FRIDAY NIGHT, CARIAKI, @natedeckard
Jude beckoned the bartender over for another drink, which wasn’t well-deserved at all. He’d had nothing to celebrate after a week, even after he’d stuck his neck out in defiance of their consensus to only dig with a permit. Emma suspected - or at least, he suspected she suspected. He could’ve been arrested by the local police, and all for naught. High risk, high reward, right? Cheers to that, he thought.
His colleagues were out elsewhere, probably team bonding or pep-talking or whatever they did when he disappeared, so he could drink himself to a self-loathing death without witnesses. It was a warm night, nice enough that most of the crowd was clustered around the large outdoor tables, and Jude was cloaked in the stillness of the near-empty bar. Until he made eye contact, briefly, with someone a few stools down from him. “Want to buy me a drink?” he asked mildly.