Little Broken Things by Nicole Baart

Author:Nicole Baart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

NORA

THE BAR WAS DIM after the glare of the bright summer sun and Nora blinked in the entryway as her eyes adjusted. The air smelled of popcorn and old fryer grease, but instead of turning Nora’s stomach, the scents reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything since Ethan’s omelette that morning. She made her way to the commercial popper in the corner of the bar and helped herself to a cardboard container and a generous amount of stale, buttery popcorn. Not exactly nourishing, but it would do.

The Cue was mostly empty at four thirty on a lazy August afternoon, but it was Friday and the sticky booths would soon fill up with workers from the window factory down the street. The day shift was over at five, and the crew usually celebrated with a cold one or two. Nora knew many of them by name, mostly because the majority of the men who frequented the Cue had tried at one time or another to buy her a drink. She always refused. Accepting a drink from a man was an open invitation for said man to flirt. Nora had no desire to chitchat with half-drunk perennial adolescents who were only interested in one-night stands and NASCAR. Okay, maybe they also liked football. Nora hadn’t really taken the time to find out.

She picked a booth near the front of the bar and directly across from the cash register. There would be lots of traffic, lots of people stopping by to say hi and shoot the breeze, if only for a moment or two. Nora wanted that sort of visibility.

“The usual, Nora Jeane?” Arlen had come out of the kitchen and spotted her. He called her Nora Jeane, not because her middle name was Jane but because he said she reminded him of Norma Jeane. Which was ridiculous. She looked nothing like Marilyn Monroe. Quinn, maybe, with her curves and full lips and periwinkle eyes. But not spare, angular Nora, whose razor-sharp jawline matched her personality. A guy in high school had once called her the Ice Queen. A far cry from the Blonde Bombshell.

“Actually, no,” Nora said. “I’ll take an Arnold Palmer.”

Arlen gave her a bit of a sideways look as he took his hand off the sleek Guinness tap. But he poured the iced tea and lemonade mocktail without question and came around the bar to deliver it to her table. He was humming “Candle in the Wind.”

“Thanks, Arlen.”

Nora sipped the drink—too sugary—and bounced her knee as she settled in to wait. After the shock of Tiffany’s betrayal and the fruitless search of all their former favorite haunts, Nora needed something much stiffer. But she couldn’t risk dulling her senses with alcohol, no matter how much she would have liked to.

Ethan had let her crash on his couch for a couple of hours and then insisted she take a shower. While he was out. Nora locked the doors to both his apartment and the bathroom, and stood for far too long under the lukewarm spray.

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