“I’m in a good mood. People are allowed to be in good moods.”
“You’re not in just a good mood. You’re in a state. You’ve been in a state since Saturday, and the state has been escalating. The current iteration of the state involves you smiling at condiments and cutting limes into wedges so thin they’re basically transparent.”
I looked down at the lime I’d just cut.
It was, in fact, transparent.
I could see the grain of the cutting board through it. It was not a functional garnish. It was a garnish that had been cut by a person whose fine motor control was being compromised by an ongoing internal highlight reel of Peter Loupier’s hands and voice and the specific sound he’d made in the dark.
“Something happened,” Jacks stated simply.
“Something happened.” I nodded.
“Peter.”
“Peter.”
Jacks set down the glass he was polishing and gave me his full attention. “Start talking.”
I blew out a sigh and ran a hand through my hair, more to buy time than anything. I’d used enough product to ensure my hair wouldn’t move until the next Ice Age.
“Saturday night, I came home from my shift early because the bar was dead. I texted him I was coming home. He texted back, ‘Door’s unlocked,’ whichwas weird. Peter lockseverything. Jacks, I walked in and he was—”
I stopped, quickly considered how much detail the moment required, then decided on the minimum viable disclosure.
“He was . . . waiting for me,” I said. “On the couch. And he had, well, prepared.”
“Prepared?”
“Preparedhimself, you know, for my arrival, in a way that was very clear about his intentions.”
Jacks studied me for a moment, sifting through the parts I wasn’t saying.
“Good for him,” Jacks said.
“Good for him?” I sputtered. “I tell you he was lying on the couch naked when I got home, and all you say is, ‘Good for him’?”
“You didn’t say he was naked,” Jacks said, his mouth quirking into a shit-eating grin.
“He was . . . shit . . . fuck off,” I snapped. “Jacks, the man folded his boxers before putting them on the chair. He folded them into a neat square with aligned edges while preparing to seduce me. He made his clothes into a display. Who does that?”
“Rewind. He was naked. We established this.” Jacks held up a palm. “The seduction is new.”
“Again, fuck off, Jacks.”
“What? He could’ve been waiting for his perfectlyfolded boxers to dry or something. Maybe he was out of clothes or they were in the washing machine. Ever think of that?” He chuckled and crossed his arms.
“God, I hate you. Can we please focus on the issue at hand?”
“No, you don’t. And yes, focusing on the issue, I would say it’s all very Peter.”
“It’s the most Peter thing that has ever happened. It almost killed me. I’m going to think about the folding for the rest of my life. A guy’s not supposed to get hard thinking about folding laundry, Jacks. It’s not natural.”
He snorted again.
“And then Sunday morning he offered me David’s mug,the blue one, the one nobody touches. He said, ‘Use the blue one,’ so casually I almost collapsed. I poured his coffee in it and gave it back to him, and told him that I didn’t need David’s mug because he’d already made room for me. That’s when he held the mug with both hands and his voice cracked. We drank coffee in the kitchen, and he wrote a Post-it that said, ‘The mug stays with me, but you stay, too,’ and I—”
My voice did a thing, a specific, unhelpful thing.
