The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

She wore very little makeup, if any, and her skin and facial structure had the look of someone who takes pleasure in running long distances regardless of weather.

She was focused on her laptop and didn’t glance over at him, then her phone vibrated and she picked it up and started stitching at it with her thumbs.

There wasn’t a bartender that Connelly could see, but Marie swept around the end and started scooping ice into thick plastic cups for one of her tables.

“So Len said you’re welcome to give it a shot tonight, but if people want to hear the TV, we’ll have to turn it up.”

“My dear,” Connelly said, “after a few strums on this beauty here, and the first honey-laden notes from me, your lucky patrons will forget television ever existed.”

“I’m gonna barf,” Marie said. Then, to the woman in the suit: “Don’t listen to a word he says. I think he might be the devil.”

The woman finally looked up and considered Connelly, and he noticed her green eyes with slashes of gold.

Then shook her head and went back to her phone.

“The devil’s taller.”

Marie’s mouth fell open, and Connelly fell in love.

Marie filled the cups with iced tea and told Connelly, “You probably need some cheering up after that burn. And good news: When you’re playing here you get half off, starting now. You doing the burger again?”

Connelly leaned toward the half-empty bowl next to the laptop.

“How’s the soup?”

He didn’t ask anyone specific but wanted the woman in the gray suit to answer.

“Sufficient,” she said. “I only got it because I can eat it with one hand while I work.”

“Must be important work.”

She made a face, dismissing the notion.

“Some people seem to think so.”

Marie said, “I’ll come back.”

She gave Connelly a look, knowing exactly what he was up to—or the surface version of it, anyway—and carried the drinks away.

“You work around here?” Connelly asked.

She didn’t look away from her laptop.

“Minneapolis.”

“Oh, so you’re in town for the big debut.”

That landed flat for a moment, then she frowned and broke away from the screen.

“Debut?”

He nudged the guitar case with his knee.

“Oh,” she said. “For sure. Because everybody in the Twin Cities knows about…uh…you.”

“Adam.”

It was close enough to Aiden to turn his head when someone called it out.

“Right,” she said.

He stuck his hand out and she glanced at the laptop again, then finally accepted the fact that she wasn’t going to get any more work done while he was standing there. She turned on her stool and shook his hand.

“Nora.”

“Hello Nora. I’m Adam.”

“You already said that.”

“I know. You passing through?”

“I’m from here.”

“Oh, born and raised? Then moved to the big city to…what? No wait, let me guess.”

He narrowed his eyes and leaned back, giving her and the laptop and phone and soup a full appraisal.

She raised an eyebrow and waited, fighting a smile.

In Connelly’s experience, most people wanted to know how others saw them, usually to measure how it compared to their own self-image, the one they tried to project into the world. It could be tricky—if he wanted his guess to be accurate, he risked creating discord by naming the thing they didn’t want to be but were all day, to the core, no matter how they tried to hide it.

It was usually safer to be wildly inaccurate and go from there.

“Submarine captain,” he said.

It caught her off guard and she laughed, a loud, short sound that she cut off immediately.

“Russian spy?”

“Okay,” she said. “You caught me. Now what about you? We seem about the same age.”

“That’s rude.”

“I mean I don’t remember you from school. You’re not from here.”

“I’m a drifter, Nora. A bard.”

“A bard.”

“That’s right. I travel from kingdom to kingdom, entertaining the royal courts and the plebeians alike. In return they offer me hamburgers. And soup, when it’s sufficient.”

“Not to be rude—again—but aren’t you a little old to be playing rock star?”

“I’m actually ahead of schedule.”

She blinked.

“Explain.”

“I already did the corporate thing and the house thing and the long-term relationship thing, and now I’m having my midlife crisis about thirty years ahead of schedule.”

This was mostly bullshit.

Nora studied him again, trying to figure it out.

“You used to be corporate?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

She just looked at him and waited for him to stop screwing around.

Connelly grinned. “Yeah, up in Seattle. Marketing, for almost ten years.”

Which was true, except it was closer to ten weeks.

In his early twenties he’d made what he considered to be a half-assed attempt to go legitimate in a field that utilized his gifts and interests and gotten fired for pitching what amounted to an illegal gambling ring to one of the clients.

The firm had found this unacceptable, especially coming from someone working in the copywriting bullpen and pitching the client in the bathroom.

It had only taken Connelly one week to realize everyone in the company was either secretly or overtly miserable, and now he was trying that angle with Nora; the notion of freedom and escape to someone who felt trapped in a gray suit and shackled by a laptop.

He gave it a fifty-fifty shot.

Maybe she loved her work and felt as comfortable in the suit as other people do in pajamas.

She said, “Ten years, then you got out. And now you do this.”

“And I’ve never been happier.”

She thought about that, then said, “Huh.”

“What do you mean, huh? You thinking about getting out?”

“No, oh no. I love my job.”

“Because I could use a bongo player.”

“Good lord, no. I love my apartment, I love the city…the idea of wandering around with no agenda gives me the hives.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Connelly said, with a tiny bit of pity but not enough to be condescending.

Just enough to make her want to prove something to him.

He said, “So you just go back and forth between Minneapolis and here for what, the soup? Your folks?”

“Ah, it’s a whole mess,” she said.

And Connelly settled in, getting down to it.

“I come back every weekend to handle the sale of my parents’ farm,” Nora said.

Connelly winced.

“Oh, man. Are