New Guy cleared his throat, and I felt his unwavering attention. I wasn’t normally jittery, but I’d been in a single-car accident in January. Crashed my Jeep into a utility pole. I didn’t remember the accident or the days around it. A few days here or there shouldn’t have mattered in the big picture, but those lost memories felt as if they mattered a great deal. My sister said I’d been taking drugs. I didn’t believe I was, but with no memories, I couldn’t prove it.

My heartbeat kicked up as my palms grew damp—a fight-or-flight response triggered by the car accident. Pride kept me on the stool. I turned toward New Guy.

Broad shoulders filled out a gray brewery T-shirt, and he wore faded but clean jeans and scuffed hiking boots that didn’t jibe with winter-pale skin likely earned during hours behind a computer screen. He had a lean build, an angled face, deep-set eyes feathered with creases at the corners, and fading blond strands streaking chestnut hair. All suggested he loved the outdoors but paid the light bill with an office job that kept him really busy. Individually his features weren’t memorable or even attractive, but as a whole, they had an appeal. The Fifty Shades version of Jamie Dornan.

He nodded to the untouched drinks. “Waiting for someone?”

The twin glasses sat side by side, close but not touching. “No. It’s a bit of a birthday tradition.”

He looked at me, clearly trying to decode my overcoat, jeans, black V-neck sweater, Doc Martens, and shorn auburn hair. I tucked a phantom curl behind my ear, wondering whether this new short hairstyle was as attractive as Brit kept insisting.

“Your birthday?” he asked.

“The big three-oh today,” I said.

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to drink them?” He looked curious, like a man who enjoyed puzzles.

I glanced at the clear liquid. “No.”

A brow arched. “That tradition, too?”

“It is.” Or it had been for the last 365 days—I’d earned my one-year AA token at a meeting. And because I was now sober, I could keep the truth locked away.

He held out his hand. “Alan Bernard.”

A collection of silver bracelets covering tiny white scars jangled on my wrist as I accepted his hand. His palm was faintly calloused, and his grip was strong. “Marisa Stockton.”

“Do I know you?” His grasp and stare lingered, as if searching for the puzzle’s corner piece.

The worn pickup line would have rolled off my back two months ago. Now it unsettled me. Since the car accident, my memory had been sketchy, like a video uploaded on spotty Wi-Fi. Missed words, frozen screens, blurred images dispersed among the coherent and clear. “Your name isn’t familiar.”

“Neither is yours,” he admitted as he released my hand. “It’s your face.”

I smiled uneasily. “Maybe I have one of those faces.”