“So,” I said.
“So.”
“I couldn’t make drinks today. I put simple syrup in someone’s beer. Jacks told every single person at the bar that you kissed me, which I think violates some kind of HR code, but I can’t identify which one.”
“How did they take it?”
“Rod said, ‘Good,’ and went back to the kitchen. Finn said, ‘About time.’ Mark said it explained the simple syrup. Mia is expecting a full report tomorrow and has threatened to debone me if I’m late filing that report.”
“Deboning. That’s harsh.”
I nodded. “That’s Mia.”
“And Dante?”
“Dante told me I have seven smiles. He said the one I wore all day was the one he’s only seen once before, at the adoption event when you told the family they could take the mutt home.”
Peter looked down at his tea and was quiet for a moment. I could see him turning Dante’s observation over, examining it, placing it alongside his own understanding of the evening and the morning and the space between them.
“Seven smiles?” he asked.
“Apparently.”
“Which one am I seeing now?”
I hadn’t realized I was smiling, but I was.
It was the one Dante had identified, the one that had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the man sitting four feet away from me, holding a mug of tea he wasn’t drinking.
“Yours,” I said.
Peter set down his mug, carefully, the way he set down everything.
“Come here,” he said.
I slid off the counter, crossed the kitchen, and stood in front of him, close enough to feel the warmth of him, close enough to see the stove light reflecting in his glasses and the steadiness of his face and the small, almost imperceptible way his breathing changed when I was near.
“I know how to do most things,” he began. “I know how to perform surgery and organize a whiteboard and write about a man I loved who died, but I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know the protocol for falling for someone while you’re still grieving someone else. I don’t have a system for it, and I can’t put it on the whiteboard, and I need you to know that going in.”
“I don’t need a system, Peter.”
“But I might. I might need a system, at least at first, because systems are how I function, and I’d rather be honest about that than pretend I’m someone who can do this without structure.”
“Then we’ll build a system. We keep using Post-it notes and stove lights and 3 a.m. kitchens and whatever else you need. We’ll build it together.”
He stared at me.
Behind the glasses, his eyes were the most open I’d ever seen them. Every wall was lowered, every door unlocked, the full interior of Peter Loupier visible in the warm kitchen light.
“Post-it notes and stove lights,” he repeated.
“And blankets, folded in thirds, like a psychopath.”
“Always in thirds.”
“Even though it’s wrong.”
“It’s not wrong. It’s precise.”
