Page 16 of Smoke and Glitter

Good enough.

I pull it on and button enough of it to be decent before following the coffee.

Sam is standing at the kitchen counter with his back to me when I come in.

"Where's my shirt?"

"Kitchen."

I look around. "This is the kitchen."

He glances toward the counter behind me.

My shirt is on the floor beside it.

I look at the shirt, then at him. "Why is my shirt in the kitchen?"

There's a pause before he turns back to the coffee.

"You know why your shirt is in the kitchen."

Right.

I leave it where it is.

The floor creaks as I cross toward him, and when Sam looks over his shoulder, his eyes land on the shirt I'm wearing.

His hand pauses halfway to the mug. I look down at myself, then back at him. He turns to the coffee with more attention than coffee requires and slides a mug toward me.

The first sip is exactly right. Not just close enough, but exactly right. I look over the rim and find him watching me.

His mouth shifts slightly before he points toward one of the chairs at the small table.

"Sit."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not doing anything today."

"I have a call at eleven."

"You have a call at eleven you can take from that chair."

I pull the chair out. "That sounds suspiciously like doing something."

"Sit down, Autumn."

I sit.

Sam pulls a pan from the cabinet and starts breakfast while I work on my coffee. The first egg attaches itself to the pan almost immediately. He tries the spatula from three different angles before finally accepting that most of it isn't coming back.

I wait until he scrapes it into the trash. "Was that mine?"

"No, that was the practice egg."

The second one goes better.

While he cooks, he tells me about a fire inspector who once shut down the club over an extension cord. The story should take thirty seconds, but Sam keeps remembering pieces of it as he goes. Somewhere in the middle Bex enters the situation and starts arguing municipal code with a man holding a clipboard.