Chapter 2: Truth or Dare
The booth was a cave of worn, burgundy leather, the seat sighing under them. Here, the music was a muffled throb, a heartbeat through layers of concrete and noise-absorbing felt. The air smelled of stale beer and the ghost of a thousand spilled drinks, but also of Rio’s clean, gingery scent. It was a tangible space between them.
Rio slid a crystal-clear gin martini across the scarred wooden table. A proper one, with a twist. Her fingers lingered on the cool glass for a moment before retreating. The gesture was deliberate, a test.
“Tell me something real,” Rio murmured. Her storm-grey eyes weren’t on Agatha’s eyes anymore; they were locked on her lips, watching the words form. “Or I’ll start making up stories about why a woman like you waits for ghosts.”
Agatha wrapped her hands around the martini glass. It was freezing. A shock to the system. “What kind of stories?” she deflected, bringing the drink to her nose. Juniper and citrus, sharp and clean.
“Sad ones,” Rio said simply, leaning back into the shadow of the booth. The neon from a distant beer sign caught the sharp line of her jaw. “Predictable ones. Girl meets girl, girl is dazzling and complicated, girl treats you like an option on a menu she can’t be bothered to read. You wear the disappointment like it’s part of the outfit.”
Agatha took a sip. The gin was perfect, a bracing, botanical coldness that cut through the sugary film the earlier drinks had left on her tongue. It was infuriating how right Rio was. “You’re very confident in your assessments.”
“Observations. Not assessments. There’s a difference.” Rio took a slow drink of her own whiskey, neat. “The jacket, the makeup, the posture. It’s all saying ‘stay back.’ But you keep looking at the door. That’s saying ‘come find me.’ The contradiction is interesting.”
A hot spike of defensiveness shot through Agatha. “Maybe I just like the jacket. Maybe it’s not a hieroglyphic for you to decode over cheap whiskey.”
Rio’s smile was a faint, fleeting thing. “This isn’t cheap. And the decoding is the only fun part.” She set her glass down with a soft clink. “So. The ghost. How long has she been haunting you?”
Agatha stared into the pale, clear liquid. She could lie. She could get up and walk back to Alice and Jen and complain about this presumptuous bartender. She could text Bea right now, a final, desperate flare into the void.
But the gin was in her veins, and Rio’s quiet, unwavering attention was a pole in the churning sea of the night. It was solid. Unlike everything else.
“On and off for two years,” Agatha heard herself say. The words tasted strange, like admitting a weakness. “It’s not a haunting. It’s a... low-grade recurring infection. You think you’re over it, and then you get a fever.”
“And the fever makes you wait in bars on a Thursday night.”
“Something like that.” Agatha took a larger gulp. “She’s an artist. A conceptual artist.” She couldn’t keep the scorn out of her voice. “Which means her primary medium is last-minute cancellations and emotional ambiguity.”
Rio let out a soft huff of air. Almost a laugh. “Ouch.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to it.” Even to her own ears, it sounded pathetic.
“You shouldn’t be.” Rio said it not with pity, but with a flat finality, like stating that water was wet. “Being used to disappointment is a shitty superpower.”
Agatha looked up, finally meeting those grey eyes again. “What’s yours, then? Reading strangers in bars and buying them pity martinis?”
“No pity here,” Rio said, holding her gaze. “Curiosity. You’re all sharp edges and defensive quips. I want to know what happens when you put the armor down.”
The air between them thickened. The noise of the bar faded further, until it was just a distant ocean. Agatha felt her heart, a quick percussion against her ribs. This was moving fast. Too fast. But it was also the first real thing that had happened to her in months.
“Maybe the armor is just me,” Agatha said, but her voice was quieter now, the sarcasm leaching out of it.
Rio leaned forward, elbows on the table, closing the distance. The scent of ginger and whiskey grew stronger. “I don’t think so. I think you’re the one buying the good gin when you think no one’s watching. The ghost gets the dishwater. You keep the real stuff for yourself.” She paused, her gaze dropping to Agatha’s mouth again, then back up. “Am I wrong?”
Agatha couldn’t breathe. The observation was so intimate, so uncomfortably accurate, it felt like being physically stripped. She had a cupboard full of nice things Beatrice never noticed—a single-malt scotch, expensive linen spray, first-edition books with broken spines. Her private world.
Rio saw it. Saw her.
“Why do you care?” The question came out a whisper.
Rio didn’t answer immediately. She reached out, not for Agatha, but for the martini glass. Her fingertip traced the wet ring it had left on the wood. A slow, deliberate circle.
“Because,” she said, her voice low and roughened by the whiskey. “For the last hour, I’ve been watching a beautiful woman break her own heart in real time, looking at a door. And I kept thinking… that door is just wood and paint. What’s on this side of it seems a lot more interesting.”
Agatha’s throat was tight. She had no quip. No deflection. The usual arsenal was empty.
Rio finished the circle in the condensation. “Your friends are leaving.”
The sudden shift made Agatha blink. She followed Rio’s glance over her shoulder. Jen was helping a swaying Alice into her coat by the front entrance. Jen caught her eye, waved with a knowing, exaggerated wink, and mimed texting. Then they were gone, swallowed by the night.
Agatha was suddenly, acutely aware that she was alone in a booth with a virtual stranger. The reality of it crashed in—the empty glasses, the late hour, the dangerous, thrilling magnetism of the woman across from her.
Rio watched the understanding dawn on Agatha’s face. She didn’t smile. She just waited.
“I should…” Agatha started, not knowing how to finish. Go home. Call a cab. Text my ghost.
Rio nodded, as if she’d heard the unspoken options. She slid out of the booth, standing up tall. She left a twenty on the table, more than enough for the drinks. The motion was effortless, decisive.
“So go,” Rio said. She wasn’t pleading. She wasn’t playing a game. It was just a statement. An offer of an exit. She placed a small, plain business card on the table next to the money. Just a name, Rio, and a number.
Then she turned and began to walk away, not toward the bar, but toward a dimly lit hall in the back, marked ‘EXIT’.
Agatha sat, paralyzed, for three heartbeats. She looked at the card. At the empty seat. At the closed front door her friends had just vanished through. She thought of her silent phone, a brick of disappointment in her pocket. She thought of the ghost, already fading, replaced by the sharp, clear imprint of grey eyes and a quiet challenge.
Her fingers closed around the cold martini glass. She drained the last, biting swallow.
Then she grabbed the card, shoved it into the pocket of her leather jacket, and stood up. Her legs felt unsteady, but the path was suddenly clear. She didn’t head for the front door.
She followed Rio into the dark.