Chapter 18. The Stranger

Avery’s POV

The bar, usually a boisterous symphony of clinking glasses and raucous laughter, was tonight a subdued hum, a lone piano melody drifting lazily from the corner.

I wiped down the already spotless counter, lost in a reverie of past patrons. There were the noisy group of construction workers who always ordered rounds of cheap beer and regaled me with tales of near-misses and mishaps. Their laughter, loud and infectious, had once sent a stack of glasses tumbling to the floor, a minor catastrophe that somehow only added to the jovial atmosphere.

Greg has been chill with it because he took had found the jokes and story amusing. He hadn’t even seemed to mind at all.

“I do love it when they come around.” He had told me after they had paid for their drinks and left. “They make everything seem like a joke.”

Then there was the elderly woman with the melancholic eyes who always ordered the same scotch on the rocks, nursing it slowly while gazing