Page 13 of Spiced!

“Fine. I’ll play nice. It’s still shocking. That guy is more introverted than anyone I’ve ever known.” He shrugged with his bushy brows. “So, what was it like, this bar you went to?”

I thought about warm walls and a crowd that knew each other and a room that understood what it was. I thought about a ridiculously sexy, muscled, sweaty man with rich-colored skin and floppy black hair moving on a bar counter like some Greek statue made in Puerto Rico then brought to life and given a Speedo.

And I smiled.

“Good,” I said. “It was good. Definitely worth the trip.”

Alan’s brows bunched, forming one massive caterpillar. He stared so long, mid-chew, that I wondered if he’d flipped a breaker in that thick head of his.

“You gonna go back?” he asked, slowly resuming his chew.

“Maybe,” I said. “Though I’ve never loved bars.”

“Maybe, huh,” he repeated, in the tone of someone writing something down internally.

“It was a good bar, has this sports theme that doesn’t feel like a gay bar. They don’t allow smoking inside, so I didn’t leave wanting to burn my clothes. Plus, the guys who work there are really nice,” I said. “Peter has good taste.”

“Just nice?” His lips curled.

“Fine. They’re hot. Seriously, like ridiculously hot.”

“There he is! My bro! I knew he was still in there somewhere.” Alan took another bite, his grin turning toothy and disgustingly tuna salad covered. “So, let’s recap. Doctor No-Personality-Peter recommended a bar, and you went, and it was good, and maybe you’ll go back.”

“That’s the whole story,” I said.

Alan nodded slowly and said nothing, which was more unsettling than if he’d said something, because Alan’s silences meant he had arrived at a conclusion he was choosing to keep to himself. Alan keeping things to himself was a temporary condition at best. I had long ago diagnosed him with a chronic case of diarrhea of the mouth. It might’ve been the most accurate diagnosis I’d ever made.

“Marcus said a capybara got out,” Alan said, suddenly shifting subjects.

“In the waiting room.”

“How big.”

“Ninety pounds.”

Alan whistled. “Marcus was there for that? Isn’t he normally the one running from the room, screaming like a—”

“He was brave,” I said, cutting off whatever insult he was about to hurl.

He crumpled his wrapper, did a basketball free-throw shot into in the trash, and stood. “Eat dinner tonight, a real one. Maybe even use a table.”

“I always eat dinner.”

“Eating vending machine chips at your desk doesn’t count. Don’t make me report to Mom. She’ll send the family mafia.”

“You’ll be banned from this office if you do.”

He snorted. “Love ya, bro. Text me.”

Then he vanished through the doorway. I listened to him stop at Marcus’s desk on the way out and say something that made Marcus laugh, which Marcus almost never did during office hours. Then I heard the front door open and close.

I ate the rest of my sandwich and went back to my charts.

The afternoon ran in the same direction the morning had established—one small, furry or feathered universe after another, each patient presenting its own world of concerns. Animals and their people moved through my exam rooms with their own needs and their ways of explaining those needs. I stood in the middle of it all doing the thing I had decided at eleven years old was the thing, healing and helping and hoping I could make each patient’s tail wag a little more.

At ten minutes to six, as Diane was shutting down her workstation, and Marcus was aligning everything on the front desk to his satisfaction, the front door opened.

“We’re just closing,” I heard Marcus say, in the pleasant but firm tone he used for walk-ins after five-thirty.