Re: the lake -> inside to the bar
If asked, he likely wouldn't label it as Fate. He'd consider it a string of events. One that each person had at least some control over, but every choice took you down a certain path. He wasn't quite sure what some of his choices had been to land him where he was, but he'd had a hand in his own making.
He let her walk without bother or interruption, and if she was a live wire, that was her own thing to deal with. He had nothing on him that could calm a person, and he didn't have a responsibility for her. They were only temporary partners, and they could part at any time. But for the moment, he found that he didn't mind her presence, distracted though it was, as they walked toward the house.
He did not think of himself as generous. Other people (most of the time) did not think of him as generous. But she offered a smile, the first he'd seen from her, so his tightened into an unpracticed one of his own. He turned away, and when he turned back, he was holding two glasses from the bar, identical, the scent of brandy heady around the clear rims. It was a memory in a glass for him, but the soda was scant and the liquor was poured heavy, the bit of fruit in the glass making no real dent into the bite of the alcohol.