Celeste fixed the strap slowly because Owen had been too polite all evening.
The lounge was nearly empty by then. A saxophone murmured from the speaker over the bar, and the last couple by the window had stopped pretending they were talking about the weather. Celeste sat with one shoulder turned toward the lamplight, her blue dress neat, fitted, and just troublesome enough to need one careful touch.
Owen noticed. Of course he did. He was sixty-six, not dead, and not nearly as invisible as he believed. What made Celeste smile was the way he looked at her face afterward, as if asking permission to have noticed at all.
You are allowed to look, she said.
He gave a small laugh and stared into his glass. That depends where.
Good answer, she said, and let her fingers rest on the strap a second longer.
Celeste was forty-eight and tired of men who confused hunger with courage. Owen had restraint, but not the cold kind. His restraint had heat under it. She could feel it in the careful space between their chairs, in the way his voice dropped whenever the bartender walked past.
She asked why he kept pretending the room was more interesting than she was.
Because I still have some sense left.
That made her laugh, low and private. Then use it.
Owen finally looked. Not greedily. Not like a boy. He looked at the strap, then at her mouth, then back to her eyes where the real question had been waiting. Celeste nodded once. The small piece of fabric had started the game, but his choice, slow and decent and honest, was what kept her sitting there.
