Page 67 of A Taste of Vanilla

And then I set the empty glass down and look between them. “There. Hydrated. Aware. Furious. Still interested.”

The man’s eyes darken.

Oliver points to him. “Do not look like that in my bar.”

He looks away, but not fast enough. My pulse kicks.

I grab my bag from the stool and pull the strap over my shoulder. My cardigan slips, and I adjust it because my hands need something to do besides touch the man in front of me. That seems like a choice best saved for when we’re in private.

Oliver walks me to the side door that leads into the alley, the man right behind us. “Are you parked out back?” he asks.

I chuckle. “Oh. Funny story. I live upstairs.”

He looks a little unsure. “Temporary place after breaking up with my ex,” I explain.

The alley smells like rain, old brick, and sugar. The city hums around us. Baltimore at night, loud and tired and familiar.

Oliver stops below the exit sign and looks at me one last time. “Text me when you’re upstairs.”

“I live right here.”

“I’m aware of geography.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Text me.”

I sigh. “Fine.”

His gaze softens in a way almost no one else would ever notice, and he looks over my shoulder at the man I’m about to sleep with. “I know where she lives,” he says.

The man’s voice is steady. “So do I.”

Oliver’s face goes flat, and I bite back a laugh.

“Because she lives above the bar,” he adds.

“Don’t get cute,” Oliver mutters.

“I’m not.”

“He’s really not,” I say. “That was tragically literal.”

Oliver opens the side door wider. Then, more quietly, he says to me, “You are not too much because he was too little.”

I freeze, the words sliding right under my ribs and staying there.

For a second, I can’t speak.

Oliver looks uncomfortable immediately, like sincerity escaped and he wants to shove it back in a drawer.

So I do not make it worse by crying.

I nod. “Thank you.”

He closes the door.

For a moment, we stand in the damp heat and the yellow of the security light without touching. The back of Bitter Bloom is a few feet away. The keys are in my bag; my heart is in my throat.