Chapter Text
TIM
James slumped into the bar stool like a man who’d fought a war just to sit down. He didn’t look up. Just tapped twice on the wood and waited. The barman slid the glass over without asking. Neat, as always. He didn’t even say thank you—his mouth too full of silence.
“Bad night?” asked Tim, knowing it wasn’t a night. It was a phase.
He exhaled like the glass was a chapel and he’d come to confess.
“She was with him. I saw it. Heard it. Her laugh.” His jaw twitched. “She used to laugh like that with me.”
Tim cleaned a nonexistent spot off the counter. It felt easier than making eye contact.
James was one of those golden boys. He had the smile, the walk, the easy way of getting hired and forgiven and adored despite it all. But tonight, he looked like all that shine had been scraped off with a wire brush.
“She said it wasn’t what it looked like,” he continued, half to the tender, half to the whiskey. “But it looked exactly like what it was.”
Tim nodded. Sometimes that’s all you can do. People don’t go to bars for solutions. They go for the confirmation that they’re not insane.
“She ever lie to you before?” he asked.
“Little things. The kind you let pass because you don’t want to know what the truth would cost.”
“Mm.” He poured himself a shot. “It always adds up, doesn’t it? Lies. Interest compounds.”
He laughed—dry, bitter, but still a laugh.
“She told me I was safe. That I didn’t need to be so... guarded.” He took another drink. “Turns out I just wasn’t worth guarding.”
There it was. Not the betrayal, but the aftermath. The mirror you didn’t want to look in. Tim knew it well. And probably James did too.
“She still with him?”
James shrugged. “I don’t care.” Which, of course, meant he did. More than anything.
“Listen,” he said, setting his glass down with a soft thud. “Women don’t always leave you because you failed them. Sometimes they leave because they want to fail with someone else. It’s not your job to compete with someone’s self-destruction.”
He blinked, slow, like he'd been handed something sharp and fragile.
“I keep thinking I should hate her,” he said. “But I don’t. I just miss her.”
“That’s the scam,” muttered Tim. “You’re not supposed to hate them. That would make it easier. You’re supposed to love them just enough to stay cracked open.”
Silence stretched between them like a worn-out tablecloth. Familiar. Uncomfortable, but not unwelcome.
“Tim,” he said finally, “how do you do it? You get dumped, and laughed at, and walked over, and you still smile like none of it touches you.”
Tim looked up at him.
“I don’t smile because I’m untouched,” he said. “I smile because it pisses off the pain to be ignored.”
He smirked. The kind of smirk that hurt to wear.
“I should come here more often,” he said.
“You should. We’ve got cheap drinks, bad lighting, and the occasional waitress who won’t break your heart unless you ask nicely.”
He laughed again, and this time it sounded like a beginning.