Page 135 of The Bartender Special

Was it Benny’s fault if Jack had started feeling more?

No.

No. It was Jack’s.

This feeling—this epiphany—stayed with Jack throughout the day.

From when Benny woke, through breakfast, to meeting up with Ethan to get ready for the parade, and up to Callum and Dewey helping him hook up their float. He smiled when he needed, he kept quiet when he could.

The entire time he felt like an idiot.

An idiot who could have asked at any time what they were but instead never had.

Now?

Now wasn’t the time.

Though, Benny must have realized something was wrong. During the lull between everyone getting ready for the parade procession to start, Benny lowered his voice and asked if he was okay.

Jack had nodded, their Jaws-themed float as their backdrop making the whole situation seem more ridiculous.

“You seem kind of quiet, is all,” Benny added. “I thought you'd at least comment on the Movers and Shakers' float.” He nodded to the float directly in front of them.

The Movers and Shakers was a historical club that was big on reenactments. They'd taken that kink and created a hodgepodge of weird decisions for their float. For some reason they'd tried to make a miniature Lincoln Monument by putting papier-mâché around a lawn chair and then had fake-Lincoln holding stuffed dolphins and squids.

Jack definitely had thoughts about the float. Same as the local accounting and tax firm's trying to do a twist on the Tom Hank’s movie Splash, but instead of having the mermaid part emphasized, they’d just put a lot of Tom Hanks cutouts among fake carboard waves.

He'd almost been jolted out of his pissy mood long enough to ask for a selfie with the absolute shit show that the Rotary Club put up. They must have run out of time or funds—or just the will to care. All they had done was take their winter-themed float that they parked outside of the grocery store the week before Christmas and added rolls of blue streamers around their snowflakes while their painted paper fish were wrapped around their still-erect fake fir trees.

Of course Jack had wanted to talk about it all, even the good floats he'd seen when they were walking up, but there was a stone that had formed in his stomach after reading Benny's blog post.

It was weighing all of his words down.

Now it took everything Jack had to roll it away enough to give the most basic responses. Which, apparently, he wasn’t doing a good job of.

“I'm a bit tired after last night is all,” he finally said, which wasn’t entirely untrue. “I think I talked to more people at the party than I have all year.”

Benny searched his expression.

Jack wasn’t sure what he found.

Now he realized that maybe he’d never been able to actually read Benny. Maybe it had been his ego instead. Even wearing his billowing pirate’s shirt and eyepatch, Jack couldn’t see the humor anymore.

Not around Marcus Robertson.

It made the fact that Jack was the one lying across the front of Roger’s boat, wearing a merman’s fin hanging low on his hips and a coconut bikini top, grate against his nerves more than it would have otherwise.

Jack was grateful when a bell sounded somewhere up the street.

Dixon was fast. He hustled over, matching coconut bra clacking as he made it to the front of the boat.

“Watch out, Benny,” he yelled out. “Merman numero uno is ready to shine!”

Benny gave Jack one more look before moving out of the way. He and Santana took their stations at either side of the middle and adjusted their respective pirate outfits. Dixon laid out like he and Jack were supposed to and pulled his fin down over his bare feet.

Dewey and several volunteer bar patrons hurried to their places next to the boat. Most wore shirts with the bar's logo on them, and all had a pint glass in one hand and their cell phones out in the other. Callum made a whooping noise from the rolled down driver's side window of Jack's truck in front.

Jack looked back at Benny one more time. He was adjusting the stuffed parrot on his shoulder and holding the plastic sword Justus had loaned him in his other hand. Santana said something he didn't catch and Benny laughed.