big yet. I’m still perfecting my accents. But I’m here for my brother. He’s a travel blogger, and I’m here in his stead, exploring London, writing about it.”

“Do that again,” Sam said, wagging a finger at her. “The accent. That’s brilliant.”

“Okay.” Her smile slipped to something more demure and her whole face changed, her eyebrow raising just slightly, and her jaw tightening. “I’m a voice actress,” she said, slightly hissing the “s.” “It doesn’t pay the bills—yet—so I’m here doing work.”

“Christ. Russian, too?”

“Eh,” I said, shrugging. They turned, Sam looking at me like I was a bug who wouldn’t go away and Mila looking at me with that annoyingly bright smile on her face. Could she not be offended by me? It hardly seemed possible.

“I’m still working on that one, I’ll admit.” She leveled me with a look, lost the austerity she’d adopted before speaking with the Russian accent. “But I’d like to see you do better.”

“Ames can only do two voices: asshole and silent. The latter is often preferred.”

That time, I did toss my rag at him, which he caught deftly before it hit him in the face. “What an interesting creature you are,” Sam said with awe.

Mila was delighted by Sam’s praise and bobbed her head before clearing her throat. “I’m still trying to get the different English accents—specifically in the London area—down. But it all sounds the same to me, so it’s hard.”

“It seems that way, but I imagine it’s not much different from the different regional accents in America, yeah? You’ve got Southern, Yankee, Midwestern…”

“That’s true.”

“So, you’re definitely American then?”

She nodded. “I’m so glad you had to ask.” She appeared to be barely containing all her glee, and I half expected her to start clapping from it all.

“Ames?” Lotte, my sister-in-law hollered from the back of the kitchen, before popping her blonde head around the corner. “Oh, hey, Sam.” She gave him a full-toothed smile, the kind that always knocked me back a few feet for how similar it looked to her sister’s. It was probably the only thing they had in common.

“Lotte the Hottie.” Lotte blushed as Sam moved around the bar and wrapped her in a hug. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Been busy?”

Lotte shrugged. “The studio isn’t totally busy yet, you know.” She lost a bit of the sparkle that had been in her eyes, and looked around the pub, her gaze landing in the direction of Mila.

“Hello,” Lotte said cheerfully, and looked back at Sam. “You brought a date?”

If I was blind and also oblivious, there’d still be no missing the way her voice changed, the way she straightened a little, looking between Sam and Mila with a tightness she hadn’t had before. Jealousy was a green-eyed monster that lived in my blue-eyed sister-in-law, but I knew Sam only admired her in a friendly way—so I didn’t have to murder my best mate.

Mila laughed in return and shook her head, causing her glasses to slip down before she pushed them back up. “I just met Sam last night, but I’m flattered that you think I could catch a guy like him.”

As I observed them exchanging conversation, I had a thought that Mila’s remark was meant to settle Lotte, but peculiarly, it did the exact opposite. She stepped just a hair away from Sam and smiled tightly at Mila.

And I would’ve had to have been deaf to not hear the jealousy that seeped into her voice when she said, “Yes, well, you would be lucky.” She let out a breath and the smile returned to her face, much too bright to be authentic as she turned to me. “I’m going to run up to check on Dad.”

I nodded and she left in a flash of blonde hair and red ruffles.

“She okay?” Sam asked, coming ‘round to me and bracing his hands on his hips. “That seemed a little strange.”

Sam could hardly be accused of being observant. Though Lotte was five years his junior, she’d pined for him since the moment she’d laid eyes on him years before. I’d never encouraged her affection for him, but I’d also never addressed it with her. Sam was shit at relationships—worse than me, in fact—so the last thing I wanted was for him to unintentionally break Lotte’s heart. Luckily, she’d mostly become immune to his ‘Lotte the Hottie’ comments.

“She’s fine,” I told Sam, realizing in that moment that I actually didn’t know if she was fine. “Just been a busy couple of weeks.”

Sam returned to his barstool and, because Oblivious was his middle name, asked, “She still wants to sell the studio? Are you still being a twat about it?”

I glanced meaningfully at Mila who was paying close attention to our conversation. Mila didn’t need to know about my family drama, especially not when I was actively trying to get her out of my pub.

“Oh, right.” Sam gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry for the language.”

He was absolutely oblivious. I sighed impatiently. “I’ll talk to you later,” I promised him, and subconsciously refilled Mila’s empty beer—kicking myself for doing so, knowing that it meant she’d be stuck up my arse on my barstool for even longer than I wanted.

“Who was that?” Mila nodded in the direction Lotte had departed.

“My sister-in-law. Do you want anything else?” I asked curtly before turning to Sam. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Sam grinned at me knowingly. “Dinner at Mum’s, but that’s not till later. Why? Want to come around?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” I grabbed his beer before he’d finished it, and dumped its remnants, hoping my meaning had reached through his daft skull.

“Add it to my tab?” Sam asked, slinging his coat over his shoulders.

“Ah, the tab. The one you’ve yet to pay toward? Sure, happy to.”

“That’s a good lad.” Sam gave me a grin and a wink before turning back to Mila. “Well, Mila. It was a pleasure. I hope we get to meet again.” He looked at me pointedly. “Ames is the best tour guide London has to offer, you would do well with him.”

“Is that so?” She tilted her head as she turned to me. “Where should I go next, Ames?”

I clenched my jaw, looking at Sam. What was he after? I’d been certain earlier that he’d been after Mila for himself, but with the way he was very nearly shoving her to me made me think he had other plans. Plans that I’d like to be made aware of.

They both looked at me expectantly. “What are you looking to see? There are too many places in London for me to name just one.”

Mila looked at Sam, and then looked thoughtful.

“Are you wanting to eat, to drink, to dance, to—”

“I want to be moved.”

The look on her face was completely different than the one she’d worn since walking through the pub doors. Her eyes seemed wider, somehow, as if they were holding a hundred secrets. Her face was soft, her mouth not quite in a line—but not curved, either. Both Sam and I stared at her, seemingly unable to speak for a moment. Who was this woman, needling her way into my pub and affecting my best mate?

Sam looked at me. “Postman’s Park comes to mind.”

But it didn’t seem right. It wasn’t enough. I wavered between offering another more suitable suggestion and taking Sam’s, but ultimately decided to not offer any alternative. “Postman’s is good.”

“Postman’s Park? Where is that?”

“Oh,” Sam said, pointing at me as he began to walk away. The dread that began forming in my stomach, knowing what he’d say, was enough to make me want to wring his bloody neck. “Ames will take you. Maybe tomorrow?”

“That’d be nice.” Mila turned to me, and that softness was still there—but it was the slight curve of her lips, just on one side, that had me agreeing to take her. I was looking at her for far too long. I knew that, and yet I didn’t avert my gaze. Sure and steady, she held mine. And I found myself nodding, agreeing to take her, before the rational part of my brain told me to refuse. “Is it a good spot for lunch?” she asked.

“Great spot. See ya later,” Sam called, just as he pushed through the door and out of my pub, leaving Mila and me doing our best to avoid eye contact. Strangely, though I’d been in a hurry to kick Sam out, his absence made Mila’s presence in my pub all the more profound.

She slapped a note on the counter, but didn’t remove her hand from it until I looked at her. “Don’t try to give this one back to me.” She looked pointedly at her empty beer and gave me a smile. “It was good, by the way. Thank you.”

Just before she reached the door, she turned around. For some inexplicable reason, I spoke before she did. “Meet here at noon, tomorrow. I’ll take you to the park.”

She pushed open the door with one hand, still turned toward me, and for a moment I felt a knot in my stomach. Something about the way she stood there, the sun pouring in through the door, lighting her silhouette, the way it washed over her hair … it stirred something within me. Something that had been stagnant for so long. A hundred times I told myself to take it back, to change my mind, but one-hundred and one times, I told myself it would be fine.

It would be fine.