Re: [The Cat: Nisha & Cat]
Jack had never cared much for Valentine's. It was one day out of many in what was ordinarily a wet and miserable month, one where people were so busy and determined to make it through to the other side they neither did anything or read anything interesting. And then, of course, there were people for whom Valentine's was something to pin good-will to. He remembered blood-red roses given by a man who still smelled faintly of his secretary's perfume as he kissed their mother's cheek. No, sod the lot of it.
He wasn't mourning as he came through the door of the Cat and he wasn't looking for a valedictory glass of whiskey from behind the bar. The weeks had been a haze since he'd put feet on terra firma. Firstly the drink, and then the week's worth of misplaced memories but when he'd shaken it off, it was with an email in the inbox from the editor at the paper out of the Capital. It hadn't been too shabby, apparently, the article. Enough to be commissioned to pull something together because he was local to the story.
Local. He was bloody local, now. The story wasn't. It was tied up in the Capital, a complicated tangle of crime, corruption and a cop that had peeled off from the Capital to the small town to, there was general suspicion, assuage his guilt. He would be an easier mark than any one on the force back in the Capital and the man was unmarried. Cop, no romance in the rear-view, and Jack came through the doors of the Cat looking for an excuse to cross paths with the cop and get his measure.
He hadn't been sober properly for several weeks, an in and out of something far more comforting than stark sobriety but the week of being utterly barking mad had left him without the greasy feeling of being utterly hungover and he was sober now. Jack had no bloody idea where Dahlia was, except that she was probably in worse shape given how much she had been drinking. He paused on the threshold, to look at the table cluttered with men who weren't buying up flowers and going home on a tide of pre-empted romance, all a couple of beers at least in. Sober clearly, for getting to know the cops, made you bloody strange.
Cat was behind the bar and Jack studiously avoided thinking about whether that was expected or not. She was talking to somebody, which was probably far safer than it would otherwise be and said somebody was drinking what looked like whiskey, of which he heartily approved on a day built seemingly on the misery of other people, but with the reverence of someone with something to prove.
"It could just be good whiskey," Jack added, and he didn't sit, he stood to the side of the woman with the glass full. "Good, or meaningful."