Chapter 2: The Beer and the Lacrosse Confession
The neon sign buzzed like an angry insect, casting everything in shades of sickly green and shadow. The bar was the kind of place that didn't bother with pretense—sticky floors, a jukebox that had been playing the same five songs since 1998, and a handful of patrons scattered across worn vinyl booths like forgotten change. It was perfect.
Stiles held the door open, and Emily slipped past him, catching the faint scent of rain on his jacket and something else beneath it—something warm and subtly spicy, like cedarwood and cinnamon. She filed that detail away without meaning to, the way she filed away everything.
They claimed a booth in the farthest corner, tucked behind a pillar where the green light barely reached. The vinyl squeaked beneath Emily as she slid across the booth, and she watched Stiles do the same on the opposite side, his long legs folding awkwardly as he settled. He was all angles and nervous energy, but there was something endearing about the way he kept glancing at her, like he was checking that she was real.
"The beer," he said, eyes lighting up as a waitress appeared. "You promised."
Emily arched an eyebrow, reaching into her jacket pocket. Her fingers brushed against her phone, some loose change, and a crumpled receipt. She pulled out a folded twenty and slid it across the table. "I believe I did."
The waitress, a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and a name tag that said Dottie, took their order and shuffled off toward the bar. Across the table, Stiles was drumming his fingers against the wood in a pattern that seemed to have no rhythm but felt deliberate somehow. She watched his hands. They were nice hands. Expressive. He talked with them even when he wasn't talking.
"So," Stiles said, breaking into a grin that made his whole face light up. "Before we dive into the emotional baggage—which I'm assuming we'll get to because that's how these things go—I need to know something." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You asked about lacrosse."
Emily tilted her head, a smirk curling her lips. "I did."
"You genuinely didn't know what it was?" He looked somewhere between offended and delighted. "Like, you've never seen a game? Never stumbled upon it on ESPN at three a.m. when you couldn't sleep and your brain was doing that thing where it won't shut up about everything you've ever done wrong?"
She laughed, surprised. "That's—very specific. But no. I grew up in a small town outside of Atlanta. We had football and basketball and not much else. Lacrosse was just something rich kids did at boarding schools in movies."
Stiles pressed a hand to his chest, feigning a wound. "Okay, first of all, that's a huge stereotype. Second, I'm offended on behalf of every broke kid who ever played with a hand-me-down stick—which was me, by the way. I am the broke kid. Or I was. I'm still broke, actually." He winced. "College's expensive, man."
Dottie returned, sliding two bottles across the table, their labels dripping condensation. Emily nudged one toward Stiles, and he took it with a grateful nod before pulling a long sip. His throat worked as he swallowed, and she realized she was watching him a little too intently. She looked away, focused on her own beer.
"So," she prompted, picking at the label. "Lacrosse. Explain it to me like I'm an alien who's just landed on Earth and this is the first human custom I've encountered."
Stiles set down his bottle, launching into a rambling explanation that was equal parts genuine and absurd. "Okay, so, imagine hockey. But on grass. And you have a stick with a little net on the end, and you have to catch this tiny rubber ball and launch it into the opponent's goal at terrifying speeds while simultaneously avoiding getting your ankles broken by guys who think roids are a viable personality trait." He paused, scrunching his nose. "I was, uh, not great at it. Thrived in the bench, honestly. Found a lot of interesting bugs in the grass while I wasn't playing."
Emily snorted, covering her mouth. "You found bugs."
"Not just found them—observed them. Catalogued them. There was this one beetle—" He stopped when he saw the look on her face, and a sheepish grin replaced the enthusiasm. "Yeah. I was not the lacrosse team's star player. More like their, uh. Morale support. And by morale support, I mean the guy they'd use as a target in drills because I was too slow to dodge."
"You had to dodge drills?" Her voice pitched up in disbelief.
"Coach thought it would help with our agility," he said, pulling a face. "It helped me perfect my impression of a human whack-a-mole. You know them, the little moles that pop up and get hit?" She nodded, and he gestured at himself. "That was me. The mole."
Emily laughed—a real laugh, one that caught in her throat and escaped before she could stop it. It felt strange and wonderful, like finding out a muscle she hadn't used in years still worked. She took a sip of her beer, letting the cold wash away the remnants of her embarrassment.
"High school was rough," she said, not quite meeting his eyes. "I get the feeling yours was too."
Stiles's expression softened. He traced the rim of his bottle, his fingers leaving trails in the condensation. "You could say that. My mom died when I was nine, and my dad, he threw himself into work. I had Scott—my best friend, still is—and he was kind of my anchor. But it wasn't exactly the highlight reel, you know? I was that weird kid. The one who talked too much, knew too much about random stuff, couldn't sit still, and had a crush on every girl who so much as smiled at him." He grinned, but there was something sad behind it. "I wore the weird kid badge with pride, eventually. It was either that or get eaten alive."
Emily watched him. There was a weight to his words that felt familiar, a loneliness that hummed beneath his rambling like a second heartbeat. She recognized it because she had it too.
"I chose forensic psychology," she said, and the words came out softer than she intended. "Because I wanted to understand why people do terrible things. Like, if I could figure out the why, maybe I could stop them. Or fix them." She paused. "Or at least predict them well enough to stay out of their way."
Stiles went very still. His eyes met hers, and there was something unreadable in them—interest, understanding, maybe recognition.
"And has it worked?" he asked quietly.
"You know what I've learned?" She leaned back, her fingers curling around her bottle. "People don't fit into neat little boxes. There's no formula. Every single person who's ever committed an atrocity thought they were the hero of their own story. The villain never sees themselves as the villain—they're always justified. Always provoked. Always forced into it." She took a long sip. "It doesn't make them any less dangerous. But it makes them human. Which is somehow more terrifying and more comforting than the alternative."
Stiles was quiet for a long moment. The jukebox switched songs somewhere in the background, a mournful guitar riff bleeding through the silence between them.
"You believe in evil?" he asked. The question was casual, but there was something careful in the way he said it—like he was testing the waters.
"It has to exist," Emily said with a small shrug. "It's the only way the world makes sense."
"Or," he said, his voice dropping conspiratorially, "the only way the supernatural makes sense."
Emily raised an eyebrow. "Supernatural?"
Stiles's mouth opened, and she could see the exact second he realized he'd said too much. Something flickered across his face—panic, calculation, and then a too-bright grin that was clearly a deflection. "I mean, you know. Things that go bump in the night. The unexplained. I have a minor in supernatural studies—unofficially, obviously, because the university doesn't actually offer it, which is a whole other thing I could complain about for hours." He took a sip of his beer, like he was buying himself time. "I'm obsessed, honestly. I have binders. So many binders. An entire drawer in my desk that's basically just a conspiracy wall in paper form. It's a problem. I know it's a problem."
Mock disbelief spread across Emily's face, curving her mouth into a smile she couldn't quite suppress. "You lured me into a bar at midnight to talk cryptids?"
A defensive edge crept into his voice. "They're more real than you think."
"I'm pretty sure Bigfoot isn't real, Stiles."
"That's what they want you to think." His eyes glinted with humor. "Look, all I'm saying is that the world is stranger than what the textbooks up at the university tell you. There are things that don't fit into the neat little boxes you're describing—things that hunt, things that hide, things that have teeth and claws and a whole lot of baggage." He paused, something flickering in his expression. "And I've seen enough to know that the ones who think they're the hero usually get torn apart by the ones who've stopped pretending to be human."
A shiver crawled down Emily's spine. The way he said it—casual, almost throwaway—carried a weight that didn't match the words. There was something there. Something real.
"You're serious," she said slowly.
"I'm always serious." A beat. "I just hide it with jokes and hand gestures."
Emily opened her mouth to respond, but the words didn't come. She realized she didn't know what to say. She was the one who studied human darkness, who believed she'd catalogued every variation of cruelty and fear and longing that drove a person to do unimaginable things. But this lanky, nervous boy with the expressive hands was looking at her like he'd stumbled into something beyond her neat little categories.
"Okay," she said, letting out a breath. "So you're a believer. That's not the weirdest thing about you."
"You've known me for two hours," he said, grinning. "Give it time."
Two hours. She checked her phone—almost two in the morning. Her beer was empty, and so was his. The bar had emptied out around them, Dottie wiping down the counter and casting pointed glances at the clock.
"I should get you home," Stiles said, and there was a hopeful, nervous glint in his eyes that he couldn't quite hide. "I mean—if you want. I can drive you. I have a car. A Jeep. It's not, like, great—it's held together with duct tape and an unhealthy amount of sexual tension from the engine—but it runs."
Emily laughed, sliding out of the booth. She paused, catching his gaze across the sticky table. "You're offering to drive me home? After I forced you to pretend to date me for the night? I think that goes above and beyond the coffee debt."
"I like to exceed expectations," he said, too quickly. Then, more softly: "And I don't really want tonight to be over yet."
The words hung between them, honest and uncertain. Emily felt something warm spread through her chest. She was already wearing her jacket, already moving past the point where she could walk away and let the moment mean nothing.
"Yeah," she said, and the word came out softer than intended. "Let's go."