“Definitely not like this.” There was that smile again. “So... New York. What brings you to town?”
“The weather. And the nightlife.”
He laughed and patted the top of her car. “Okay, ma’am. You’re free to go.”
A second “ma’am” in less than ten minutes? There wasn’t enough eye cream in all of Sephora.
“Thanks... and sorry about the stop sign.” She gave him a genuine smile.
As she pulled back into the road, she honked a goodbye.
She snuck a glance in the rearview mirror. He stood watching her go.
She thought he was probably wondering how a girl like her ended up in a place like this.
If he only knew.
Chapter 18
Afew days later, after finishing up her writing for the day, Harper texted Mary from a bar on Main Street.
“Found a cute spot. Come meet me. The Sin Bin. Next to the coffee shop.”
“Sin Bin? Doesn’t sound like your kind of place. More like one of mine! Be there in 30.”
Mary closed her laptop. She’d spent hours reviewing briefs for a class action lawsuit that was brought against a banking client. She was way ahead of schedule, so she could bang out a short brief of her own in the morning before the lead partner in New York even got to the office.
Mary threw her hair in a messy bun and touched up her makeup. She stood in her closet and considered what to wear to a place called the Sin Bin. It had warmed up to twenty-five degrees and hadn’t snowed in a week. Almost felt like a heat wave.
Feeling casual, she chose a navy blue silk shirt, an olive-green suede blazer, dark blue jeans, and black high heels. She threw on a long emerald brushed cashmere coat, grabbed her black sling bag and keys, and headed downtown. It took just five minutes to get there and park.
Harper was set up in the corner against the far wall, under a giant TV screen. She had on light blue wide-leg jeans, a navy turtleneck, and a hot pink puffy vest with ruffled sleeves that she’d found in a local shop called Vintage Vibes.
Harp’s eyes lit up when she saw Mary. She cleared a space, putting her notebook and laptop into a giant cloth tote bag.
Mary gave her a hug and took a stool opposite her. “So,thisis a Sin Bin? It looks like a sports bar to me. I was expecting something a little more... dangerous?”
“Ha! The Sin Bin is where hockey players sit when they get in trouble. It’s like being sent to your room to think about what you did.”
“I didn’t know you knew so much about hockey.”
“My dad took my brother and me to Rangers games a few times a year,” Harper said and looked around the bar. “He’d love this—especially all the memorabilia. When he was growing up in Canada they watched hockey every Saturday night. He said it was a national obsession.”
She pointed out the vintage hockey sticks that hung down between the exposed beams on the ceiling, the framed jerseys on the wall, and some of the most iconic moments in hockey captured in a large hand-painted mural opposite the bar. A huge mirror in a gorgeous wood frame was mounted behind the bottles of booze.
“Love that. My dad and I used to go to games together, too, but he was a Mets fan. His favorite player was Mike Piazza. We met him once at a pizza place near our house. My dad never stopped talking about it.”
“Maybe in the spring the three of us can go to a game in Milwaukee. Big weekend out.”
“I feel like we’re putting a lot of to-do items in the spring bucket,” Mary said. She pointed at Harper’s laptop. “Get very far today?”
“A solid chapter and a half. I think. I keep second-guessing myself.”
“Sounds like normal novelist neurosis.” She reached for Harper’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
A busboy walked by, and Harper flagged him down.
“Hi, could we order?”