Page 3 of A Taste of Vanilla

Oliver’s expression goes flat.

Grant’s name has that effect now. Like it enters the room and takes all the air out.

Oliver turns, grabs a basket of fries from the pass window, and sets them in front of me. “I’m not discussing the pantry preferences of the human boat shoe.”

I frown. “He didn’t wear boat shoes.”

“He wore boat shoe energy. That counts.”

He’s got a point. Grant Whitaker had been handsome in a very specific way. An expensive haircut. Good teeth and a good family. Good manners as long as there was an audience. He looked like he belonged leaning against a marble kitchen island in a white linen shirt while telling someone named Tinsley about interest rates.

He had not, however, looked like the kind of man who would cheat on me with his secretary. In hindsight, that was probably because I had been looking at him wrong.

Cheaters do not walk around with warning labels. They have nice watches and remember your mother’s birthday. They kiss your forehead at charity dinners and say things like, “You’re so much, Hals,” but yet somehow they make it sound affectionate until one day you realize they had been filing complaints in the shape of compliments for years.

I drag a fry through ketchup and stare at it. “Do you think some women are easier to love?”

Oliver stops moving. Not dramatically. Oliver never does much dramatically, unless you count the way he once unplugged his own jukebox because someone played country music twice in a row.

But he stops wiping the bar. Stops reaching for the next glass. Stops pretending this conversation is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

“No,” he says.

I look up. “That was fast.”

“It was a stupid question.” Okay, never mind.

I smile, but it feels like a stab. “You always say that when I ask something sad.”

“Because you disguise sad things as stupid questions.”

“That feels like a criticism of my creative process.”

“It is.”

I look down at my fry, watching it go limp between myfingers. Relatable.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he grunts.

“Maybe I was too much.”

Oliver’s jaw tightens.

The bar moves around us. Glasses clink, someone laughs loudly near the dartboard, and a song I vaguely recognize hums over the speakers, not emo enough for my current state but not country, which means Oliver valued our lives just a little.

In the back corner, three Baltimore Vipers players occupy a high-top table like large, athletic golden retrievers who have been given money and no instructions. They’d come in after a game, still damp-haired and loud, wearing simple clothes that have small Viper logos on them. Small enough that if someone were to think they know them, it would give them away, yet not big enough to appear vain. Each one has an air of smug exhaustion of men who get paid obscene amounts of money to hit things with sticks.

Baltimore loves the Vipers.

Oliver hates this.

Not because they’re rude. They’re actually really great tippers, and only one of them has broken a glass so far, which, by Saints & Sinners standards, practically qualifies them for sainthood.

Oliver simply does not like sports. Any sport. He considers the citywide enthusiasm for the Cobras and Vipers a personal inconvenience.

One of the players calls from the corner, “Hey Oliver, can you put the highlights on?”