Page 44 of Spiced!

I spun the can back toward Brendan, put my face back on, and gave him the grin that had paid my rent for six years.

“Anyway,” I said. “Sorry, I get invested. I once cried at a documentary about a penguin who lost his little penguin family. It was a cartoon one, Brendan. It was animated grief. I have no defenses.”

“I . . .” He seemed to struggle with how to respond. “We do what we can. Healing the patient is usually the greatest comfort we can offer.”

I wasn’t sure I liked that answer, but I was sitting in a bar in my underwear. I wasn’t about to argue.

“Then you’ve got to figure it out, right?” I said. “She deserves to feel okay again.”

He looked at me across the table with an expression I couldn’t fully name. I’m not even sure he could give it a name. After a moment, he nodded slowly and said, “That’s the plan.”

“Good.” And then, again for no explicable reason, I added, “I’d like to meet her sometime.”

The smile that bloomed on Brendan’s lips nearly stole my breath. “I think she’d like that.”

We sat for a minute in the comfortable way of people who had run out of words and didn’t feel the need to fill the space. Outside, the Saturday Ybor crowd was starting to gather and wander and make their way inside one bar or restaurant or another. Inside, Barbacks was waking up around us. Jacks and Benji stood behind the bar, the music thrummed its warm-up cycle, and Finn moved throughout the dining area with purpose, setting up tables and greeting the early arrivals.

“I should get ready,” I said.

“I know.”

But I didn’t move right away. Instead, I looked at him across the table, at the easy way Brendan occupied the booth, at the glass of whiskey he’d been nursing for an hour, and at the jacket folded beside him like he was planning to stay.

“You came early,” I said.

“I did.”

“You could’ve texted.”

“I could’ve,” he agreed, then picked up his water. “This was better.”

I took my Fanta and slid out of the booth. I was three steps away when he said, “Adrian.”

I turned.

“The worm conversation isn’t finished.”

“It really isn’t,” I said, tossing him a wink.

He took a sip and looked at the room with that steady, unhurried attention of his, and I went to finish getting ready.

My first set started at nine. As I stepped onto the bar, the energy shifted, the Saturday night becoming what Saturday nights were supposed to be.

I ran my scan of the room during the second song.

Brendan was still in his booth.

He had a new whiskey now. Jacks had brought it at some point, probably without being asked, and he was watching me dance.

The room was warm and full and giving me everything it had.

So I gave it everything back.

Chapter 11

Brendan

Puck was in his hammock when I got up, which was unusual enough to be noteworthy. Most mornings, he was either on my face or conducting a search of the bathroom or already halfway into some household object he had no business being inside. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watched him sleep, and decided not to question it.