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“Shut up, Niles,” said Essence witheringly.
“See, I was thinking that you must have gotten handcuffed together during a little sexcapade, but then you couldn’t get yourselves free from each other, and maybe the sex was awkward or bad or something?” He laughed. “I mean, can you imagine?”
“Who, me?” said Dahlia. “Can I imagine?” She shrugged. “Sounds awful. But that’s not what happened, so why don’t you drop it?”
“What did happen?” said Niles.
“Why are you bothering them?” said Dahlia.
Decker would have insisted that he and Essence go somewhere else in the bar to talk one on one, but he was afraid that would mean they started having a nitty-gritty conversation about the sex earlier, and he still didn’t know how to talk about that. Every time he tried, it all went badly. So, he was enduring Niles.
“He’s bored,” said Essence. “He wants to live vicariously through our drama.”
“I’m not bored,” said Niles.
Dahlia furrowed her brow. “Oh, of course. Right.” She looked down at her fingers.
“Hey, no,” said Niles. “No.” He wrapped his arm tighter around Dahlia. “No.”
“It’s fine,” said Dahlia, her voice too breezy.
“Baby,” said Niles, “even if I said something about… I didn’t mean you. You’re the best fucking thing that ever happened to me.”
“It’s fine,” said Dahlia again. Her phone beeped. She picked it up. “Um, they said that they do have bolt cutters. Should I tell them to bring them to the Meck if they’re not busy?” She looked up at Essence.
Essence shrugged. “I don’t know? Would they do that?”
“I don’t know either. One way to find out,” said Dahlia, typing on her phone. “I’m going to give them your phone number, Essence, because I’m going to go home.”
Niles leaned his head back against the wall behind the table, groaning softly. He mouthed, Thanks, at Essence.
“Hey,” said Decker. “Do not blame her. You dug that hole yourself.”
“He’s not in a hole,” said Dahlia. “It’s fine.” She nodded at Essence. “What’s your number?”
Essence told her.
Dahlia typed it in.
Niles dragged a hand over his face.
“Look, maybe not bored,” said Essence in a contrite voice.
“I don’t need to talk about our business,” said Dahlia. “I mean, he’s clearly fine with talking to strangers—”
“It was because Valdi was here,” said Niles. “He showed me seven thousand baby pictures. I swear the man stands over this child’s cradle snapping pictures and does nothing else. He’s obsessed with this child.”
Dahlia turned on him. “Okay, I really don’t see how that’s related—”
“So, it got me thinking about having kids,” said Niles. “And I said this stupid thing, that I don’t even know if I mean, about how I was settled. I have you. I have the restaurant. I’m all locked down. And it’s… it’s just scary, that’s all. Not boring. Not even remotely boring.”
“We don’t have to do this here,” said Dahlia.
“We were just talking about that,” he said.
“Because you don’t want to have kids,” said Dahlia. “Because every time the subject of kids comes up, you get like this.”
Niles looked at the ceiling. He groaned again.
