He sighed, loudly.
“What the hell do I know?” he said finally. “Mason and Parker both seem happy.”
“They are happy,” I confirmed. I should know, living at the inn. Although Parker spent less time here now that he was with Delaney, and the renovations were almost done.
Cole stood and headed to the coffee pot, pouring it. Black. Like his soul.
I chuckled.
“What?” he demanded, his sport coat and crisp shirt so very… Cole.
“I was just thinking your coffee is black like your soul.”
“Thanks.”
Chuckling, I tried again. “Or what you want everyone around you to believe, anyway. Though for the life of me, I don’t know why. Let other people see the fun Cole who would give his life for his friend.”
Literally. Not figuratively. I should know.
“I’m good.”
Biting back a smile, I sipped my coffee, thinking about… what else? Mae. And lunch. What she would say. What I would say.
“I’m not trying to be an asshole about the whole Mae thing,” he said, quite unexpectedly.
“No? Could have fooled me.”
“You’re looking at me like I said Julius Caesar destroyed the Library of Alexandria.”
Cole’s lips hinted at a smile, but then apparently changed their mind.
“My parents were happy.”
He said it so quietly, I almost didn’t hear him. Cole stared into his coffee mug.
“Growing up, I can remember murmured voices when I went to bed. They talked, went to dinner, took me to the park. I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but sometime between middle school and when I went to college, it just… eroded. They don’t sleep in the same room. I don’t even think they like each other.” He looked up. “The idea of a bachelor pact, for me, was a reminder not to repeat their mistake.”
I was pretty sure Cole had just used up his monthly allotment of words. At least, ones on a serious topic, about himself.
“I get it. Look at mine. They’re a total shitshow. I agreed, we all did, for a reason. Our own reasons. But then we grew up.” I grinned. “Some of us more recently. And took the blinders off to see… some relationships work. Some marriages work.”
“And you think you and Mae would be one of them?”
I was about to say “yes” but paused. I would love that woman until the day I died. And would try like hell to make her happy. But could she be? Living here?
“What the hell do I know?” I echoed his earlier question.
“Apparently not who destroyed the Library of Alexandria.”
“It wasn’t Julius Caesar.” But now I doubted my memory. “Right?”
“Right. It’s a common misconception. The most widely believed cause was the destruction of the Serapeum and the actions of Coptic Christian Archbishop Theophilus.”
Cole’s master’s thesis was on the subject, so I knew way more than I wanted to about the topic. But before he began nerding out on me, I stopped him.
“Appreciate the history lesson, but I don’t have learning about Archbishop Theophilus on my to-do list today.”
“No?”
