Page 24 of Spiced!

By 7 p.m., I was seated in the same booth I’d sat in the first time I visited Barbacks. I wore the same dark henley, which was clean and the correct choice and had nothing to do with anything else, certainly not the compliment a certain dancer may have given it the first time I was there.

Jacks set a whiskey in front of me without being asked.

“You came back,” he said.

“It’s a good bar,” I said.

“Yep.” He nodded once and moved off.

I sat with my tumbler of amber goodness and watched the room filling around me.

I was on my second whiskey when the music shifted and Adrian stepped onto the bar.

I looked at my glass.

Then at the bar.

Then at my glass again.

All right, I thought. There it is. There he is.

Adrian moved like someone who had chosen dance as his love language years earlier and had never once looked back. Most go-go performers I’d seen writhed and wiggled with little rhyme or reason. Adrian flowed with the music, his body married to the beat and harmonies. His movements were hypnotic, like watching water gliding across pebbles and then down in a torrent until the waterfall filled the pool below. Beautiful didn’t come close to describing it.

Maybe, just maybe, the second whiskey was thinking for me.

I would never admit that, though.

As Adrian’s dance continued, the room reorganized itself around his performance the way rooms did when someone was doing the exact thing they were built for. I watched—my attention complete—because that was just how I watched things that interested me. Whether or not I was ready to admit it, Adrian interested me very much.

Four minutes into the set, Jacks appeared at my elbow.

“Message for you, Brendan.”

I startled at his voice, sure, but more from him remembering my name. “Sorry? What?”

Jacks looked like a man who had been handed a task he hadn’t applied for. “I have a message from Adrian. He says, and I’m quoting, ‘Tell the vet my dog is going to be fine and that he likes his name.’”

I couldn’t hold back a snort.

Jacks cocked his head, which reminded me of Mofongo minus the elephant ears, which made me snort again.

I glanced toward the bar, where Adrian was very much not looking at me, which meant he very much was.

“Tell him I appreciate the update,” I said. “Purely from a medical standpoint, of course.”

Jacks’s brow knitted for a beat, then he wound his way through the crowd, back across the bar, and delivered the message during a turn in Adrian’s set. The sexy dancer leaned down and bared far more of his ass to the crowd than he likely intended. They roared at the display.

Before the music resumed, Jacks returned to my booth.

“He says, ‘Tell the vet that Mofongo learned to sit on command this week and is thriving.’”

“Tell him that’s excellent progress for eight weeks, especially since he’s only had the dog a few days. Oh, and tell him I call BS.”

Jacks grinned. “BS. Got it. I can definitely call BS on Adrian.”

He went.

A moment later, he came back.