Chapter 4 - Not Nathan
Nathan regarded the two steps up from the Gull's gravelled parking lot to the wooden deck and walkway as something of a curse. He'd fallen and tripped down them more times than he could count, leaving the bar. It didn't hurt anything except his pride – but there were enough professional level drinkers in this town that the Chief of Police falling on his face on the way home hardly attracted notice.
Falling up them, on the way in, that could start talk.
Goddamn Duke knew better than to call him after fucking six p.m.
'Come' he'd insisted. Without explanation or any clue what he was walking in on. 'Pour your drunken ass into a taxi if you have to, but come'. And hung up, ignoring what Nathan was sure would have been perfectly reasonable reasons why Nathan was in no way obligated to work overtime or show up when goddamn Duke snapped his goddamned fingers.
Call the bloody cops if he needed to. Not him.
One step at a time. Hand on the post, he didn't even need to crawl.
The bar wasn't in flames. Nathan lifted a hand to a couples' 'Chief.' greeting as they left the restaurant for their car. No one was running. No one was screaming.
Whatever Duke wanted, it had better be good.
Inside, it looked like an ordinary Thursday evening. Nathan crossed his arms and leaned up against one of the interior posts – the better to not stagger and fall – but also to convey something of his disgust as Duke filed across the room towards him.
Nathan shied away from the look in the other man's eyes as he got closer. The judgment. Duke had no right to judge him. And he could keep his fucking pity for his own sorry life.
"Am I wrong?" Duke asked.
What? What the fuck now? Nathan didn't even bother the half dozen or so possible responses that rose in him, quips to slashing insult. It was too easy and he was too… beat. Beaten.
"Wrong about what?"
"Can't you see her? Brunette, at the bar."
Duke had called him here about a girl? A girl? Seriously, Nathan was going to make Duke pay for this.
He looked, saw who Duke meant. A slip of a girl with ripped jeans, untidy black hair in need of a strong comb, and a garish black leather jacket with red lightning bolts. And Audrey's profile.
"You're wrong." Nathan could see the resemblance. She looked like Audrey. Much more than the others; the others who had popped in and out of the corner of his vision, a tone of voice from around a corner, a laugh with just the right mixture of affection and rue and lilt. Just enough resemblance to make his throat close and his heart leap out of his chest, but always, always – once he looked again – not her. The same with this woman – not her. "Seriously, Duke?"
Not to mention that there was a quarter century still to wait.
If this was some attempt on Duke's part to interfere with Nathan's life – judgment after all on his drinking – then this might be the point where he and Duke were going to have to part ways for good.
"Look closer," Duke pleaded. Nathan concentrated instead on Duke. This was important to him, obviously – nothing to do with Nathan, really. Duke faced away from her, surveying the rest of the restaurant over Nathan's shoulder, probably not seeing it at all.
Duke and Audrey had been friends too. Nathan sometimes forgot. He wasn't the only one she left behind. He put his hand on his friend's shoulder, squeezed – he hoped – lightly. He almost never made physical gestures like that. This seemed to call for it.
"Fine." The word slipped out before he knew it. He'd been about to shut Duke down, walk away, deny the possibility outright. But it occurred to him that Duke needed to know, to see for himself. And it wouldn't hurt him to give Duke that much. She couldn't hurt Nathan, but if Duke got his hopes up… the consequences could be catastrophic. Literally.