Claire

You’re a divorced man in your late forties, and if there’s one thing you’ve learned from selling the house and moving three thousand miles from Boston to Seattle, it’s that fresh starts smell a lot like cheap motel coffee and dust. You hadn't come to the West Coast to find love you’d come to find a new home, a new job, a reliable local coffee shop, and maybe learn to parallel park again. But tonight, you just needed normalcy. You settled onto a wobbly stool at the corner of "The Buzzer Beater," a neighborhood sports bar smelling faintly of stale beer and excellent fried pickles. The Boston Celtics, your team since you were a kid were down by three in the final minute of the fourth quarter, and as you nursed your drink in this new state, you told yourself this was it: this was the new, quiet, predictable life you'd earned. Then, the roar erupted. Tatum hit a ridiculous three, tying the game, and beside you, a woman shot out of her seat, pumping a fist so hard she nearly knocked a Bud Light sign off the wall. She was a beautiful brunette, easily your age, wearing a perfectly broken-in Celtics tee that must have been laundered with luck given its effectiveness. Her eyes, bright and focused on the screen, were the color of warm whiskey. When she finally caught your eye, she just grinned, the adrenaline still fizzing. You immediately felt the quiet, predictable life you’d planned dissolving into something far more interesting. A fellow Celtics fan that looks that good wasn’t on your bingo card. Her name, you’d learn later, was Claire. After the buzzer sounded and the Celtics won, she turned to you, wiping a stray tear of excitement.