Page 52 of Keep

“Details.”

The line went dead. Hank set the phone on the nightstand and lay back. The hotel room hummed with air conditioning and silence.

Sunday. Luncheon. Monday. Flight home.

He could manage that.

CHAPTER 8

The apartment smelled like garlic.

Ricky stood at the stove with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb, phone propped against the backsplash, George’s voice memo playing on a loop. “Low heat. Don’t rush the onions. If they stick, add a little wine—not too much. You’re cooking, not drinking.”

“He says not too much wine,” Ricky said, pouring liberally.

Chad leaned against the counter with his own glass. He held up a box of Mueller’s spaghetti. “If George gave you a whole tutorial, why did you ask me to help?”

“I can’t do everything. And I need you to be here for moral support. There’s a difference.” Ricky adjusted the flame, squinting at the pan like it owed him money. “He sent home the sausage, too. Spicy Italian. He bought a boatload of it—had plans for some food-truck situation that never happened. Said he couldn’t just have Italian sausage on the menu, though Mikey would approve.”

“Mikey still makes people weep at the occasional Tuesday Tunes. He belted out Memory from Cats last month, and one guy put down his drink and genuflected.”

“The man has a gift.” Ricky poked at the onions with a wooden spoon. “George said to cut these smaller. I cut them smaller. They still look like sad little onion chunks.”

“That’s because you cut them into rectangles. Onions aren’t bricks.”

“Don’t critique my knife work. I’m following instructions.” Ricky gestured at the phone. “Add the garlic when the onions go translucent,” George’s voice said again. “See? I’m waiting. I have patience.”

“You’ve had wine. I don’t believe you.”

It was rare that both of them had the same night off—Sunday nights were usually busy for BJ’s and David’s alike. But Tim had overscheduled and sent Chad home, and a plumbing snafu had closed David’s early. So, they found themselves in the apartment at eight o’clock with nothing to do, which felt almost unnatural.

The apartment showed its usual signs of shared habitation—Ricky’s collection of moisturizers colonizing the bathroom shelf, Chad’s brushes soaking in a jar by the window, a stack of art history textbooks serving as a side table because the actual side table had been claimed by Ricky’s speaker and three half-empty water bottles. The couch had a permanent Ricky-shaped indentation on the left side. Chad’s easel stood folded against the far wall, a drop cloth underneath it spotted with cadmium yellow and phthalo blue.

Home, such as it was.

Ricky’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. He smiled softly—a recalibration that was nothing like his usual grin.

Chad noticed. Three years of living with someone taught you their frequencies. This was a new one.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

“I don’t have faces. I have moods. They’re curated.”

“Who’s texting you?”

Ricky hesitated. Which was also wrong. Ricky didn’t hesitate. Ricky filled silences the way water filled cracks—instantly, completely, and often with dramatic overflow.

“Wilson,” he said.

Chad watched the onions starting to go clear at the edges. “Wilson Alford-Keegan? Demarco and Jack’s kid?”

“The very same.”

“What’s he want?”