Page 5 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

“Thanks.”

“Like, you have such a gentle touch. Does anyone ever tell you that?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you work out?”

I can feel Mack watching from across the room.

“A little.”

“We’re going to Sixth Street later,” the girl in the chair offers, tilting her head to try to look at me. I redirect her gently.

“Hold still for me.”

“You should come.”

“I’ve got an early morning.”

“Oh come on.” The one in the chair draws it out. “What time do you get off?”

“I close up at eight.”

“That’s so early, it’s perfect. We could grab food first?—”

“I’ve got a kid.” I say it the way I always say it. Easy, with no apology in it, because I’m not sorry. It’s the most efficient off-ramp I’ve found. Most people hear it and the energy shifts. “Early mornings pretty much indefinitely.”

A small pause.

“Oh,” the waiting one says. “That’s... sweet, actually.”

I focus on the butterfly and don’t say anything else, and after a minute the conversation moves on to something between the two of them, which is where it should be.

It takes me eighteen minutes. It’s clean work. I walk the taller one through aftercare, take payment, then watch them head out the door already on their phones.

I stand at the counter for a second after the bell stops ringing.

Then I look at Mack.

“You saw them coming from the window,” I say.

He doesn’t look up from the back piece he’s working on, an enormous geometric mandala that’s going to take three sessions and is already impressive. “I was busy.”

“You were standing at the window with a coffee.”

“Busy.”

I shake my head and go back to my station. The butterfly is still up on the light table. I slide it aside and open the sketchpad again, but the sketch I was working on earlier looks different now.

It’s still good, but I’m not in it anymore, the way you can be in something and then abruptly not be, and going back in just makes it look like effort.

I close it again.

My phone buzzes on the counter.

I already know before I look.

Call me when you have a minute.