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This is Adele Waldman and you're listening to StoryBand.

Welcome to Storybound, presented by Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate.

I'm your host, Jude Brewer.

Coming up in one minute is a story told by Adele Waldman with original composition by Haley Johnson.

And be sure to stick around until after the credits to get a behind-the-scenes look into how this episode was made. The light was dim and reddish at the bar Hannah chose on Myrtle, once known as Murder, Avenue.

The music, an early 1990s alternative album distantly familiar to Nate, wasn't too loud.

A large exposed pipe ran along the ceiling.

Tables were topped with old-fashioned desk lamps, an upscale touch in a place that was on the whole studiously dingy, a dark, heavily curtained, wannabe dive.

As Jason said, you can tell a real dive by its bathrooms.

If they don't reek, it's no dive, no matter how much graffiti is on the walls.

Hannah arrived a few minutes after eight, apologizing for being late.

I have no excuse, she said as she slid onto the barstool.

I live just down the street.

Nate caught a whiff of coconut shampoo.

While Hannah deliberated between a Kianti and a Malbec,

with her head tilted away from his and her lips slightly puckered,

Nate noticed she looked a lot like a girl he knew in high school.

Emily Covence had been in 10th grade when he was a senior.

He could still picture Emily sitting outside on the strip of grass between the upper school building and the cafeteria.

Her long, dirty blonde hair,

shiny like Hannah's, but lighter and less Auburn, had a bit of string braided into it,

...