Star Wars - Kenobi

her with excitement and anticipation. And the slow moments she now found interminable. She’d become more concerned about wasting days than wasting profits. It was as if her life had suddenly gained an importance and a weight it previously didn’t have, or that she’d denied. She didn’t know the reason.
    Well, something had changed, of course. There was Ben.
    Since that day out on The Rumbles, every hour she’d spent around Ben had seemed full of life. It staggered belief that, in fact, they’d only known each other for a few hours over the course of half a dozen meetings. So much had happened.
    The Tuskens had attacked the oasis, something they hadn’t done in years. She’d ridden into a battle and met a most-wanted Tusken warlord—who turned out to be a matriarch and mother, like herself. She and Orrin had both been hassled by big-city lowlifes. And the man her kids knew as the jovial uncle had suddenly declared his love for her.
    And she’d begun to imagine a different life for herself. All this had happened, since Ben’s arrival from … where? She still didn’t know. Unbelievable.
    Some people are trouble magnets, her mother had said. And by “people” her mother had meant “men,” and by “some,” she meant “all.” It had taken Dannar four years to pass the Nella Thaney Stress Test. Four years during which he’d had to show that, while he might once have been a sand-spitting rowdy, he could stay in the same place and open the store every day. For Annileen’s first two years working the counter, her mother had counted her pay every week, just to see if Dannar was keeping his word. A credit short and he’d have been a no-account dreamer again. But Dannar was Tatooine’s greatest salesman, because eventually he sold Nella Thaney on himself.
    Nella wouldn’t have let Ben Kenobi within rifle range of her daughter.
    Her mother’s sayings came fresh to her ears. A man with no past is a man with no future. No one with sense moves to Tatooine. Nothing good comes from the Jundland Wastes. Annileen remembered them well. She’d caught herself saying them to Kallie a few times, although she had the integrity to curse herself afterward. Ben had no visible means of support, no occupation, no seeming willingness to commit to anything beyond his solitary existence. And despite his efforts, trouble found him everywhere.
    But if he was a jinx, why did she feel so much better having him around?
    Annileen walked to the counter and closed the hinged flap. She wouldn’t need her blaster. She wouldn’t take her new landspeeder out in the night to see if the lights were on at Orrin’s house. She would imagine that Jabe had gotten caught up in an all-night sabacc game at the Gault place with Mullen and Veeka and their friends, and she would be fine with that.
    Because she was going to see Ben again. Sometime. Maybe soon, and everything would be fine. It always was, when he was around.
    Annileen walked through the stacked tables and chairs toward the hallway leading to her residence. Down the darkened hall, something moved in the shadows, giving her a terrifying start.
    “Kallie, I thought you’d gone to bed!” Annileen said, heart pounding. She squinted down the hallway. “Kallie?”
    A shadowy figure slumped in the doorway to the hall leading to the garages. “It’s me, Annie.” Orrin’s voice was scratchy and unusually high-pitched. “We have to talk.”
    Orrin sat at the bar stool Annileen had pulled down from the counter. “Don’t turn on the lights,” he said.
    “I never do at this hour,” she said, pouring him a drink in the darkness. “The last thing I want is for anyone to think I’m still serving.” She withheld the mug from him long enough to survey him. In the moonlight, Orrin looked as gray as she’d ever seen him. His hair was messed, his face dirty. Gone were the spiffy clothes from Mos Eisley that day; he looked as if he’d dressed out of the back of his landspeeder. “You brought Jabe back, I hope?”
    Orrin reached past the mug in her hand and grabbed the bottle instead. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said, raising it.
    “Try at the start,” she said, pitching the contents of the mug into the basin.
    He looked at her and started to say something. Then he shook his head. “No, no, I can’t tell you that part right now. You’ll never—”
    “Start somewhere!”
    He clasped his hands together. They were shaking. Gathering himself, he finally spoke.