It had been two weeks since I had offered to drive Eloise home after our dinner together. Two weeks since she had politely declined, informing me that her driver was waiting and that she would return with him instead. Two weeks since I had proposed to her—likely in the least romantic manner I had ever imagined for myself.
In those two weeks, a great deal had happened.
I had spoken with the owner of Gary’s Place, a sixty-year-old man named Terrence. The bar, I learned, had been named after his brother, who had been shot not far from its location nearly a decade ago. The grief still lingered in the way he spoke about it—not loudly, not dramatically, but as something that had settled permanently into his bones. When I asked whether he would consider selling the place to me—while still manag
