“Yeah,” I managed to say. I might have been legally blind, but fuckinghello.
Max looked grateful when the shop phone rang and he could back out of the conversation before it got even more uncomfortable.
“How’d you two end up becoming friends?” Lee asked. “An antique dealer and a cop. There’s not much crossover.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Antiquing is a dangerous business.”
Lee laughed and put his hands in his trouser pockets. “You don’t say?”
“Lots of murder,” I continued.
Lee knitted his brows together.
“Seb,” Calvin murmured. He said to Lee, “We’re dating.”
“Oh.” Lee staggered a bit on the landing but made another decent recovery. “I remember a guy, back in the Army, who everyone called Heartless Winter. How’d he put it that one time?I. Don’t. Date,” Lee said in a deep voice obviously meant to be an imitation of Calvin.
“That was a long time ago,” Calvin answered. “People change.”
“Yes, they do,” Lee said with a smile. But his tone, though pleasant, had at least a dozen different layers to it. I didn’t even know where to start on deconstructing the meaning behind that statement.
Lee suddenly reached into his inner pocket, removed a business card, and offered it to Calvin. “I’ve got a class in thirty minutes,” he said. “But we should do lunch soon. Talk about old times.”
Ah yes, a not-so-subtle way of saying I wasn’t invited.
“I try to focus on the here and now,” Calvin answered, accepting the card. “But sure.”
Lee smiled again and glanced at me. “Pleasure to meet you, Sebastian.”
“Oh, uh. Yeah. You too,” I said, stumbling over myself after being a third wheel for most of the interaction.
Lee inclined his head and moved around us both. He paused at the bookshelf beside the door, studied the spines for a moment, then saw himself out.
“Wow,” I stated after a long pause.
Calvin grunted. “Sometimes New York is too small of a world.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just wasn’t… expecting that. Him.Lee.”
I touched his bare arm and gave it an affectionate rub.
Calvin kissed me. “I’m going to head home.”
Home. Hearing that was never going to get old.
“I’ll see you this evening,” I answered.
“We’ll christen the new bed.”
THE MEETINGwe were scheduled to have in bed was on my mind the rest of the day.
So the second the clock hit six, I all but shoved Max out the door, locked up, brought the gate down, and hoofed it down the block. Of course, first I had to make a deposit at the bank, grab a box of condoms from the drugstore that weren’t the glow-in-the-dark variety because I wasn’t okay with Calvin’s dick looking like a party favor, and then needed to pick up some takeout since I was certain he’d be too tired to shop and cook dinner again. Especially after we’d both been up and running since four in the morning.
Doing errands was the very essence of delayed gratification, I guess.
I grabbed the receipt from the ATM and turned to exit the after-hours lobby of National Trust. I held the slip of paper close and tried to decipher the tiny print as I shoved the door open with one hand. I felt and heard a loud thud and looked up, expecting a pigeon dive-bombing the glass.
