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“Come on,” I said, holding my hand out to him and nudging my head toward the ledge. “What?” I asked in mock offense when he met my outstretched fingers with a raised brow.
“I don’t need my hand held,” he said sharply, anxiously spinning the wedding band I hadn’t noticed before. I wondered how many people in his life knew he had a tell. Probably not many, if any. To the people downstairs he wasn’t even a real person.
“I know,” I said, because I doubted he would ever admit to needing help. I’d come looking for commonality and was finding it in spades. “But I do.” Again, a truth I hadn’t planned on spilling. Franky paused in the nervous rotating of his ring but said nothing.
“Things are less scary when holding hands,” I said, wiggling my fingers. Franky shot me a skeptical look.
“All the iconic sad movies have hand holding scenes,” I went on to explain. “Holding a dying loved one’s hands as they transition. Holding a woman’s hand as she gives birth to a twenty-pound baby,” I exaggerated. “It’s been proven by science.”
“Science?” he asked without feeling.
“Science,” I confirmed gravely.
Footsteps ascending the stairs on the other side of the door snagged our attention, and Franky backed up in time to miss the door hitting him in the face. The beer bottle holding it open rolled, bumping up against the toe of my shoe, and the man standing in the doorway reared away at seeing me there.
He took in my server’s uniform and dismissed me. Franky appeared from behind the door, and even I shrank away from his murderous glare.
“Frank—”
“What can I do for you, Robert?” Franky asked curtly.
Robert’s gaze pinged between me and Franky. “Is this server bothering you?” he asked with a hint of disdain.
“His name is Mr. Bear,” Franky corrected, and I groaned inwardly. I’d have decked him if it hadn’t amused me a little to see an imposing man with a bad attitude sayMr. Bearwith a straight face. “And someone is bothering me at the moment, but it isn’t him.”
Robert either sucked at reading the room—in our case the roof—or he was used to Franky’s hostility because he continued as if he hadn’t heard him. “You’re needed downstairs,” he said, suffering Franky’s staredown like a champ.
“I’ll be right there,” Franky gritted out. Robert offered a stiff nod before striding off. I caught the door and refixed the bottle.
“You’re mean,” I said, low enough to not travel through the cracked door and down the stairwell.
“Duly noted,” Franky said. He exhaled at the gloomy night sky. “This place brings out the worst in me.”
“What brings out the best in you?” I asked, earning myself a sardonic chuckle.
“When I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”
“So walk away from it,” I said, like it was the simplest thing to do. “If it makes you miserable, then walk away.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“People depend on me,” he said, and I remembered the wedding band. He had a family to take care of.
“Well, maybe you can take some time off to figure out what makes you happy, then work toward figuring out how to support your family by doing whatever that is.”
“Maybe,” he said, but I got the impression he was humoring me. He felt trapped. I knew because caged men recognized other caged men, even if our prisons were of a different kind.
Franky entered the stairwell, gesturing for me to hold the door so I didn’t get locked out when the bottle rolled again. I listened as he descended, thinking of something to do or say to prolong this moment, but there was nothing. Maybe a moment was all it was meant to be.
I peered toward the edge of the roof, remembering why we had been up there in the first place. A wave of sadness hit me as one thought filtered through my brain.
He left before getting a chance to be brave.
Chapter 2
Leland
