He’d been working at the Half Moon for twenty-four years when he bought the place, knew it better than even his childhood home. He knew the smell of it, the way the light looked at different times of year, in different weather. It was at the Half Moon that he learned how to fix a running toilet, how to solder a pipe. He got strong at the bar, bringing case after case of Bud Light and Ultra up from the basement because Hugh wouldn’t add a light beer to the draft options. He learned about cash there, how to accept it, how to turn it away. He learned how to handle the sales reps, which ones would fork over free branded glasses and napkins and throw a few packs of cocktail straws on top, just because they liked shooting the shit for ten minutes. He learned that though he could drink for free at any bar in town, he’d drop more in tips in those places than he’d ever have paid had he come in as a regular customer. He learned how to talk to anyone, how to find common ground. He learned how to be a vessel for people’s worries, their complaints, and he learned that he’d better not have any worries or complaints of his own. He learned how to be friendly to women without crossing a line, he knew how to make them feel beautiful without being a sleaze, and he learned how to walk those same women back when they crossed the line, without insulting them, without embarrassing them. He learned to hide his shock at some of the things they said to him, these perfectly normal-seeming women, these women in their nearly identical faux leather jackets and their wedges, their hair in banana curls like they were all heading to some pageant for middle-aged women, the things that came out of their mouths when they had too much to drink or if they’d been wronged by their boyfriends or husbands. He learned it was possible to appear to the world as an average, ho-hum person but to actually harbor thoughts that human strangers didn’t normally share with one another, until they sat at a bar for too long on a Friday night and encountered a bartender they considered attractive.

Roddy was wiping down the bar. What a night it had been. If Malcolm could capture lightning in a bottle every time, he’d be okay. But if he couldn’t, what then? He couldn’t operate a place that was only half-full three nights a week. He was forty-five years old and he’d never had any other job. And he was good at this one. But middle age was looming and he could already see the headline that would arrive with it: that a person could be extraordinarily good at something and still fail at it.

He thought, at first, they’d go right back to the way they were before. He thought she’d start stopping by the bar again, to surprise him. He thought she’d start grinning at him again, looking at him like she knew a juicy secret. It’ll take a while, he told himself, have patience. But then she was gone.

[...] The guys came in for extra security on big nights, and Jess had a memory of the one called the Grog hitting on her even though she was newly married to Malcolm, who was twenty feet away. Pleasantly buzzed, she was waiting for the bathroom, leaning against the wall. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, he was standing in front of her. He put one hand on her hip as if to ask her a question, and she put her hand over his and gave it back to him like she was apologizing, like it was awfully tempting but she was a good girl.

A memory skittered through him, how he’d been brushing his teeth with the bathroom door open one morning and in the mirror he’d seen Jess lift his work shirt out of the hamper and press it to her face. He was about to ask what she was doing, when it hit him. He tried to never mention Emma at home, but maybe it was the omission of her name that pointed Jess to his interest. But interest wasn’t a crime. Nor was the way his belly tightened when he passed close to her in the narrow space behind the bar. When Emma asked him a question, she didn’t immediately doubt his answer, and that felt good. When she reported a problem, she looked at him with an expression of total faith that he would figure it out. One time, once, he stood so close to her as they were looking at an invoice that he could feel the light down on her arm brushing against him. She held perfectly still and so did he. Then Roddy came in and Malcolm shifted away.

He should have followed her that day. He should have stopped her from getting in her car and talked everything out with her, like Dr. Hanley said was important. But he’d just let her go. Because he was shocked. Why else? Because his feelings were hurt. Why else? Because he didn’t know what to say.

“To think,” he repeated, and she nodded, looking up at him like she was making herself brave, like she was ready to answer anything he might ask her. He could see her pulse flickering in her slender throat, her long dark hair swept up as it always was when she was around the house. But he was too surprised to ask another question.

“I can’t deal with this,” he said. “Not this week. Do you even know what’s going on at the bar? I can’t.”

He gestured at her little piles of clothes and shook his head as if to say this—leaving—was what they promised each other they’d never do. They’d never even joke about it. They were family, thick or thin. And yet.

“Because you know those wineglasses you like have no place in a bar like the Half Moon.”

She knew she sounded like the exact kind of wife she swore she’d never be, speaking to him like she was his boss, or his mother. Did she want to speak to her husband like he was a child? Of course not. But when a person dreams of partnering with someone for life, no one ever considers the fact that there’s no dependable way to communicate a thought except to say it.

“God,” Jess said the first time she saw Malcolm, standing behind the bar, “who’s that?” It was her friend Jenny’s birthday. They’d been co-captains of the track team their senior year of high school, and they still ran together sometimes when Jess was home. Jenny had just broken off an engagement, and Jess had just broken up with a classmate she’d been seeing half-heartedly. He always finished her sentences and he was always wrong. So they were due for a night out. They’d rounded up a few other friends from high school Jess hadn’t seen in a while.

[...] When they went out he always had plenty of cash and kept it neatly folded in a clip. He made the guys searching the opens maws of their wallets look like little boys.