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"Tabbi doesn't ask permission to tell you the truth. She just picks a moment when your guard is down." Hakeem took a breath. "She told me I'm wasting myself at the bar. That The Last Cue is a hiding place, not a career. That I should stop rehearsing the rejection and just submit the tape."

Antonio was quiet for a second. "She's not wrong."

"I am aware that she's not wrong. That is the problem."

Hakeem looked at the glass in his hand. Then he lifted his glass with a mirthless expression and said, "Arriba, abajo, al centro, y pa' dentro," and drank.

Antonio paused with his own glass halfway to his mouth. A shift, possibly surprise, slowly spread across his face. It was a door opening half an inch that Hakeem hadn't seen before.

"Where did you learn that?" Antonio asked.

"My father. He learned it from his father. Who probably learned it at a table significantly louder than this one."

Antonio's mouth curved. "Morales."

Hakeem looked at him. "What about it?"

"I wondered."

"You wondered if I was Latino?"

"It was more of an educated guess."

"An educated guess." Hakeem shook his head and laughed lightly. "You could have just asked."

"I don't ask things I can learn by paying attention."

"That is both flattering and deeply unsettling." Hakeem took another sip. "My dad's Mexican, and my mom is Black."

Antonio tilted his glass once, a small acknowledging motion. "How's your Spanish?"

Hakeem let out a sound that was half laugh, half resignation. "My dad made sure I could do three things in Spanish: curse, show respect, and make a toast. Everything in between, I fake with confidence and good pronunciation."

"That explains the toast."

"It explains most of my personality."

Antonio's laugh faded, but the warmth of it stayed in the room like a handprint on glass. He tilted his glass toward Hakeem in acknowledgment.

"You should enjoy that while you can," he said.

"Enjoy what? Whiskey?"

"Toasts. Being twenty-six. The whole thing." Antonio took a sip and waved his hand. "Twenty-seven changes things."

The sentence arrived wearing casual clothes but carrying a knife. Hakeem looked at him.

"You keep saying things like that."

"Like what?"

"Like twenty-seven is a cliff I'm walking toward."

Antonio's expression didn't shift. "Maybe I just think milestones are worth noting."

"That's not what you sound like when you say it."

"What do I sound like?"