Nothing Good Happens After 2AM by Niamh Hargan

Author:Niamh Hargan [Hargan, Niamh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2025-12-05T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

It was late – the middle of the night, really, though it didn’t feel like it in the Chateau Marmont’s courtyard. Candles were twink­ling; cicadas were buzzing. The whole place was relaxed chatter and warm night air. Robbie was on his break, and he didn’t know what El was doing out there, what had taken her away from her friends. He’d watched her step out the French doors, though, and he was following before he knew it.

Leaving tonight without talking to her again, he’d decided, was simply out of the question. That was all there was to it.

She stopped when she saw him, and for a second, she just looked at him, as though she, too, felt a sense of inevitability about this meeting. ‘Hey, Robbie.’

‘How are you, El?’ he replied. ‘Poured any drinks over anybody recently?’

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Every night at midnight. It’s my party piece.’

He smiled a little. ‘And there I thought I was special.’

She smiled a little, too. He took her in, up close. She wasn’t as thin as she’d been the last time he saw her, and she looked a million times better for it. She still had the long hair. She was in a dress he’d seen before, although in London she’d always worn it with – he remembered this – an insane amount of jumpers: at least three thin layers on top of one another, when it had always seemed to him that just one proper winter woolly would surely have done the job. Underneath, that dress turned out to have delicate straps at the shoulder, its floaty material falling almost to the ground. She was barefoot.

‘Seriously, you look well,’ he continued. ‘Are you well?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, you know me, Robbie. As soon as things wrap up here, I’ll head on down to Skid Row, shoot up whatever’s lying around.’

He didn’t laugh, didn’t respond at all.

‘I’m … not doing that stuff anymore,’ she muttered then, like a child forced into honesty.

Something Robbie could only characterize as relief flooded through him. ‘Do you feel better for it?’ he asked.

‘Sometimes I feel a lot worse,’ she retorted.

He took that as a yes.

‘So, I see you stayed then,’ she said, after a moment. ‘At Love and Death. I knew you would.’

‘I didn’t know I would,’ he countered.

‘So, why are you here – really? Last I remember, international field trips weren’t part of the gig.’

‘Have you heard they’re starting this list? The World’s 50 Best Bars. It’s going to be like an annual ranking. Getting on it would be like getting a Michelin star apparently.’

‘Who votes for it?’

‘This thing called “the Academy”. I think there are like five hundred members from around the world, all hand-picked. Otto’s been selected for it, obviously. Anyway, who knows if the whole thing’ll take off. But if you want to be highly ranked, there seems to be a bit of winning friends and influencing people involved. That’s why we’re here, really. We’re going to a place in San Francisco after this, plus Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

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