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There isn’t enough alcohol in Westeros to make this party interesting. Arya looks around and sees the same sort of man on the ballroom floor, looking like they’ve just been marched from the assembly line: pale, balding, saggy-skinned, thin-lipped, dressed in imported three-piece suits that probably cost as much as a downtown studio apartment. She wonders how hard it would be to lock one of them in a closet and steal his suit (not hard at all), imagines the look on people’s faces when she tells them how she got the money for her own place. An involuntary donation from a middle-aged millionaire. Well, it’s probably not worth the jail sentence.
She’s only here because of her dad. Baratheon Industries is welcoming Eddard Stark, their new Chief Operating Officer. It’s been all over the newspapers these past few weeks. They’re calling it “The Return of the Dream Team”. Back in the eighties, when Robert Baratheon was kind of handsome and Arya’s dad was less wrinkled, the two of them had founded an incredibly successful computer company. She imagines they did a lot of coke and had a lot of sex in those days—two rich geeks living it up like rock stars. But then Ned had met Catelyn, a middle school teacher, fallen in love, and suddenly he was a father of five, driving a minivan in the suburbs and living off of the revenue of Rebellion, Inc. and the small companies he started up every so often.
Rebellion, Inc. turned into Baratheon Industries; Robert turned into a fat alcoholic; and a few months ago, his COO had a heart attack and died. Robert personally flew north to beg her father to come back. They needed a man with vision, Robert said, someone who was passionate about innovation and purpose and the future, and her dad listened and then he said yes. It meant an adventure and helping a friend, but also leaving everything behind and moving to the capital.
Ned slept on the couch for a week.
Her parents are arm in arm now, standing in the middle of a small crowd of affluent clones, and her dad looks the way he did every morning after Robert left. His brow is creased, and his mouth is pinched in a polite but slightly pained smile. He rubs his thigh every once in a while, on the spot where Arya knows he has a scar from a mugging in the Rebellion days, and he winces. She thinks he regrets saying yes, but he’ll never admit it.
Out of the four of them (Bran and Rickon stayed in the new house with a babysitter and Robb is still in school up north) the only one having fun is Sansa. She’s been smitten ever since she met Robert’s eldest son, Joffrey. Arya supposes he’s not really bad-looking—he’s tall and he’s got shiny blond hair and green eyes and a square jaw—but there’s something about him that makes Arya’s skin crawl. Sometimes he looks at Sansa like he hates her—really, truly hates her—and then he grins at her, oozing smarmy fake charm, and it makes Arya want to hit him. She wishes Robert Baratheon and his shitty company and his shitty son had stayed buried in the eighties.
Arya polishes off the dregs of her wine glass and heads to the open bar for a refill. Technically, she’s not supposed to be drinking—the legal drinking age in King’s Landing is twenty-one—but if her dad’s going to be practically running this company, she might as well enjoy some of the benefits, few as they are. It’s just her luck, then, that the bartender takes one look at her, sweeping his blue eyes up and down her very short frame, and asks for ID.
“Excuse me?”
He crosses his arms over his broad chest defensively. “Sorry, miss, but you need to be twenty-one.”
She puts her empty glass on the bar. “I was already served,” she says. “Give me another one. Please.”
“Yes, miss. As soon as I see some ID.”
Seven hells, this is unbelievable. She roots around her purse for her wallet—she really needs to clean it out, it’s full of candy wrappers and loose scraps of paper and tampons and two tangled pairs of earbuds for some reason—and sighs when she realizes she’s carrying her real ID instead of her fake one. She slams the card down, and the bartender picks it up and squints at it under the dim lights of the bar.
“1993. Sorry. We could lose our license if we serve to minors. Can I offer you a soda instead?”
“Soda?” Arya can’t help but gape at him. He’s handsome and really, really fit, judging by the way his arms stretch the black shirt he’s wearing, but he’s obviously a little dense. “Listen,” she reads the name badge on his chest, “Gendry, why don’t you just get the other guy who was here earlier? You know, the one who doesn’t have a stick up his ass.”
“Hot Pie’s shift ended half an hour ago,” he says, shooting her an angry glare. “If you want a soda or a glass of water, I’ll gladly get it for you. If not, you can move on.” He hands her the card back and goes back to serving other people.
Arya shoves the card into her bag, biting her tongue. She wants to yell at him, cuss him out in front of everyone. Her mother would die of embarrassment, though, and then she’d come back from the dead and kill her. She would ask her mom or dad to get her a drink, or even Sansa, but she knows they’ll say no as soon as they hear why she can’t get it herself.
She’s absolutely over this ridiculous party, but her mom practically threatened her to make her stay until the end. The man on the barstool next to her gets up and she sits down, and suddenly it feels absurd to be sitting there without something in her hand, and she’s thirsty and she wants to go home.
The next time Gendry passes, she waves her hand at him. He walks past her a little bit, like he’s thinking of ignoring her, and then thinks better of it and faces her. “I’ll have a soda, please,” she says.
He rolls his eyes so far up his head, they almost get stuck there, and she feels a little bad about what a brat she was earlier. In less than a minute, he returns with a tall glass of Coke and a straw wrapped in paper.
“What kind of a name is Hot Pie anyway?” she blurts out before he can leave.
He eyes her suspiciously, like he’s afraid she’s going to trap him into another argument, before replying, “It’s a nickname. He was in a commercial for microwaveable pies a few years ago. Had to sing a shitty jingle about hot pies while pies in skirts danced around him. He’s never lived it down.”
“Oh, I remember that!” She hums a few bars of that ridiculous song, and he joins her with the actual lyrics.
“Our pies are the hottest, swear we’re being modest, filling’s nearly flawless, honest!” When he’s finished, they’re grinning at each other like a pair of little kids.
They make small talk the rest of the night. Every time there’s a lull in business, Gendry stands behind the bar in front of her and chops lemons, he refills her glass of soda, and they talk. He’s twenty-four, a sculptor. He won a scholarship to a fancy fine arts school in the city, but now he’s a bartender because being a sculptor doesn’t pay well, or at all. He lives in Flea Bottom with two other guys, a painter and a musician, who are just as broke as he. He’s amused when she tells him she’s studying computer engineering and wonders if she could hack into the Iron Bank and transfer a couple million dragons into his account. She doesn’t tell him she probably could. He smiles every once in a while, his blue eyes crinkling, and Arya decides he has a nice smile, not smarmy or artificial. It’s a little bashful but explosively honest.
“Hey, you kinda look like Renly,” she says suddenly.
“Who’s that?”
“Renly Baratheon? He founded Facepage?” Gendry stares back blankly, and she sighs. “He’s a web developer. His brother’s the one throwing this party.”
“Maybe he’s my dad.”
“No, he’s too young. And he’s gay.”
He shrugs. “I dunno. Stranger things have happened.” He winks at her. “Maybe one day I’ll wake up and find out some millionaire left me all his money.”
Arya knows he’s joking, and maybe she shouldn’t pry, but there’s something sad about the way he says it, and it makes her sad too. “You don’t know who your dad is?”
Gendry clears his throat, doesn’t look up. She thinks maybe he didn’t hear her when he replies. “I don’t know his name, no,” he says to the lemons. “I know he’s an asshole. That’s good enough for me.”
“But… does your mom know?”
He looks at her sharply, because there’s no delicate way of asking someone if their mother knows who got her pregnant. She wants to crawl into a hole and die.
“If she knew, she took it to the grave. She died when I was ten,” he says lightly. “Car accident.” He shrugs, as if to say, what can you do, and she knows what he means, that if you tell yourself enough times that you don’t care, that you’re over it, the pain will dull some and you’ll breathe a little easier.
“My best friend got run over when I was fourteen,” she says suddenly. She doesn’t know why she’s telling him this, but once she starts, she can’t stop. “We were playing soccer in the street. I was the goalkeeper.” Arya’s heart is hammering in her chest, and the more she talks, the more she knows how full of shit she is. She does care. She’s not over it. “He kicked the ball into the neighbor’s backyard and I went to get it. When I came back, he was lying on the street and the car was gone.” It’s like she’s there again, the summer sun beating down on her as she stares down at Mycah. The ball lands in a puddle of blood, and she stands there staring until Old Nan across the street looks out the window and screams.
“They ever catch the guy?”
Arya takes a sip of soda to wet her tongue and buy some time. She thanks the Seven she only had one drink or she would be a spluttering mess by now. “No.” A nearby traffic camera had caught a luxury car speeding off about five minutes later, but they never found it, like it had vanished into thin air. Now that she’s older, she knows someone bought their way out of it.
“Drunk driver,” Gendry says. “Blindsided us on the highway. I was in the backseat.” He rolls up the left sleeve of his shirt, holds his arm out for her. There’s a scar snaking up his forearm up to the elbow. Arya traces it with her fingers, feeling the way the texture changes from wiry hairs to leathery pink skin. His skin is warm, though. She wonders if his chest is warm too. She wonders if he has other scars.
He’s staring at her again, and when she looks back, it feels like understanding.
“Arya!”
She starts and tears her hand away, flushing deep red. The bar is almost empty, save for a few drunken stragglers, the staff, and her family. They’re standing by the door, shrugging into their coats, watching them.
“Sorry, I have to go,” she says, jumping down from the stool.
Gendry smiles, rolling down his sleeve. “It was nice talking to you.”
Arya reaches into her purse and pulls out a wadded up five-dragon bill. It’s polite to leave a tip, especially when you spend so long talking to the bartender, but it feels weird now, like charity, for her listening to him or for him listening to her, she doesn’t know. When she offers it to him, he shoves his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels, shaking his head. “No charge, miss.”
She walks away feeling foolish, shrugs into the coat her mom’s holding out and doesn’t look back. They make it halfway down the street when she realizes she is being foolish. With a stammered excuse, she runs back to the bar, stops in front of Gendry where he’s cleaning glasses.
“Did you forget something?” he asks, his eyes sweeping the bar and the floor for anything she might have dropped.
She kneels on a stool, pulls the pen from his shirt pocket, and scribbles her number on a paper napkin, her name clearly printed underneath. She puts both things back in his pocket and, because she can’t resist, grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him into a quick kiss. She barely hears the glass smash against the floor.
“Call me,” she says.
“I’m not supposed to pick up customers.”
“You didn’t pick me up. I picked you up. Big difference.”
“Who’s gonna believe that?”
Gods, he’s so bullheaded. She pulls him in for another kiss. “If you don’t call me, I’m coming back here and kicking your ass.”
“You can try,” he says, and kisses her.
“Arya!” Sansa is gaping at them from the entrance, blushing almost as red as her hair.
Arya hurries out of the bar, pulling Sansa away by the arm before she can say something embarrassing. Their parents are waiting on the corner, and Arya can’t stop smiling.
“Who was that? Do you know him?”
“Yes,” she says, and she does.