“Poor decision,making,” Felix said.
“Romantic,” Shay said.
He wasn’t looking at Felix when he said it.
Felix, absolutely, was looking at him.
It was subtle. It always was, with him. But now that the word had been said in an apartment not far from here, now that the line between them wasn’t denial but timing, it was impossible not to see it.
Henry saw it.
Of course he did.
He always did.
The thing about being on the other side of your own hard story was that you started recognizing the beats in other people’s.
There had been a time when I couldn’t look at Henry at this table without feeling like I was standing in a miracle I hadn’t earned yet. Now it only hit me once or twice during dinner, in manageable waves.
Once when he refilled my glass without looking, because he knew how much was left.
Once when his knee found mine under the table, automatically, like my leg was where it was supposed to be.
Tonight, there was a new beat.
Shay reached for the bread.
Under the table, I saw Felix move.
Not much. Just a shift of his hand, the small adjustment of someone whose brain has made a decision and sent it to the body before the system has time to veto it.
His fingers slid sideways across the tablecloth.
Found Shay’s.
Closed.
It wasn’t dramatic. No interlaced fingers, no theatrical squeeze. Just his hand over Shay’s , palm to back, warm, deliberate, unmistakable.
Shay went very still.
Not the frozen kind of still. Theohkind.
Above the table, he kept talking.
“,so Reeves is in the line again,” he said, with only the tiniest hitch, “and the guy in the headset is like, ‘Didn’t you just,’ and Reeves says, ‘No,’ like a criminal.”
Henry’s eyes flicked up.
He followed the line of Felix’s arm. The angle of Shay’s shoulder. The very small motion of Shay’s thumb, turning under the table like he was testing whether this was real.
Felix didn’t look down.
He was looking at me.
“Drayton,” he said, perfectly calm, in the middle of his boyfriend holding his hand under my table. “You’d have done the same thing.”
“I would absolutely have driven around for more sauce,” I said. “I would also have lied about it.”
