Page 67 of Spiced!

“Benji—”

“You totally got laid.” He said it the way he said things when he wasn’t taking alternate submissions. “I know your face in every configuration, and that is the ‘I got laid’ configuration. It’s been a long time, but I remember it. It’s very . . . expressive.”

“My face is not a configuration.”

“It is. It’s the one where you’re loose in the shoulders, and you keep almost-smiling at nothing, and your whole body has the energy of someone who has recently been—”

“Benji.”

He held up both hands. “I’m just describing what I observe.”

Jacks, who had been listening to all of this from three feet away with the focused attention he usually reserved for sports scores, put down the glass he was polishing and said, in the earnest, considered tone he brought to most things, “I don’t know. I think he just got a really good kiss, maybe with lots of tongue, and maybe a little third base feel. Third base is cool. It’s a triple, after all.”

Benji and I both turned toward him, both of our mouths hanging open.

“What?” he said. “He looks happy, not smug. Smug is ‘got laid.’ Happy is ‘something good happened,’ and he’s still thinking about it.” He picked up his glass again. “That’s a kiss face. Or maybe a hug. A really good hug. Maybe a finger—”

“Jacks!” Benji and I said in unison.

Finn’s laugher bounced around the bar, as though some drunk leprechaun had just found his pot of gold.

Benji gathered himself and said to Jacks, “How are you like this?”

“Like what?” Jacks asked, perplexity marring his adorable face.

“Like a golden retriever who just took a philosophy class.”

Jacks considered this. “Was that a compliment?”

“It was,” I said, silencing whatever Benji might’ve said. “It definitely was.”

“So which is it?” Benji said, turning back to me. “Jacks’s version or my version?”

“Neither,” I said. “Can we not do this?”

“We cannot not do this, Adrian Voss,” Benji said. “This is what we do. This is our function as a bar family. We notice things, and we interrogate them lovingly and with the vigor of an old British lady in a cozy mystery, you know, the one with a cat who might smoke cigars filled with pot when no one’s looking.”

“Definitely with cats,” Finn finally contributed.

“Lots of cats,” Jacks agreed, curls bobbing with his head.

I sighed. “There’s nothing to interrogate.”

“You’ve been humming since you walked in. Adrian, you don’t hum. In two years, I have never once heard you hum. You sing—on the bar, for money, when the song earns it. You even sing in the car when you think I can’t hear you. You do not hum.”

I had been humming. I knew I had been humming. I hadn’t realized anyone else knew I had been humming.

“Maybe I’m branching out,” I said. “Call it professional growth. Make it a new revenue stream for the bar. Humming for dollars. Mark will love it.”

“A humming revenue stream,” Jacks repeated, delighted, and slipped one glass in a slot and began polishing another. “I’d subscribe.”

“Professional growth,” Benji spat. “You don’t hum during warmup like a man whose brain is somewhere very pleasant. And yet—here we are.”

“Or whose ass is recovering from a solid pounding,” Finn contributed again.

“My brain is here,” I said. “And my ass has nothing to recover from, thank you very much.”

“Your brain is with the vet,” Benji said. “Which is where your ass likely was.”