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“Boyfriends.”

I said it out loud to the coffee maker, just to hear how it echoed in my kitchen.

It echoed just fine.

It echoed great.

I was a forty-eight-year-old, grown-ass man, and I was calling out that word like a kid tooting a new trumpet.

Thursday. He was bringing Dosty Thursday. I was already planning it, the food I’d make, the paper bags I’d buy, whether I had time to build a dog bed before then and whether that was insane, deciding it wasn’t, deciding a man builds what he can for those he keeps. I’d fold the whole nervous, spidery, plastic-bag-fearing animal right into this house the way I’d folded his human into mine. My house would be a little less “too big” thanks to all of it. That was the plan. It was a good plan.

I picked up the plates. I wiped down the island, the big butcher-block one I’d put in myself the year I bought the place. I moved the salt and the pepper and the stack of mail I hadn’t dealt with, and that was when I saw it.

The business card.

It had been sitting on the island for days.

I’d forgotten setting it there, that heavy cream stock. I’d told myself I’d handle it. I’d walked past it every single day and let my eyes slide off it because I was busy, because I was happy, because I was a coward about exactly one thing and it turned out to be this.

MERIDIAN COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES.

Representing the ownership interests of your property. Let’s talk about your options.

The grin slid off my face like paint dripping down a wall as I picked the card up. It had the same blank back it had when Finn and I had looked at it in the booth, that blank back that expected a phone call. I’d told Finn I’d call. I’d told Finn, “I’ll call the owner, the actual owner, and find out what’s what,” and Finn had said, “Do that.”

I had not done that. I’d done everything except that. I’d bought an ice machine and grieved an ice machine and gone to a bathhouse and downloaded an app and gotten scored by strangers and fallen in love. The one thing, the one actual, load-bearing thing, the thing sitting right here on my own counter, I’d let slide. I’d looked at the single most important piece of paper in my life every morning, set my coffee down next to it, and walked away.

Because I didn’t want it to be real.

That’s the truth of it, the ugly truth, the one I’d never have admitted to Finn. As long as I didn’t call, it was just a card, a fishing letter. It was a “maybe.” As long as I didn’t call, I got to keep the version of my life where the bar was fine and the family was fine and the only thing on my mind was a dog bed and a man’s tea order.

I stood there a long time with the card in my hand, then I put down the dish towel, and I went to the office, and I opened my filing cabinet. It didn’t take long. B for building, or L for lease, and there it was, seven years of it. I flipped past the original lease and every renewal, momentarily reliving each year. Clipped to the front the way I clipped everything was the owner’s info in my own block handwriting.

Gerald Foss.

I’d shaken his hand seven years ago in an empty space that smelled like the dry cleaner it used to be. I told him I was going to make something good. He’d said he hoped so, that the neighborhood could use it. He’d been an easy landlord ever since. He fixed the roof when it went and never once gouged me on a renewal. Gerald was a decent man. I’d sent him a bottle of good wine every Christmas.

I sat down at my desk and called Gerald Foss. When the phone rang, I looked at the card in my other hand and hoped he wouldn’t pick up.

He picked up right away.

“Hello, Mark Delgado.” They were warm words, glad to hear from me, and that was the thing that told me everything before he’d said much at all. A man who’s about to give you good news doesn’t lead with a voice that gentle. “I wondered if I’d hear from you. I figured you’d have gotten the card.”

“Yeah, Gerald, I got the card. Been meaning to call. Things have been—” I looked around my office, at the whole overturned truck of my life. “Things have been busy. What’s, uh, what’s the story with the card?”

He was quiet a second. I heard him decide to just say it, the way you decide to pull a splinter fast.

“I’m selling the building, Mark.”

The office went dead quiet.

“Buyers approached me back in the spring,” he went on, gentle and steady, a man who’d clearly practiced this because he’d dreaded it, too. “Meridian’s been buying up that whole stretch of Seventh, block by block. They’ve got development money and came in with a number, and Mark, I’m going to be honest with you because you’ve been a good tenant, the number wasn’t one I could say no to. I’m sixty-eight. My knees are shot. Deena wants to see the grandkids before we’re both too old to fly. That number is the rest of my life not spent worrying about a roof.” He paused. “It’s already under contract. It’s done. I signed three weeks ago.”

“Okay,” I said. My voice came out level. I don’t know how. “Okay. And the lease? Our lease is up at the end of the year, so does the new owner—do they—”

“They’re not renewing, Mark.” He said it quick, so I wouldn’t have to finish the hope out loud. “I’m sorry. I asked. I want you to know that. I told them you’d been in there seven years and made it something special and they said—” He stopped, and I heard a deep apology in that stop. “They’ve got their own plans. It won’t be a bar. Your lease runs out December thirty-first, and that’s—that’s the end of the term. They take it from there.”

“Their own plans for the building?”