When I glance over my shoulder toward the bar, I can see a bartender hard at work, opening beer bottles and taking crumpled dollar bills. I don’t think he’s Leo. He looks older than college age, maybe even in his thirties. Also, he does not have a ponytail.

It occurs to me now how risky this is. My search for Leo has become a search for a guy at Delaney’s with a ponytail. The girl in the green jog bra renegotiated my terms. She could be sending me to find anyone, theoretically. But one thing that was for sure not theoretical? Her blocking me exactly the way Kelsey did. That was not something she made up. And right now, that’s enough for me. No, maybe not enough. But it’s all I have.

Finally, I spot somebody farther down the bar, on the other side of the bartender. He is bent over and pulling glasses out of a rack like a barback and not a bartender might. When he finally stands, sure enough, I can see light brown hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Lit up behind the bar, his face is a series of elegant angles. Leo, definitely.

“Do these people actually think this is good?” Jasper whispers to me. He’s listening to the girl up onstage, her face more and more flushed with each and every angry word. “All she’s doing is yelling.”

“Come on,” I say, turning my attention back to Leo. He’s ducked under the bar with his rack of glasses and is headed past us toward the back, the kitchen maybe. I watch him disappear behind a door that swings back and forth on its tight hinges. “I think I see him.”

IT ISN’T EASY for us to make it the rest of the way through the crowd, but eventually we end up at the same door. I hold my breath as I push through, startle when I let go and the door makes a super-loud snapping sound. But Leo—if he is Leo—does not twitch. He does not look up. He just keeps on with what he’s doing. Pulling out a clean rack of glasses, loading another dirty one into the dishwasher. But he has tensed. I can feel it.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he says finally as he starts up the machine. He still hasn’t looked in our direction. And he is wound tight. But I don’t feel any actual anger coming off him. At least, not yet. Then again, we still have not made eye contact, which I get the sense is not an accident. “You’re supposed to wait around back, in the alley. I take the empties out at midnight.”

Like he knows exactly why we are there. Maybe the girl in the green jog bra told him to expect us.