1. Sapphire

Sapphire

“That man looks like he could use a drink,” my best friend Zoey says, motioning to a startlingly attractive dark-haired man at the end of the bar who’s staring into his water glass, brooding about something or other.

Join the club, I think, since I’m having a pretty terrible New Year’s Eve myself.

But as the star bartender at the Maple Pig Bar and Grill, it’s up to me to cheer this man up with whatever concoction comes to my mind as being the one he needs.

So, I walk over to him, and his gaze shifts to me.

His eyes are silver. An unusual color that holds an icy glint, like icicles pinning me down.

But I keep my cool. I’ve seen enough sad and mysterious eyes behind this counter to know how to deal with them.

Besides, there’s something different about this guy. Something that makes me want to reach beneath that brooding exterior and touch his soul.

Something that makes all thoughts of my fight with Matt this morning disappear into the corners of my mind.

“Rough night?” I ask once I’m standing in front of him.

“You could say that.” He keeps his eyes locked on mine, as if he’s challenging me about what to say next.

“Lucky for you, I have just the thing.” I pick up the shaker, getting ready to do what I do best. “This one’s on the house.”

It’s what I always say to newcomers.

And, as always, my hands move like they have a mind of their own. Each ingredient flows into place, and there’s a familiar soft hum beneath my skin, like the vibration of a note just beyond hearing.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be serving drinks?” he asks as I work.

“I’m eighteen,” I say. “I make the best drinks in Maine. So, as long as I don’t drink the drinks, the restaurant lets me make them and serve them.”

The finished product is a soft pinkish concoction—one that fizzes gently, like bottled warmth.

“Do I seem like a man who orders pink drinks?” He raises an eyebrow, not moving to take it.

“You must not be from around here,” I reply, since he’s right—he definitely doesn’t strike me as the sort of man who orders pink drinks.

But my hands lead the way, and I obey.

So, pink is what he gets.

“I’ll take it as a compliment that I don’t seem like I’m from a small town in Maine,” he says, sounding decently amused with himself.

“People come here from all over.” I shrug. “But I always remember a face. And yours…”

Is beautiful, I think, although of course, I hold back.

“I lost my cat,” he says simply. “Ended up finding him nearby, and this place seemed busy, so I figured I’d check it out.”

“Your cat?” I repeat, since normally, people come to the Maple Pig for my drinks. Not for a cat.

“Correct.” He smirks and leans back in his chair. “His name’s Ghost.”

“And where’s Ghost now?”

“He’s waiting outside.” His eyes drop to my wrist—to the sapphire bracelet I never take off—apparently done talking about his cat. “That’s a beautiful bracelet.”

“My mom gave it to me,” I say, and I force a smile, wanting to change the subject. “So, are you going to try the drink?”

“Depends,” he says playfully. “Are you going to tell me your name? ”

“I’m Sapphire.” I glance down at my wrist again. “Like my bracelet.”

“Except you’re far more beautiful.” He picks up his glass, and I stand there speechless as he gives the pink drink a try.

For a heartbeat, the chattering inside the bar fades. There’s just the two of us, here in this moment, strangers on the verge of something I can barely understand.

Something I want to understand.

“What about you?” I ask when he places the drink back down. “What’s your name?”

Before he can answer, the door slams open so loudly that everyone turns to look.

Matt.

My boyfriend—well, ex- boyfriend—strides in, his jaw set, his eyes blazing with that look that makes my stomach twist. Not in the good way it used to, but in that anxious, here-we-go-again kind of way.

“Larkin!” someone off to the side says Matt’s last name—one of the guys who used to play on the Presque Isle football team with him. “You made it!”

Matt ignores him as he pushes through the crowd, barely glancing at the dark-haired, silver-eyed man as he steps around the bar to stand next to me.

“Sapphire.” His eyes scan my body, as if he’s making sure no one else has touched it in the less than twenty-four hours since we broke up. “We need to talk. ”

“Now’s not really a good time,” I say, but he reaches out and wraps his fingers around my wrist. Not hard, but with a possessive edge that makes my skin prickle.

“Please,” he says, and there’s a sort of desperation in his tone that makes my heart soften a bit. “It’s the last few minutes before the new year. I don’t want to end it like this.”

I’m hyperaware of everyone watching us—the silver-eyed stranger, Zoey, Matt’s old football buddies, and probably a dozen others.

“Fine,” I say, yanking my wrist free. “Talk.”

He pauses, as if he wasn’t expecting me to say yes so quickly.

Then, he begins.

“I want us to have a fresh start.” He leans closer, and his eyes are anxious—pleading. “Come home with me. Tonight.”

“I’m not moving in with you,” I say for what must be the hundredth time these past few months. “I’m not ready.”

“You’re never going to be ready.” He slams his hand onto the surface of the bar, and I jump, and then there’s a loud crack as water sprays out of the service sink.

“Great,” I mutter, and I hurry to the sink, water getting all over me as I twist the valve, searching for that sweet spot to fix it .

“Let me help,” Matt says, and then he’s there, as if nothing happened, reaching forward to take over.

Before he can, I twist the valve shut, cutting off the spray. Water drips from my sleeves, chilling my skin, and I take a deep breath, steadying myself.

“I didn’t realize how handy you were,” he says in a strange mix of approval and irritation.

“It’s been happening a lot lately.” I wipe my hands on my soaked jeans, which doesn’t do much to dry them off. Luckily, I keep a spare pair in the back, in case of incidents like these. “We really need a new sink.”

His face softens a little, as if seeing me soaked and struggling pulls something sympathetic out of him. “You know I just want us to be together,” he says, gentler now. “I love you. I always have, and I always will.”

I love you, too, a part of me automatically wants to say—the part that’s been saying it to him since I was a starry-eyed freshman, and he was the most celebrated senior on the football team.

He’s waiting for me to say it back when the countdown begins, voices echoing through the room as people raise their glasses in excitement.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Matt’s eyes flick back to mine, and there’s a look there—one that’s almost pleading.

“Seven… six… ”

“Sapphire,” he whispers, and I can barely hear him over the rising cheers. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Five… four…”

His hands are on my waist, the heat of his body closing in on mine.

“Three… two…one…”

He closes the distance between us, and there’s a comfort in the familiarity of his lips pressing against mine. Memories rush back of the good times we’ve had together—our nightly phone calls when we were first getting to know each other, his making our relationship official by taking me to homecoming, the playful snowball fight we had before the first time he told me he loved me, and the walk around the lake the morning of my high school graduation when he told me how scared he was that he was going to be stuck in Presque Isle forever.

“Happy New Year!” The bar erupts into cheers, people shouting in excitement and clinking their glasses together.

I pull away from Matt and open my eyes.

But instead of focusing on him, I glance at the far side of the bar.

The silver-eyed man is gone.

A strange pang hits me. Regret, or maybe disappointment. I can’t quite place it, but it makes my chest hollow with the undeniable feeling of loss.

Especially because I never even got his name.