ahora sí

Richie had lost all track of time once he got back to the office. It was like once he shut the door, he was sucked into another dimension. If only it had been a better one. He was trying to get as much of a grasp on the shitshow in front of him as he could before Mikey came crashing back in and tried to explain it all away the way that he always did.

There was a knock on the door and Richie looked back over his shoulder, confused as to who it might be. It definitely wasn’t Mikey—he wouldn’t have knocked. When he saw Sydney standing in the doorway, half in half out with a slightly confused look on her face, his tensions eased some.

“Family’s up,” she said, gesturing back over her shoulder with her thumb.

He nodded. “Right. Thanks—I’ll be there in a minute.”

Part of her felt like she should be asking him something, or maybe even offering him something, but she didn’t have the faintest idea as to what it would be. “Okay.”

Richie watched her slip right back out of sight again and sighed once she was gone. He wanted to ask her how the hell she ended up here. He also wanted to tell her to cut and run while she still could, but he just didn’t have the energy for it yet. He wondered if he ever would. Maybe that’s why they were all still there.

It was easy to forget the mess of it all when everyone was sitting together for family. Even Richie was able to push it from his mind as he slithered down into his seat between Tina and Ebra. Mikey was already a few paragraphs deep into his next tall tale as he set plates down in front of everyone. Richie laughed, already knowing where the story was going and how it would end, but the ride was still enjoyable no matter how many times they went on it.

Marcus and Syd were the only two people in the camp of still hearing all of these stories for the first time. Richie could tell by the way they were watching with curiosity, with interest, rather than smiling in anticipation because they knew what was coming. There was something wholesome and heartwarming in that—Richie got just as much amusement from their reactions as he did from the story itself. Maybe more.

Family was done and due to be cleaned up before Richie even knew it. Everyone pitched in, many hands making light work and soon enough the tables were cleared and ready to be set for the people that were about to be coming in to get their own food. Syd was stacking and clearing cups while Manny and Sweeps put the tables back in their rightful spots.

Richie watched for a moment, but when it was clear that they all had everything under control, he made his way back towards the kitchen. He wove around everyone, uncharacteristically quiet as he did. He listened to the banter going back and forth as he went, laughing but not chiming in otherwise.

Mikey was coming back out of the office just as Richie was about to go in. The wild look in his eyes from earlier was gone, his expression now relaxed almost like it used to be. Richie wanted the knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach to ease because of that, but the knowledge in the back of his head prevented it—the constant inherent knowing that the pendulum would eventually swing back the other way.

The sympathetic smile on Mikey’s face almost had Richie convinced for a moment that he was at least somewhat aware of the emotional gymnastic routine that Richie had been trapped in lately when it came to him, to them. He didn’t want to ruin the moment with reality, but he still had questions that needed to be answered. Allowing things to fester and go unattended was only going to make things worse in the long run. And, Richie knew even if he never said it out loud, the long run was getting shorter and shorter every damn day.

Clearing his throat, he couldn’t even make himself look Mikey in the eye as he started to speak. He was running his fingers across his brow as he said, “You gonna walk me through—”

“Later,” Mikey interrupted as he waved him off. “Gotta show the new kid the ropes, you know?”

Richie sighed and forced himself to lock eyes with Mikey. “Cousin, you—”

Mikey was already making moves to slide past him since his initial dismissal didn’t work. “C’mon, bro, it’s her first day. I gotta make sure—”

“You said she’s the real fuckin’ deal, right?” Richie volleyed back, voice getting sharper now. “If she’s the real deal I bet she can figure out a fuckin’ sandwich line so you can come back here and explain some shit to me.”

Mikey was smiling enough to fool anyone but Richie. He could see it in his best friend’s eyes, in the tightness of his jaw, when he was starting to get defensive. Apply just a little too much pressure and Mikey turned into something else entirely, like a wounded animal who thought the only way to stay somewhat safe and alive was to lash out at anyone who came near. Richie was a hair’s breadth away from bringing that out in him right there in the back of the restaurant.

For the moment, however, Mikey kept his composure. “Yeah, but c’mon, you know how it is here. Whole different ecosystem, right?”

Richie was doing a cost-benefit analysis at record speeds inside his head as he tried to figure out how he wanted to answer that question. He chose his words carefully. “Yeah, right, but you know, I gotta know what’s going on in this ecosystem too. If you’re doing shit or changing shit up you gotta tell me what the fuck it is.”

That seemed to make him a little less defensive. His hackles lowered. “And I will!” He took another step backwards towards the kitchen. “Later. How much do you think is really gonna change in the next couple of hours, huh?” He laughed and turned so that his back was to Richie as he walked away. “Lighten up!”

Richie waited until he disappeared around the corner to let his head drop back. The sigh he let out was one that he dredged up from the deepest part of his chest. Even when he closed his eyes, it felt like the fluorescent lights above him were still burning into his corneas. It felt like his heart was beating hard enough to crack a rib. Trying to focus on his breathing, or literally anything else besides the worst-case scenarios that were beginning to mount in his mind, he also told himself that he really needed to call his doctor and get a fucking Xanax prescription or something before the dread inside of him started causing real problems.

Opening his eyes back up again, he straightened out his shoulders and walked into the office. “Lighten up,” he muttered to himself with a shake of his head. “I fuckin’ wish.”

He could hear the chaos of the lunch rush even from his current, slightly disconnected position. Usually he would be out in the thick of it, but if they could handle it without him at least for today he was going to take advantage of it. If things got that back he’d hear Chuckie yelling for him specifically.

For now it was just the shouting of orders back and forth between the register and the kitchen, the nonstop narration of Mikey in the kitchen explaining things to Sydney. Some of it had to do with what they were doing, a lot of it didn’t. Richie heard Mikey plenty, but didn’t hear much in return from Sydney. Part of him wanted to go out there just to see what the look on her face was in the midst of it all. If she was the ‘real deal’ like Mikey said she was, this place was probably extra jarring to her.

By the time the kitchen hit a lull, Richie had started tuning most of it out. He didn’t notice that it had gotten quieter. If he had, he would’ve gone out and dragged Mikey back to the office by the collar of his shirt if that’s what it would’ve taken.

He’d been muttering so many numbers to himself that they all melded together. They were just static, static that he could see as it spilled onto the papers in front of him. On top of the static was the added layer of already being able to hear the impending arguments that were going to come from all of this. Vendors being annoyed, Mikey yelling at vendors for being annoyed, Richie yelling at Mikey for yelling at the vendors. And that wouldn’t be the end of it if things didn’t start to look up soon. They couldn’t operate without their vendors—they were necessary even if these days Mikey treated them otherwise. But if they did have to make cuts, if something had to go, their newest staff would be the first ones up on the chopping block. Mikey would be yelling about that too, he was sure. He wondered if Sydney or Marcus would also be yelling—he didn’t feel like Marcus was the type, but he didn’t know Sydney well enough at all to try and make that judgment call.

“What the fuck are you still doing back here, man?” Mikey’s voice, and the laughter laced into his words, switched Richie from the static-laden channel he’d been stuck on for so long.

Richie shook his head, not turning around yet to face him. “Just, you know, getting the lay of the land.” He finally spun in the chair. “Got a minute now?”

Mikey’s tongue darted out across his bottom lip as he nodded. It was the most present that he’d looked all day from what Richie could see. Finally managed to catch him at the sweet spot between high and low tide.

“Yeah, yeah I got a minute.” He walked over and sat on the edge of the desk. He could actually see some of the surface now. Richie had done some organizing as he rifled through everything. Mikey noticed but didn’t comment on it. He casually leafed through a few papers as he asked, “You’re really stressin’ about this shit, huh?”

Richie leaned back in the chair, unable to dial back the disbelief on his face. “Yeah, cousin, I'm fuckin’, I'm stressed. How are you not?”

Mikey shrugged. “I mean, I am. Of course I fucking am. I’m always stressing about it. That’s how I know it’s not gonna fix anything.”

He gestured aggressively at the stacks of papers. “Yeah, but—”

“We always hit low points. We hit ‘em and then we, you know,” he made an upwards sweeping motion with his hand, “we come back from that shit.”

Richie chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t think we’ve ever come back that much.”

Mikey laughed but he didn’t disagree. “Maybe not. But you know what I mean.”

“I know. But this low point, cousin, it’s pretty fuckin’ low. And it’s lasting a long time.”

“I know. But we’ll get out of it. We’ll figure it out. MacGyver some shit together.”

Richie scoffed, dragging his fingers through the hair on his face—he needed to trim it down. “What, you gonna call Nico again?”

Mikey shrugged. “Why not? That shit worked before.”

“And then we said that we aren’t gonna fuckin’ do it again.”

“You’re the one saying that we gotta figure this shit out!”

“With a long-term fix, cousin!”

“I don’t have one!”

Now they were both standing. Hand gestures getting dangerously close to the other’s face but never making contact. Richie pointed over Mikey’s shoulder towards the kitchen. “Then why the fuck are you still making long-term investments?! Another cook?!” He slapped the back of his hand into his palm between each word as he said, “There’s no fucking money!”

Richie had been ready for Mikey to match his volume, maybe even one-up him. But when he spoke it came out clear and level—there was a challenging edge to it. He sniffed, dragging his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger down the sides of his nose. “You wanna go out there and tell her to pack it in, then? Go ahead. Go tell the new girl we’re saying thanks, but no thanks.”

Richie took a deep breath as he shook his head. He reined his volume in, aware that not a single wall in that restaurant was thick enough to hide what they said when they were yelling. “You’re gonna be saying that to everyone in a few months if we don’t get this shit on lock.”

It wasn’t that Mikey thought he was wrong. The true frustration came from knowing that every single thing Richie was saying was accurate. He just didn’t know what to do about it. He took that out on Richie too, like he did with most things. “You got some fuckin’ solutions for me then? Or you just wanna bust my balls about this?”

“I’ve been tryin’ to get your fucking attention so we could come up with some together but you’re always dodgin’ me.”

Mikey scoffed. “Sorry I don’t have time for a fuckin’, fuckin’ brainstorming session. I have a restaurant and a kitchen to run.”

“Not for long,” Richie muttered, the words coming out before he could stop them.

He flinched at the words, noticeably enough that Richie saw it. He didn’t give him a chance to apologize though. He sucked his teeth and turned around. “Gonna go get Syd set for dinner service.”

Richie wanted to call after him, but he knew that there was no point. That ship had sailed. He sighed, wanting to collapse back into the chair and also wanting to leave. He didn’t get to do either as his phone started to ring. Looking down, he saw it was Tiff calling. Taking a deep breath, he prepared to go from one tumultuous conversation into the next.

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Richie strutted into the kitchen, ready to make his usual morning rounds of conversation and storytelling with everyone. He was in the middle of taking his sunglasses off, about to address the kitchen as a whole, when he saw that there was a new face in the crowd. He never even got the first syllable out. That was a change to the system that he hadn’t been informed about. And if he didn’t know, he doubted that anyone else did either. He snapped his jaw shut, stuffing his sunglasses into his pocket despite the number of times Tiff had reminded him that all that does is scratch the lenses.

No one even noticed him walk in, including the new girl. They were all too busy talking amongst themselves. Richie stood in the doorway and watched everyone trilling around. There was the usual chaos of prep, now with the added layer of people pointing out and explaining things to whoever the new hire was. Richie should just walk up to her and ask but he was too busy trying to realign everything in his head while accommodating this apparent new addition to the crew. Tina was saying things but wasn’t looking at her. Sweeps and Ebra seemed a little more genuine in their explanations and descriptions of where to find things. Part of Richie was wondering why Mikey wasn’t the one explaining shit to the new girl, but another part of him knew exactly why.

He made his way through the kitchen, weaving through the space and around people, mumbling out his excuse me’s as he went. He didn’t disturb the flow, what little of one there seemed to be at the moment. That was typically at the top of his list of things to do when he arrived in the morning, but the latest addition to the kitchen changed things. Now it was his flow that was getting disrupted. This was not System. Shaking his head, he made his way back towards the office. The door was only open a crack, but he saw the light coming from inside and he knew that that was where he’d find Mikey. He hesitated for a moment, hand on the doorknob. If he didn’t ask now, he would just have to ask later.

“Yo,” he said as he finally opened the door, “cousin. Who the fuck—”

“Cousin!” Mikey called out as he shot up from his seat at the desk. His tone was far from matching Richie’s, who for once was actually trying to use something adjacent to an inside voice. It was more exhaustion than it was self-control, and apparently Mikey wasn’t feeling that particular strain. “I think I finally got it.” He gestured vaguely to all of the papers that were scattered across the surface of the desk. “I got a way to get us the fuck out of all this shit!”

Richie raised his eyebrows nodding. “Oh, yeah?” he asked, clearly not convinced.

Mikey paid no mind to the ingenuity in his best friend’s voice. “Yeah! Yeah, yeah. I got it. We got this.”

He’d lost count of how many times he had heard that exact sentiment from Mikey over the years. It wasn’t always in relation to The Beef. Sometimes it was about whatever side-gig he was conjuring up for himself or for the two of them. He always said it with that same level of certainty though, even if the plans were paper-thin. Anyone could turn a house of cards into steel beams if they squinted their eyes enough. Richie just didn’t have it in him to do that anymore, especially not with the restaurant.

Forging onward, he tried to get Mikey on the same playing field with him, address the matter immediately at hand. “Does this have to do with the new chick out there?”

That question actually seemed to get through to him a little bit. “Syd? She’s dope, right?”

He shrugged. “Might be, I didn’t fuckin’ talk to her.”

“You should! She’s like the real fuckin’ deal. Worked at—”

“Didn’t we just hire Marcus, like, two fuckin’ months ago? Why are we bringin’ on new people when we can’t even fuckin’ afford—”

“We don’t fuckin’ afford anything,” Mikey cut him off, tone shifting drastically as he snapped. “I got this shit, cousin, alright? Don’t fuckin’ worry about it.”

Richie frowned, knowing that it would’ve been a worthless argument. It still felt like one that they should have, though. He was in too deep to get away from it all, from Mikey and the restaurant and the mess of it. It was too late for him. But that didn’t mean that Mikey had to keep bringing on more people to drag down into the shit with them. They didn’t deserve that. They didn’t know any better. Marcus, and apparently Syd, they were just kids. This was no place for children.

Mikey’s expression went right back normal, like the last fifteen seconds hadn’t happened. “Come on. We got shit to do. You gotta meet Syd.”

“Cousin—”

“Let’s go!” Mikey was all smiles and enthusiasm as he brushed past Richie towards the door.

Richie lingered behind for a moment. He looked over at the desk, the mess of papers that were strewn all over it. On a good day Mikey’s handwriting was rough, and judging by what was written in the margins of the legers and all over the forms that were supposed to be signed, dated, and mailed out to people who gave them what they needed to keep the restaurant running, it’d been a while since his last good day. He leaned over, tented fingertips shifting the papers just slightly and giving him a glimpse of the second layer of the mess.

Before he could try and find the third layer, Mikey’s voice echoed clear back into the office from the kitchen. “Cousin!”

Richie sighed, chin dipping down as he let his eyes shut for a moment. Once it passed, he pulled his hand back to his side, peeled his chin from his chest, and turned to head back out into the kitchen. He could hear everyone’s laughter but it was tough to process it when all he could think about was how the hell they were supposed to be keeping their doors open for more than another two months at the rate they were going. Maybe they’d get three if Cicero helped them out. He caught himself letting out a dry laugh at the thought—if they were going to get help from him, someone else was going to have to ask for it. At this point that man wouldn’t give Richie a life jacket if he was drowning, let alone a few thousand dollars to keep a sinking restaurant afloat.

“About time,” Mikey said with a grin when Richie emerged from the office.

Everyone was gathered in the same space, as much of a huddle as the cramped quarters of the kitchen would allow them. The closer he got, the more effort Richie put into trying to slip back into his typical demeanor. He manufactured a smile, and he just hoped it was convincing. No one other than Mikey was going to be worried about him at this point anyway, not with a new face in the crowd.

“Heard we got the real fuckin’ deal working here now,” Richie said, dissipating any tension that might’ve still been lingering from his hesitation to leave the office. He held out his hand, “Richie Jerimovich.”

Sydney smiled but there was an air of confusion to it. Still, she shook his hand. “Syd, uh, Sydney.”

Richie nodded, hand dropping back to his side. “Pleasure to meet you, sweetheart.”

Mikey laughed, jerking his thumb in Richie’s direction. “This guy. Who the fu—pleasure to meet you,” he mocked with a laugh. “Tryna make a good first impression or what?”

“First time for everything,” Sweeps joked quietly, earning a chuckle out of everyone there except for Sydney, who didn’t know any better, and Richie, who knew too much.

“Alright, alright,” Mikey said, waving his hands in a gesture to get everyone to quiet down. There were more layers of irony to that than he was able to wrap his head around in that moment. “Everybody, this is Sydney. She knows her shit so, you know, be fuckin’ nice.” He laughed and rested his hand on Sydney’s shoulder. “Sydney, this is everybody. If anyone acts like a dick you come and find me.” He punctuated the statement with a squeeze to her shoulder before pulling his hand away. “Meeting fuckin’ adjourned.” There was a pause, a momentary scrunch of his expression. “Who’s got family?”

“You do,” multiple people responded in unison.

Mikey chuckled, and Richie was the only one who heard the hint of unsteadiness in the sound. “Shit, alright.” He slipped by Marcus, clapping him on the outside of the arm and then on his back as he did. There was humor in his voice as he said, “Better stay outta my fuckin’ way then,” but it wasn’t bone-deep the way that it used to be.

Everyone accepted it at face value, chuckling as they started to go back to the tasks and prep that they had been immersing themselves in before Richie showed up and before Mikey did the most informal formal introduction there had ever been, if it even really counted as an introduction at all since he didn’t tell Sydney who anyone really was. For a second Richie thought about pulling her aside and just giving her the rapid-fire rundown of names, something to at least get started with. But she’d been talking to everyone already. If she didn’t know all their names yet, she would soon. That wasn’t on him.

Richie was watching Mikey even though everyone was shuffling around. The others might’ve been too busy to notice, but Richie could see the widening cracks in his façade. The frown that was lasting a little longer, that cloudy faraway look in his eyes. He let himself get to preoccupied with it, with him, but it wasn’t like they were in the right space for Richie to confront him about it right now. Too many people. Too much shit to take care of that couldn’t get derailed by an argument in that moment. Once Mikey disappeared into the walk-in, Richie thought about following in after him for a moment before thinking better of it. He turned his attention back to Sydney—the only other person who hadn’t moved. She was looking around, trying to watch and study everyone as they delved into their tasks.

“Trying to figure out where to start?” Richie asked, false enthusiasm gone from his voice.

Syd’s eyes widened slightly as she glanced over at him, her first real look at him without everyone watching. “Yeah.”

Richie let out a deep sigh as he nodded. “Yeah.” He turned on his heel to head back towards the office, try to get a look at things while Mikey was preoccupied and not hanging over his shoulder to derail him. “Get used to it.”

If she had a follow-up statement or a question of any kind in the wake of that, Richie didn’t linger or look at her long enough to find out. His long, slow strides were already carrying him back towards the office. Over all the noise in his head, Richie was just barely able to hear Marcus’s voice offering Sydney help with finding anything that she needed. Something about that made his stomach knot, but at least the kids were sticking together.

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You pause where you are and look at him. He’s leaning against the table, which stands against the cabinet by the bed, because you’re yet to buy any dining chairs, and he’s yet to find a way to be comfortable here, as often as he comes, which makes you both look like strangers, really. Neither of you have settled. It’s more of an introduction on neutral ground than anything else.

He’s got his arms crossed. Bare forearms, rolled sleeves. He looks from you, to the floor, to the half-drawn curtain over your window. Nobody’s bothered to turn the overhead light on, so he’s orange, and you’re blue. 

‘Bad day?’ you ask.

‘No worse than the rest.’

You try a smile, pull that card from your deck. ‘Something a whiskey might solve?’

‘Look.’ He sighs and draws his gaze back to you. ‘We should talk.’

The lamp on the bedside flickers. He waits until the amber glow is steady again, and then he nods, like you’ve asked something, and his brows pull together like he’s apologising for it. 

‘Can I take my shoes off first?’

‘It won’t—’

‘Please.’

You get another nod, and a raised hand to wave you on, before it’s tucked back under his forearm again. Crossed and waiting. 

The lace of your boot has become knotted, so it takes a pregnant minute for you to get it off, leather fighting the curve of your heel, then it drops to the ground with a thud. 

The second comes off easy and quiet. 

‘You want a drink?’ you ask, sock-footed and able to move again. You cross the room before the offer’s been answered, hand on the fridge before drink has even tilted up into a question. 

‘It won’t take,’ he tries again, ‘I shouldn’t stay.’

‘That’s what you say every time.’

‘This is different.’

You take two beers from the case on the shelf. White light there and gone again. 

‘You’re different?’ you guess.

He lets the quiet have its turn before answering. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘Yeah, I noticed last time.’ You could tell he wanted to talk then, too, but he’d been too scared, or too happy, or too greedy, to want to tell you so. ‘You don’t fuck the same when you’re thinking about something.’

There’s a laugh that you reward with one of the beers, handing it to him as you reach his side of the studio. 

‘And you’re just telling me this now?’ he says. 

‘I could hardly tell you then.’

He snorts and you match it, smiling, before dropping onto the side of the bed. From here his cheek is gold, his hair is gold, and the rest of him is grey, muted by the moonlight through what’s left of the window. 

‘Please sit,’ you say, and when he doesn’t move you add, ‘it won’t hurt less from the table.’

‘I was trying to give you space,’ he admits, standing as he does. Arms slack, knees straight. He walks two steps then dips the bed as he goes down beside you, shoulder to shoulder.

You switch the lamp off. No more orange, just blue.

He starts before you’ve even tasted the beer, which sits damp between your palms. 

‘I don’t think,’ he says, ‘we can keep doing-’

‘Wait.’

‘-this.’ His eyebrows trick his eyes into looking soft. Or tired. 'Baby,’ he reasons.

‘You’ll have to give that up,’ you reply. ‘Baby.’

You imagine his palm on your thigh and his thumb running the outer seam. Replace it directly with the sight of his fingers now, threaded together, and balanced in the gap between his knees.

‘In the morning,’ you offer him. ‘Let’s save it for then, okay?’

He exhales and looks away before the last of it can hit your face. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘To who?’ You’re smiling somehow. ‘I’m the one suggesting it.’

‘We can’t just keep on—’

‘Don’t say it,’ you interrupt again, because you know already. ‘Don’t tell me until the morning, Javi.’

‘How is that any better?’ he asks. ‘For either of us?’

‘How is it any worse?’

You’re both orange, and you’re both blue, and you’ve known the colour of him since the beginning, really. Since you first told him how to get the lock just right. There’s nothing here that you hadn’t seen coming, and nothing left to say, either. 

‘One more night?’ you ask, for a final hopeless time. ‘Don’t tell me now.’

You watch his throat as he swallows the request, his lips as he nods in reply. ‘Alright,’ he says, ‘until the morning.’ 

And then there’s his hand. There’s your thigh. 

______

You’re pleased with that, his warning and his submission. He clocks it on your face before it’s away again. ‘But seriously,’ you continue, ‘how long will that take?’

‘How long have you got?’

You laugh, half turning toward him. He watches it twitch out of you, watches your rib cage go in and out again afterwards, between the column of open buttons. In this world, he’s allowed to look. That’s obvious without asking, or hearing you say it, that’s beneath the bones themselves. In the blood. 

He can look. You want him to look. 

‘Shingamadre's ruined every shirt I’ve put on this week,’ you complain, moving again to show him the horseshoe stamped onto your checkered back. There must be a matching one beneath the cotton, raised and discoloured, hot to the touch from the swelling, but you turn again as the shirt drops; he’s left staring at your chest when you pull on the replacement. His shirt over your shoulders, his buttons bracketing your navel.

‘It doesn’t hurt?’ he asks.

A smile slings across your cheeks, point to point. ‘Not at all.’

He can’t match it. His head shakes. ‘You’re crazy.’ 

Then you’re in front of him—in exchange of a reply—having never moved, or raised a foot, but being right there all the same, hot breath to his neck, hands comfortable on his collar. ‘Crazy enough to say no to?’ you ask.

‘No.’ 

‘Never?’

‘I don’t like boring,’ he explains. ‘You aren’t boring.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do,’ he says, ‘but this is a dream, so it doesn’t count.’

You pull back. You kiss him. You don’t touch him at all.

‘What?’

He says it again into the black. ‘This is a dream.’

*

When he wakes, you’re standing over him. You as you are every day, in your own clothes, with that usual indifferent expression. It sits on him like that was what summoned him back, not the sudden awareness of himself, of his false consciousness, but the call of that look you give him every fucking day. 

It’s not quite hatred, but it’s a distaste constant enough to sting just the same. 

‘You fell asleep again,’ you snark, tossing his car keys onto his chest. They land with a thud, cold metal hitting his gold chain. ‘I’m bored of waiting.’

He sighs, dragging a flat, dry palm across his face. ‘We’ll go then.'

‘They’ve called twice already.’

‘I said we’ll go.’ 

‘You also said you were done sleeping on the job.’

He sits upright, unable to stop the low groan that follows. This couch was never made for naps. It’s barely made for sitting at all. He flexes his shoulders to no avail, then gives you a look instead of a warning, also to no avail. 

‘You could have driven yourself,’ he says, low and unconvinced of the idea. He’s only saying it to say it. And because there’s enough sleep around his tongue to lead it astray. 

You don’t move as he stands, putting him and yourself face to face in defiance. ‘Are you dreaming still?’ you ask, scoffing in between. ‘Drive myself?’

‘We’re going.’ He pushes past you, avoiding your shoulder, avoiding the image of your shirt, un-done to your waist. ‘But it’s the last time.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ You’re following him, mocking him. ‘Because that’s your decision to make.’

It will be, one day. Once he’s left the dreams behind and the ranks under his feet. Once you’re the one driving him. 

‘Do you know horses?’ he asks, light like it’s small talk and not an anchor in the deep.

You’re frowning, no doubt, he can feel the scrutiny in the back of his head. But you humour him with an answer all the same, ‘No, never liked them.’

You’d known that you weren’t going to solve all of your problems in one day. Hell, you weren’t even going to be able to solve any singular one of them in a day. You knew that. Deep down, you were pretty sure that Kathy knew that too—she was too smart not to know it. But she’d clearly still been hoping for a miracle. Always a fixer.

Apartment-hunting was a bust. You didn’t expect anything less, though. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that. You were pretty sure that the only thing that kept Kathy from completely losing her marbles was the fact that she got a nearly uninterrupted all-day chance to grill you on everything that had happened that somehow resulted in you quitting your job, breaking your lease, and coming back to Chicago without so much as a real heads-up.

She collapsed into the driver’s seat of her car, head immediately pressing back into the rest behind it. There were about three entire seconds of silence as you got into the passenger seat, and then she sat up and threw the key into the ignition.

“I need a drink,” she said, exasperated.

You smiled, having a feeling that you knew where it was going. “Where you go for that now’a days?”

She could hear the smile in your voice before she even looked over to see it on your face. The frustration that she’d been battling with all day faded to annoyance, then finally transformed into amusement as she laughed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. You already know where we’re goin’.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t, really.”

She scoffed but she was still smiling as she put the car into drive. “Not the place, you know, but you know what I mean.”

“Where’s home-base for this rough and tumble club I’ve heard so much about anyway?” you joked.

She chuckled, something about the thought of the club being described as rough and tumble was amusing to her even though she knew what the guys got up to better than most. Benny did more tumbling than damn near any of them, after all.

“’Member The Stoplight?”

It took you a few seconds to conjure up the mental image of it. Then it finally hit you, that little divey hideout on the other end of town. It wasn’t the type of place you ever went to. Wasn’t the type of place Kathy ever would’ve gone either the last time you were in Chicago. You also wouldn’t have pictured her running off and marrying a guy like Benny after only knowing him for a month either, though. Things change. You wondered if The Stoplight had changed too.

“That’s it, huh?” you said as she cruised down the street.

“Yep. That’s it.”

You hummed. “Guess somethin’ had to start happenin’ there.”

It was getting dark when Kathy parked her car across the street from The Stoplight. Your eyes widened at the sight of it. What was once a quiet, albeit shady, watering hole of sorts now seemed to be teeming with life. The lights were all on, warm yellow bleeding through the windows out onto the street. The light cascaded over all the bikes that were parked outside. They were lined up so nicely and neatly, like a row of dominoes begging to be tipped even though you knew far better.

“Benny’s got a lotta friends, then,” you said as she pulled the key from the ignition.

Kathy laughed. She was shaking her head as she tucked her keys into her purse. “Oh, yeah. Real winners too, these guys.” She threw the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “Some’a them, it’s a real wonder they got two thoughts to rub together to make a sentence, you know. Bunch’a yahoos.” She pushed the car door open. “Nice guys, though.”

There was nothing else you could do but laugh as you climbed out of the car after her. Between those comments, and what she’d said to you about the club last night while the two of you were up and talking, sometimes it was hard to tell just how much she liked it all. She couldn’t have hated it too bad if she was still showing up to this kind of stuff. The club couldn’t have been that awful if she went and married herself into it. Benny seemed alright—how bad could the rest of these guys really be?

“Don’t take nothin’ they say seriously,” she warned as you approached the door of the bar. “They’re all full of it, you know. Sayin’ wild things just to get a rise outta ya.”

You chuckled. “Know that one from experience, do you?”

She gave you a look as she opened the door. “Hey, listen, at least you got me to walk in with. First time I was here? I was like a fish outta water. Didn’t know nothin’ or nobody.” The door clattered shut behind both of you as you landed inside the bar. “Bunch’a hooligans running around with no shirts on or nothin’.”

The imagery it conjured up in your head, the idea of Kathy walking into the thick of it all with no warning about what she was getting into, was enough to make you laugh. She wasn’t the type to necessarily go looking for trouble all the time, but it never seemed to have any issue finding her regardless. She had you for that at first, now apparently she had Benny.

It was loud inside The Stoplight. Not deafening, but the music was loud and the conversations were louder. So many conversations happening it made your head spin a little bit. Looking around, you tried to get your bearings. You didn’t even notice the fact that Kathy had looped her arm through yours so that you didn’t drift too far away.

There was no reason to not let her pull you along through the crowds. From how she’d prepared you, you’d been expecting there to be an onslaught the second you set foot into the place. Maybe if you’d walked in alone it would’ve been a different story. Or maybe if you’d walked in with someone other than Kathy. If she talked to these guys to their faces anything like how she talked to you about them, they probably knew better than to give her too hard of a time. That was a show you’d tune in to watch every week if they decided to put it on TV.

“Benny!” she called out, snapping you out of your thoughts. “Jeeze. Get enough’a these guys in a room and they all look the same. Make it so I can’t even find my husband.”

You were laughing as she tugged you over to the bar where Benny was sitting. He was sat on the stool right at the end, able to watch most of what was unfolding around him in the bar. With a practiced amount of ease he was holding the neck of his beer bottle and his cigarette in the same hand. Once the two of you were a step or two outside the fray, Kathy took her arm back. She walked over, giving Benny a quick kiss on the cheek before she leaned into his side, arm that was looped through yours now draped across his shoulders.

Kathy looked at the bottle he was holding, and then looked down the bar towards the bartender who looked like they had wanted to get out of there long before the two of you walked in. Leaning a little closer so she didn’t have to shout, she asked, “Wanna grab me a—”

Benny was nodding before she even finished her sentence, already knowing where it was going. He looked over at you, lifting his eyebrows but not actually saying anything. You still heard his question loud and clear.

You had your arms folded over your chest, but you made a small motion towards his beer bottle with your elbow. “I’ll take one, yeah. Thanks.”

Without another word, Benny was getting up to go down the bar. Kathy watched him for a moment and you had been expecting her to plop right down in Benny’s spot. Much to your surprise, though, she motioned for you to follow her and she started walking deeper into the throes of it all.

“C’mon—I can’t hear nothin’ when I sit at that bar.” She shook her head. “Everyone’s yellin’ to hear themselves over everyone’s else that’s yellin’.”

You chuckled. “Sounds about right.”

Kathy managed to find the last empty table in the place and sat down. You picked the chair kitty-corner to hers so that you were both, more or less, facing the majority of the chaos unfolding inside the bar. It wasn’t anything too crazy, really. Shouting, drinking, pool, darts. Pretty standard as far as you were concerned, especially what you’d expect in a biker bar. The thing that really stood out the most was the matching uniforms everyone seemed to be wearing. You did laugh, though, when you realized that Kathy hadn’t been exaggerating about the lack of proper clothing—plenty of the guys had their vest on with nothing underneath it. It was funny to you because you’d been prepared, but you could only imagine how wide Kathy’s eyes must’ve gotten the first time she stumbled into this place.

“So who are all these guys, anyway?” you asked. She’d spoken to you in broad strokes about the club, made her generalizations about the guys, both flattering and not. But you didn’t know much about anyone in particular. Even names she’d mentioned in passing before didn’t mean a hell of a lot to you when you didn’t have faces to put to them.

“Want me to run down the list?” she asked, a grin on her face that was all but begging you to tell her to do just that.

“Don’t gotta do all that,” you answered with a laugh. “Just, you know,” you drummed your fingers on the tabletop, “gimme the highlights. Who do I really gotta know if I’m ever gonna come back here again?”

She leaned back in her chair, draping one arm over the back of it. “They’ll all make sure you know ‘em, don’t worry. I can’t believe they’re not already over here breathin’ down the back’a your neck about somethin’ or other, you know? Can’t help themselves.”

“They know you talk so nice about ‘em?”

She smirked but the glint in her eyes shined brighter than any of the lights hanging from the ceiling. “’Course they do.”

You were shaking your head at her, but you turned your attention back to the sea of bodies in front of you. Over the years you had landed yourself in the middle of plenty of bars, gotten dragged out onto a number of dancefloors, but this felt different. The energy was busy and chaotic but not like at the big bars in the city. This place felt chaotic the same way a giant family reunion feels chaotic.

The longer you looked, the harder you worked to try and figure out a specific question to ask her. Luckily, the man walking towards your table right beside Benny gave you the perfect kickoff question. You tapped her shoulder before nodding to the man beside her husband. “So who’s this gonna be, then?”

“Oh,” she said with a laugh, waving to the pair as they approached the table, “he’ll tell you. Don’t you worry.”

Even though there was a smile on your face, there was no hiding the confusion that you felt as well. You weren’t quite sure what you were in for, but if it was something bad Kathy would’ve given you an eject button of some kind.

Benny was half a stride ahead of the other man, handing you your beer and then Kathy hers. He plopped down in the chair on the other side of her without a word. You took a sip of your beer and were about to ask Benny if he was going to introduce his friend.

Half a second later the question became unnecessary when the man crouched down right next to you, putting himself just below your eyeline. He rested his hands on top of the table, interlocking his fingers and propping his chin on top of them as he looked up at you. There was a grin on his face and something about the look in his eyes had you wanting to reach out and tousle the curls on top of his head.

“When Benny said that Kathy brought a friend, I had to come and see it for myself.” He raised his eyebrows. “You can call me Corky.”

You bit back a laugh but that didn’t stop the wide grin that split across your face. “Corky.”

Chin still pressing into his interlocked fingers, he made a small nod towards the door. “You wanna get outta here, gorgeous?”

Your face felt like it was on fire but Kathy stepped in before you could try and think of something to say. “She just got here, Corky. What’d she wanna leave with you for?”

He looked at Kathy. “I can think of a couple’a things.”

She was smiling as she rolled her eyes. “I’ll make Johnny spray you down with the hose, you know.” Using the bottom of her beer bottle, she pointed towards the pool table. “Give ‘er a minute, will ya?”

Leaning back on his heels, he put his hands up in a show of surrender. “Sorry. Lemme get outta your hair.” He stood up and shot you a wink. “For a minute.”

Once he had disappeared back into the crowd, both you and Kathy broke down laughing. You took a long drink from the beer that Benny had brought you. The interaction felt like a strange kind of ice-breaker, like now you knew what you were going to be in for, for the rest of the night. It didn’t seem too bad, although your sides were going to be hurting from all the laughing if the rest of the guys kept it up like this.

“They all that charming, then?” you asked, watching as Corky snatched a pool cue out of the hands of one of his friends.

“No,” Benny and Kathy both answered in unison. Kathy laughed, whether it was at the situation in general, or her and Benny going step for step you weren’t sure. Benny chuckled quietly, shaking his head as he took another sip of his beer, not saying anything more about it.

You took a swig of your drink, biting back a smile when you caught Corky still looking at you. Determined not to give him any more undue attention, you looked at Kathy. “So who’s Johnny?”

“Hm?” she pried her gaze away from Benny.

“The guy who’s apparently gonna be hosin’ down guys who look at me too long.”

Kathy chuckled. “Oh! Johnny. He runs this whole thing,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her beer bottle. “It’s his club. All these yahoos are his yahoos.”

You smiled, giving a pointed look at Benny. “All of ‘em?”

She gave a dramatic roll of her eyes but nodded. “Yeah. Don’t get me started on that.”

Laughter might not have been the response that she wanted from you, but it was the one that she got. “Well, not I gotta get you st—”

“Kathy,” someone behind you spoke up, causing you to flinch. “Who’s your friend?”

Turning her head, Kathy looked behind her even though she knew who it was from the moment he said her name. “Well, look who it is! Man of the hour.” She hooked her arm over the back of her chair as she stared up at him. “Your ears ringin’ or somethin’?”

His brows pinched together in confusion, a frown on his face. “What?”

She gestured to the table. “We were just talkin’ about you, you know.”

“Yeah?” He walked around the table so that he was on the opposite side of it from you. Neither of you said anything for a moment, just looking each other over. You wondered if his face always had that vague air of annoyance and confusion to it, or if that was just for you. Maybe he’d met enough people—the bar was certainly full of them and almost all of them had the same patch on their back.

You broke the stalemate first. “Yeah. Kathy was tellin’ me that you’re in charge of this band of hooligans.”

He shrugged, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “That’s the idea, anyway.”

Kathy inserted herself into the conversation, pointing at the last empty chair that was at your table. “You gonna sit with the rest of us? Or just make us keep starin’ up at you like a bunch’a schmucks?”

He rested his hand on the back of the empty chair. “This one?”

“Yeah,” you said with a chuckle, peering around at the sea of bodies behind him. “Better take it before someone else does.”

He plopped down, you on one side and Benny on the other. He and Kathy directly across from each other. Something told you Johnny wasn’t the type to usually have his back to the crowd, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

“Like who?” he asked, leaning back in the chair and folding his arms across himself.

Kathy stepped in before you could. “Any’a these wolves smellin’ fresh meat in the cave here.”

Johnny looked at you and shook his head, like what Kathy was saying was ridiculous. “You’ll be fine. I won’t let these guys give you any trouble.”

You couldn’t help the smirk on your face. “You got ‘em that in line, do ya?”

Johnny’s, “Yeah,” and Kathy’s scoff hit the air at the same time. You looked at Benny like he was the tiebreaker but he made a point not to look at you, suddenly very interested in the patches of the men sitting at the bar instead.

You chuckled, gaze landing back on Johnny again. “Guess we’ll see about that, then.”

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It did take you a minute, or however long it took him to smoke a little bit more of his joint, eyes going puffier by the second, but then you decided, “Yeah, sure there’s a difference. There’s Johnny, and then there’s Johnny-Johnny, y’know?”

“Yeah, think I’m working that out,” he said, agreeing with you.

“Not that it’s a big difference, though.”

“Sure.”

“And now he’s having me round here with ‘em, it’s, well, you know.”

“Sure,” he went again. “Yeah.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” you asked him, cause he was looking at you like he thought as much, and ‘sure’, and ‘yeah’, felt like place holders for, nuh and uh. And you know what these journalist types are like, you’re not no fool, y’know.

“Sorry,” he said, “what am I not believing?”

“Well that there’s not much between them,” you told him, “the two Johnnys.”

“But there is two of them.”

“No, not two of them.”

“But you just said you felt like they were different.”

“He’s one guy, don’t get it twisted, but you, you gotta be, don’t you? The guy I’m cuddling on, and talking movies with, isn’t the same guy busting fights and setting rules now, is he?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

And you was starting to really feel like there was a corner coming up right behind you, one he was hell bent on talking you into, and that’s when you realised maybe you were saying something Johnny wouldn’t really want you to, but he kept on pushing. Really pushing.

Danny said, “The Johnny you get, he’s sweet?”

“Yeah he’s sweet, why wouldn’t he be?”

And he waited a second, then he said, “Y’know, I’m just asking questions, Lips,”

“And I’m answering them, aren’t I?” 

You didn’t think you were being rude or nothing, but maybe, sure, your voice was coming up a little sharp, but he was being nosy, and you’re nosy too, but maybe shit don’t work out when you got two noses pointing at each other like that. 

“Sorry,” you ended up apologising for some reason, “you got me all tied up.”

“Wasn’t my intention. You know the other guys much?”

It was a hell of a life jacket he threw to you, cause he didn’t even seem phased, just asked something new like he’d been thinking on it a while, even though it was a dead question with a dead answer, but you took the help like you’d been breathing water for weeks. And after that, well, whatever.

He’s sweet? Yeah, he’s sweet.

God, Johnny would’a hated that, sure as, he’d of winced like you bit him if he was there to hear it. ‘What you saying that for?’ he’d say. ‘I’m not sweet.’

And did you even mean it? Do you even believe it, really? Candy is sweet. Pudding, those sodas you grew up on. But Johnny? Maybe he’s sweet the way potatoes are, you know, when you get the orange ones all mixed up with all sorts of stuff to make ‘em nice, or whatever. But him? Suppose maybe you’re the stuff mixed up with him to make it taste good.

Or maybe you’re dumb as anything, burned the top of your tongue off, or something, so you can’t taste no more. Cause when he swings back around, way past eleven, he’s anything but sweet to you.

Not that you expected it, you suppose, but you thought…you thought maybe the first time he was, well, you guess he never said he would, but maybe if he did, or was thinking on it, on staying over, you know, or whatever you and him were planning on—you figured he’d be like the sugared-up rim of a cocktail. A little sweet before the zing.

But all he did was ask you to wait up, and so you waited. Anything after that was undetermined. You can’t go round expecting unexpected things from people, can you? ‘Specially not things of that sort, no matter how long it’d been since you, yeah, or since he, yeah. That. 

“This thing work?” he says to you now, pointing at the TV in the corner of the room.

“No,” you say, “I like just staring at the glass—course it works Johnny, what sort of a question is that?”

“You weren’t watching nothing?”

“No, I was just. Well I had something to eat and then I was just sitting, and thinking, I guess. Waiting for you.”

“Uh-oh.” He turns to you, hands in his pockets, where they’ve been since he got through the door, and a look on his face like he’s waiting for the ball to drop. Like he didn’t take his jacket off for a reason. “Thinking ‘bout what?”

“Hmm. You can take any guess you like, and it’ll probably be a right one,” you say. And you don’t mean much by it, cause you’ve been thinking to outer space and back, so there’s a good chance he’d strike gold. 

He lifts his shoulders a little, head tilting, brows going up too. Like he’s really at his ends with you, y’know, only five minutes after he got here. Even when you haven’t done nothing. “You bring me round just to be mad at me?” he asks.

“No.” 

Well, maybe. You don’t even really remember no more. The time between him leaving and him coming back again has got you all twisted. Thinking and thinking bout stuff, over and over. Microphones and date nights and bike races, and bars you don’t even know, with flames shooting up out of them, and God, somehow, in all of that, you was even thinking about him getting a good long look at you. You know, with nothing else on and lots of things to do.

“Baby,” he says. 

Baby. That’s new. Plopped right down in front of you, straight out of his lips with those big sad eyes waiting behind it. 

That’s really really new. You like it as much as you don’t, cause you figured a tongue like Johnny’s wasn’t built for saying things like that. Things like baby and sugar and sweetheart. That seemed like something Benny would’a said—or something Johnny might’ve only used for his wife, you know, back when they was…well, you don’t think you’re anything like she was. Maybe there’s the difference. Maybe she was a darlin’, or a sweet-pea.

“I don’t wanna fight with you,” he says. “I—I’m tired, alright? If you aren’t, if we aren’t—maybe it’s better if I go, alright?”

“Sorry,” you blurt out, loud and clumsy. And the world comes back from spinning where it had been, off behind your head somewhere, putting everything all straight again. Just about, anyway. “I’m not mad, Johnny, and I’m not trying to fight with you,” you tell him, meaning it, cause, God, it’s late now. 

And then you think, fuck it, what are you even…? You know, if you were wondering about something in any other place, on any other day, you’d have just said it outright. You’d have blurted it before you realised there was anything even there to blurt. So what the hell was your deal now? What’s really so bad about saying what you want? 

So you tell him, “If anything,” you say, finding your feet a little, “if anything, I think we should be going about doing the opposite.”

He catches on real quick. Looks a little surprised, but a lot excited, too. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

And it don’t take a scientist to work out how you got from there to here. Upstairs, you know, in the room that wasn’t really anyone’s ever—cause God knows you weren’t gonna be sleeping in Pop’s old one when you moved back here, and you never slept in this one enough times to make any real claim on it—and it still don’t feel like your room yet, even though it’s been a while and you got a bed in it. Real nice big one too, one that had the plastic on and everything when you bought it. 

Well, anyway, now that bed’s got a Johnny on it, so maybe that’s what makes it yours, no matter how else it feels. Your room, your Johnny.

It’s kind of a stupid way to resolve an argument, you know that, even though you were never really arguing in the first place, but kissing is a whole load easier than talking through whatever sludge you’d both gotten yourselves stuck in. Like, come on, who has time for talking about all that on a night like this, after you already swallowed the worst portion of it, ‘handling’ and what not—if you was really gonna argue about all that, he would’ve never come back around in the first place. 

So what harm could it do? What harm could it cause to, you know, to have some hands on your hips, and your jeans and your waist, and, well. There.

It scrapes a little, his fingers under your shirt like that. 

“That alright?” he says, real quiet like you spooked him by taking in a bit of air. 

“Uh-huh.” You’re breathing real hard all of a sudden. “It’s good.” 

Working on bikes and driving trucks gets a man real nifty with his hands. Hell, he might be better at this than you are, and that don’t sit right with you, in a stupid stubborn kind of way, cause what’s an old man like him doing showing you up like that? So you start reaching for his pants, and try to sound—well, whatever way you should sound, when you ask, “Can I?”

He grunts a pretty clear yes and you make a poor job of his belt, so he takes over and you focus on the stuff that really matters. Like your hands on his neck and over his shoulders, and down his back that feels way bigger now it’s floating over you like that. He’s not a big guy really, but big enough, you know, bigger than ever when it matters. Feels like the light’s already off cause you can’t see the bright of it past him. 

You can barely even see the ceiling around him, it’s just Johnny, and Johnny’s eyes, and his chest and his lips. Oh, his lips. And that little piece of hair there, that one defying all that fuckin’ grease he puts into it, just to sit over his forehead like that. 

“I’ve been missing you,” he says, after putting a real long kiss on you. “Came by every night.”

“Yeah, I figured,” you tell him, or sigh at him, or moan at him, really, you don’t know what you’re saying or how you’re saying it. His stubble is starting to leave marks on your chin and that seems more important right now. “Sorry I didn’t say I was going.”

“S’alright.”

He tastes better than you remember. All ash and candy and wood like he’s been living off those little toothpicks of his. 

“Forget it,” he says, lips to your throat. “I forgive you.”

Mhmm. Forgiven and then some. There’s a thud as his jeans hit the floor, belt buckle ringing and you curl up into him like he’s got a rope around your stomach. 

For some reason, right after that, he stills. Stops doing what he was doing with that mouth of his, and pulls a noise from your throat that you’ve never heard yourself make. Like your engine went kaputt, or something, and all it’s got to give is that last little puff of air.  

“Hey,” he says. “Open your eyes a second.”

You hadn’t noticed you’d shut them, but you do what he tells you and wait for him to show you something that’s worth pausing for. 

Time starts stretching on a little and he’s just there, looking down at you, looking up at him. “What is it?” you ask.

He smiles all the way up to his eyes, looking drunker than the two beers he’s got in him. “Never seen you so quiet. S’like you finally got nothing to say.”

“I don’t.” It’s real empty in here. “You better make the most of it.”

You would’ve expected a laugh from that, but he just comes back like he’s starving for you, scraping those fingertips up your sides ’til the flesh is bumped over your ribs. And you don’t know if he takes his shirt off, or you do, cause your hands and his hands are starting to be one big hand-bundle, like they’re fighting for something, and clothes are the united enemy. You just about got used to the feeling of his chest resting on yours when all of a sudden it’s a whole different feeling: bare skin, and sweat, and grey, curling chest hair—and he’s got more tattoos under there, so many, you’re gonna have to ask him to sit real still afterwards just to get a look at them all.

“Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“You figure that hand of yours might wanna…?” 

He answers without making you say it, pulling your jeans down and going along with them so he can get them all the way off. Over the ankles and onto the floor next to his own. By the time he’s coming back up the bed, you’re lifting your hips to meet him, and that hand, well, you know, if he weren’t kissing you again you might’ve sworn right into his pretty face. 

“Like that?” he says.

You nod and he keeps on going, his palm as hot as the rest of you feels. He didn’t even take your underwear off and it’s still the best attention that part of you has ever been lucky enough to receive. Why did you wait so long for this? Why did he?

“Hey?”

“What?” You blink like you’ve been dreaming.

“I said, you got a condom?”

“Did you?” You can’t focus on nothing when he’s touching you like that. “I don’t know,” you sigh, “maybe?”

“Maybe?”

“Does it matter?”

Oh, and that was a knife through old rope, cause he’s cut you loose. His hand comes free and he’s pushing back on the mattress to look at you properly, chain dangling between your gaze and his, with a real serious face on him. Too serious for a man poking that thing into your thigh the way he is. 

“Course it matters,” he says, in a voice you ain’t able to label yet, “you don’t think we should—“

“Should what?” You know you’re annoyed at least, that’s clear enough in your own words. Something in you’s decided that before your brain has. “We don’t have to, you know, we can just—it’s whatever, Johnny, come on. If you don’t wanna fuck without one we can just work around it.”

But you’re not stupid, as much as he’s acting like you might be right now, and you can tell the moment’s gone. The mood in him, it’s snuffed out. 

“Yeah,” he says, not meaning it at all. “You’re right, yeah.”

He comes down to kiss you again with as much awkwardness and restraint as someone who hasn’t kissed you before. Like he forgot he was just working you between your underwear, or something.  

“Johnny—“

“No, no, come on.”

“You don’t even mean that yourself.” And now you’re the one pushing back to get a look, cause, what the fuck? “Let’s just. Yeah.”

He rolls off you like a dead log loose of its truck. 

“It doesn’t matter,” you tell him, knowing that his next word is gonna be—

“Sorry.”

“For what? Let’s just plan better next time.”

“I can’t risk, you know…” He rubs one hand over his forehead and the other over his stomach. “I already got two kids.”

“You really don’t gotta make this more awkward than it needs to be, Johnny.” Because, yeah, it’s no big deal, and yeah, you get it, and really, yeah, you still got to know what those hands of his are capable of. So all in all, “I liked it.”

He says nothing back. “I liked it,” you tell him again, but he’s a damn brick wall already.

God help a man when his ego’s hurting. 

“You been hiding all that from me?” you try, turning onto your side so you can look at him, so you can run a thumb down the curves of his chest like that. It doesn’t do much, but he puts a hand around your wrist, and he smiles a little. “I might never let you leave again,” you tell him. 

He snorts through his nose. “You’re the one that left me.”

And he’s true enough that you can’t even argue back. 

Instead, you do that thing that you really should work on not doing, and you ask, “Why did Betty leave?”

Credit where credits due, he knows you enough by now to take it well, knows you don’t mean it any other way than how you said it, and he likes you enough, too, that he don’t run away from you asking this time. 

Cause you’ve asked him before, and you didn’t get any sort of answer then. But this time, in your almost room, with his clothes in a heap and his palm over your pulse, he thinks about it. Really thinks. Then he says three things, up to your ceiling, sure, without moving or looking at you, but he says ‘em. 

First, he says, “She didn’t like the club. Said I was picking that over her and the kids.”

Then he says, “She thought I was try’na be someone I’m not. That Benny and…y’know.” He waves his free hand above him. “That they’re bad influences.”

And then, after a little quiet, and a little up and down on his chest with your fingertip—cause you’re being good for once and not saying nothing until he gets all his words out—he says, “There wasn’t. We didn’t, we couldn’t love on each other anymore.”

“What d’you mean?” you ask, once he stops talking for good. 

He itches under it, glancing sideways at you. “I mean, she went to bed and I went to bed and that was it. We weren’t sleeping together anymore.”

“Never?”

He makes a withering sort of noise. “I don’t even remember the last time.”

And you realise, that even with the mess upon mess that led to this point, somehow, under all that, you ended up with a Johnny that was comfortable. A Johnny that was telling you things you’d wondered for weeks, things you thought he’d rather take to his grave than share with you. Sure, you didn’t get past his hands in your pants, but you got whatever the hell is happening here, right now, and that’s worth more than any good fuck. 

You go up on your elbows. “What happened?”

He shrugs. “Nothin’ happened. Marriage happened.”

“People get married and still fuck each other, Johnny.”

“Yeah? And you’d know that?”

“Well, alright, maybe not first hand but…” 

“It just changes,” he says, sharp with it, cause he either hates you saying so, or he knows that you’re right about it. 

“Was it you or her?” you ask. “That stopped wanting to.”

He doesn’t answer right away, but he looks guilty, not hurt, so you figure that means it was him. “Betty’s always been pretty,” he says, real fair with it. An answer without injury. “Don’t know what it was.”

You hum, thinking on it. Though, not really, cause this is the sort of conversation that flies right by, only to get caught in a net three miles down, which is when you’ll really start doing the thinking on it. And right now, it’s him on his back, head in your pillows, you leaning over him like you do it every night, and you don’t wanna miss that.  

“Do you.” You start asking something new, but then stop when you imagine yourself saying it, imagine the words out your mouth and into Johnny’s ear. You don’t like how it looks or how it sounds; asking something like that would make you seem real small. Insecure, you know? And that’s not you at all. 

Instead you try, “I don’t mind if you,” but then you give up on that one too. 

And now you’ve said two things without finishing them, right after Johnny admitted something precious to him, and he’s starting to adjust himself like he’s planning on going somewhere. 

“Johnny,” you say. You didn’t mean to make him nervous.

“See, yeah,” he’s nodding, and pulling away so that he can sit himself on the edge. He’s already decided what you were gonna say, how you would’ve said it. “See, now you’re figuring out what I knew all along,” he says.

“What’s that mean?”

“You’re realising I’m not who you think I am.”

“What? Sit down. Johnny.”

“I gotta go.”

Gotta go? You’re over to his side of the bed, watching him pull his jeans from the floor, a real strong heartbeat in your throat. You hadn’t even decided what to say yourself and he’s already punishing you for the idea of it.  

“I’m not figuring out nothin,” you tell him, feeling like you’re pleading for something you hadn’t planned on losing. 

“Won’t marry you, can’t fuck you,” he turns to look at you, “you gonna lie to me and say I can give you what you want?”

You stare at him like he’s grown a new fucking head. And you admit, it’s the first time you’ve ever been mad enough to get nasty with him, because he’s talking all kinds of crazy. “You gonna stop fucking acting like you read minds?” you snap. “I never said that or thought it, Johnny. And you wouldn’t fucking think so if you ever asked me how I was feeling every now and then.”

He nods in that wandering, shaking sort of way, like he expected you to say it. “Yeah, yeah, well, I’m saving you the trouble of explaining it.”

You laugh once. But he means it. “Alright, fuck you, then.”

“Yeah, fuck me,” he agrees, half dressed and dumb-looking. “Real nice.”

“Kill a good thing for no fucking reason.” You find his shirt on the mattress beside you and throw it at him, limp like a child, but who cares. “Dumbest fucking reaction I’ve ever seen to nothin’ in my whole fucking life,” you tell him, feeling hot under the skin for all the wrong reasons. “Can’t even have a normal conversation anymore.”

He stops, his shirt on one arm and open over his chest. “Ask me then,” he says, still talking like he’s right and you’re wrong. Like he knows what you don’t.

You scoff. “Ask what, Johnny?” 

“What you were gonna ask me before.”

You laugh in a real soulless way, one you hear without feeling, like someone else did it for you. “I was gonna ask if you thought I was better looking than she was,” you admit, because what the fuck else can you do, “but then I decided that’d make me look too fuckin’ insecure, so I didn’t.”

He stares. Any sort of reply he might’ve had waiting to go just fumbles behind his lips, unspoken. 

“Clearly,” you carry on, “I should’ve been more worried about you feeling that way. I mean, what the fuck did you think I was gonna say, Johnny? Cause you seem to be real certain there’s a fuckin’ problem somewhere.”

“Nothin’,” he says, tossing it at you really, like a spent cigarette. “Forget it.”

“Really? You’re gonna start something and then—”

But his big hunking boots are already getting shoved on, and his belt buckles all done up, and you don’t need any other clues to know that this is done with. Flame well and truly snuffed. 

He’s ready to walk out on you. After that argument, after the thing before that argument. After you had heard he set a fucking bar on fire and didn’t even leave him for it. 

“You at least gonna see me again?” you shout after him, sitting on the bed still, cause God knows you won’t be following him to the door. He knows the way sure enough. “Gonna come talk to me when you’re a little less…?”

“Jesus.” He pauses by the stairs, looking back at you through the doorway for a second. “You ever get tired of asking so many questions?” he says. “You ever just think about letting stuff be?”

Well, no, is the answer, but you’re too shocked to even give it to him. 

“Why should I?” you ask, knowing he won’t hear cause he’s already gone. 

Shit.

You sink into the mattress that stinks of him still. So much for kissing instead of arguing, sure was a stupid fucking idea. 

__________

Kathy’s plan had been to put you up in the guest room and then make her way back to her own room for the night. But once the two of you got to talking, she ended up passing out on the bed right next to you at some ungodly small hour of the morning. Neither of you were even under the blanket—just fell asleep hugging pillows while you talked and rehashed new news about old friends and older rivals. The types of conversations you always have to have when you see someone for the first time in a long time.

You were up before Kathy was, and you couldn’t help laughing when you saw her still laid up in bed beside you. As quietly and carefully as you could, you slipped out of bed and grabbed a fresh set of clothes to change into. You crept down the hall to the bathroom to change and brush your teeth, make yourself something of a presentable human for the day.

Heading downstairs, you made your way to the kitchen to put a pot of coffee on, maybe even look to see what there was to make breakfast with. The least you could do for Kathy for letting you crash was making a meal or two here and there. Measuring out coffee grounds, you leaned and braced yourself against the counter while you waited for the coffee to brew. You were no stranger to late nights, but staying up late after traveling all day always wore on you differently.

The only other noise in the house was the soft thudding sound that got closer and closer to you. Turning to look at the doorway to the kitchen, you were expecting to see Kathy but instead Benny materialized. He was wearing a different version of the same outfit he’d had on the day before—t-shirt and jeans. Now he was just down to his socks instead of his boots.

“Morning,” you offered up with a smile, unable to hide the tiredness in your voice.

He nodded. “Mornin’.” He gestured to the coffee pot. “’Nough for everybody?”

You laughed. “Yeah, should be.” You turned so that you could face him directly. “Sorry I stole Kathy from ya last night,” you joked.

He smiled, gave a little hum of amusement in place of a laugh, like it was still too early for that yet. “It’s good. Usually, it’s…” he trailed off, and you wondered if it was just a side effect of it being morning or if he just thought better of saying whatever the thought was to you, “Yeah, it’s good.”

“Then I take it back,” you joked. “I’m not sorry at all.”

Another tiny grin, and you were waiting for either the banter to continue, or for him to pick up a new topic of conversation. Instead, you were met with silence. You couldn’t quite call it an uncomfortable silence because Benny looked right at home in the middle of it. That fact alone had you smiling a bit—Kathy did make the express point to tell you that he was one of the quiet ones. When she first told you that you wondered how that would even work, but apparently opposites really do attract sometimes. Life’s funny that way. You never considered yourself a chatterbox, especially not stacked up against someone like Kathy, but Benny sure had you feeling like you might be close with how strong the impulse was to say something else.

The two of you stood there, you leaning against the counter, Benny half-perched on the edge of the small kitchen table. The coffee pot slowly dripped and the two of you watched it with the same amount of attention you’d give a movie at drive-ins. A yawn was creeping its way over the horizon and you tried to stop it. When you couldn’t, you did your best to hide it behind your hand.

“Talks all night once she really gets goin’,” Benny remarked with a smile.

You glanced over at him, but he was still staring at the coffee pot. “Hm?”

Another drip, enough to continue keeping his attention elsewhere. “Kath.”

Once the recognition hit you, you laughed. “Yeah. Plus, y’know, it’s been a while I guess. Least since we’ve been able to talk face-to-face.”

Now he looked at you, a knowing gleam in his eyes as he smiled. “Still.”

You matched his expression, both of you seeming to have the same understanding. “Yeah, still.”

Then it was quiet again. It felt a little easier now, though. There was something comforting in his acceptance of who exactly Kathy was. If you were being generous, which at this point you had no reason not to be, you’d even say there was something in his eyes that seemed appreciative of it. Maybe he knew he was too quiet. Maybe he liked that she talked enough for the both of them.

As you were grabbing a pair of coffee mugs, you heard the thuds coming from the ceiling. You smiled as you poured out coffee for both you and Benny. The steps crossed the ceiling, then stopped. Then a moment later started up again until they disappeared and turned into the creaking of the staircase.

“Cream? Sugar?” you asked as you held out the coffee mug to Benny.

He shook his head, taking it from you before finally allowing himself to sit at the table. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.” You turned back around and started to rummage around for cream and sugar for yourself. Benny could do what he liked but you weren’t ever the type of person to drink your coffee black. You were dropping another heaping teaspoon of sugar into your coffee when Kathy made it to the kitchen. You were smiling to yourself before you even looked up at her as you said, “Mornin’ there, Sleepin’ Beauty.”

She laughed as she went and draped herself over Benny’s shoulder. She kissed his temple before turning her attention to you. “Why’d you go and let me stay up so late? God, I’m not young like I used to be, you know?”

You rolled your eyes as you stirred your coffee, satisfied with the light brown color it was turning. “Right, yeah, you’re a real old maid, now.” You took a sip from your mug. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

You fixed her up a cup, that muscle memory not having fully left you despite your time apart. She was sitting across the table from Benny when you set it down in front of her. She cupped it with both hands for a moment, savoring the warmth of it before she even took the first sip. Looked like something right out of a cartoon.

After drinking nearly half of it in one go, she asked you, “What’s the big plans for today, then? What’d ya miss the most that you gotta go and see?”

Part of you wanted to sit with them and talk, but it felt like your body was fighting against it. Like you’d spent too long sitting in your car yesterday and now you were making up for it. You leaned back against the counter again, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m already here!”

Kathy laughed in the type of way that had her falling back against the support of the chair, half-empty coffee mug still clutched in her hands. “You’re a real funny-guy.”

You beamed. “The funniest.”

“Seriously though.” She took another sip of her coffee, still partially slumped in her chair. “What’re you gonna do now that you’re home?”

If only you knew the answer to that. It felt like everything had happened so fast, and suddenly here you were back in Kathy’s kitchen again. Staring down into your cup of coffee like it was going to give you answers, you tried to figure out what to tell her. This wasn’t even the first time you found yourself crashing at Kathy’s place because you didn’t have any other plan. Last time was years ago, before she was even living in this house, and it was because of a bad breakup. Still, though, it felt familiar. You wondered if Kathy thought so too.

“Gotta look for a place,” you finally said.

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. Shock propelled her forward and now she was leaning against the edge of the table. “Look for a place? Jesus. Tellin’ me you’re just comin’ to visit only to find out—”

“I didn’t tell you anythin’, actually,” you corrected her. “You told me to come visit before I could tell you what was really goin’ on.”

She scoffed, but what had more of your attention than that was the fact that Benny let out a chuckle. He was smiling and shaking his head as he stared off at nothing in particular. You felt yourself smiling then, that sensation of being seen that you’d had before. Something told you that the two of them had found themselves in a similar conversation at one point or another.

“So, what?” she asked. “Got no job no more and you got no place to stay?”

That about summed it up. All you could do was shrug and nod. “Pretty much. You know, creeks and paddles.”

Kathy shook her head. “You’re lucky I don’t have a paddle or I’d knock you over the head with it.” You and Benny both laughed at that but Kathy was still just shaking her head. You could see it in her eyes that her brain was going at a mile a minute. “Well that’s what we’re gonna do today, then.”

You took another sip of your coffee and set it down on the counter next to you. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“We’re gonna go and find you someplace to live. Can’t be havin’ you bummin’ around like some sorta—”

“Like some sorta bum?” you finished with a laugh.

“Glad you think it’s funny.”

You held your hands out. “It’s my life, I think I’m allowed to find it a little funny.”

It was clear on Kathy’s face, the way that most of her thoughts and feelings were, that she was trying to come up with the perfect response to that. You wanted to just tell her not to worry, that it wasn’t going to do her any good, but you knew that there was no use in that. Kathy took care of people. That’s what she did, that’s who she was. She’d taken care of you on more than one occasion. This would be another tally to add to the count, not that she ever saw it that way.

You’d be more worried about it if you didn’t always end up figuring it out one way or another. Wouldn’t have made it this long or gotten this far if you didn’t, right? Your life had always felt like a series of bumps and potholes in the road. You’d get a smooth stretch of highway for a while and then something else would come along that threw off your alignment. This was just the most recent thing.

“Will it make you feel better if we go look for a place?” you asked, like it was an olive branch for your joke that she clearly hadn’t found very funny.

“Yeah, actually, it would. It’d make me feel a lot better to know that my friend isn’t gonna be driftin’ around town like some kinda hobo.”

You choked on your laughter as you tried to stifle it but you couldn’t. A lot of Kathy’s humor came out in moments when she wasn’t even necessarily trying to be funny, which was one of the many things that you enjoyed about her. Whatever words popped into her head came flying right out of her mouth and you never got tired of it.

“Alright, alright. We can look for a place then.” You dragged your hands down your face. “Gotta take your car though.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

You laughed. “All my shit’s in mine. Couldn’t find the shotgun seat even if you tried.”

That earned another quiet chuckle from Benny. Whether he had places he actually needed to get to, or he’d simply had his fill of watching the two of you bat the conversation back and forth, he stood up from the table. He downed the rest of his coffee and put the mug in the sink before pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

He kissed Kathy before he lit one. “Gotta go.”

Kathy nodded as she watched him grab his denim vest that was by the front door. “We’ll see you later!” she called after him.

You could hear the soft thuds of him shoving his feet into his boots. The next sound was the door opening and shutting. Neither of you said anything as you listened for the motorcycle engine. It wasn’t until the sound had almost completely faded off into the distance that either of you said anything to each other again.

Kathy finished off the last of her coffee. “Let me shower and put some clean clothes on and then we’ll get goin’.”

You chuckled. “Kath, we don’t gotta—”

“Oh yes we do. Yes we do gotta.” She stood up. “And you’re gonna tell me all about everythin’. No more secrets, you know?”

“I wasn’t keepin’—”

“No more, alright?”

It was a fight that you knew you weren’t going to win. So instead, you nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

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When you had been on the phone with her earlier and she’d extended the invite to come and visit, she ended the call with, “I’ll still be cookin’ when you get here, so I’ll just leave the door unlocked. Let yourself in, y’know? See you when you get here.” Then she hung up before you could get to the real reason you were calling her up in the first place.

So now here you were. You’d parked right in front of her house. She’d made a remark on the phone earlier about how for once there wouldn’t be any bikes on her lawn so you wouldn’t have to worry about looking at all that. You wouldn’t have known that was even a typical issue for her these days, though. Last time you were living in Chicago she was still with her now-ex-husband. You’d only heard about this new guy in passing a couple times and one of those times was Kathy telling you with a bit of a giggle over the phone that she’d gone off and married the guy. Benny.

“Oh, I think you’ll like him. He’s not like that last guy, you know? He’s quiet. He’s a nice guy. Not like those other guys in his club.” She said it like it contextualized things for you, but it didn’t. You were just as clueless about who Benny was as you’d always been.

There was one bike on the street. It was parked directly across from where you’d parked your car. You had no one to ask at the moment but you figured that it was more than a safe assumption to say that it was Benny’s bike. Motorcycles had never been your thing, or Kathy’s for that matter, so you had no idea if it was a nice bike or not. They all looked more or less the same to you. You stared at it for a few seconds longer before turning and heading up towards her front door.

Even though she’d told you to just let yourself in, you still raised your hand to knock on the door when you’d gotten to it. You shook your head at yourself. There was no point to it, but you still lightly rapped your knuckles against it as you pushed it open to let yourself in.

Once you walked in, you could hear the sound of the sink running in the kitchen. You could also faintly hear Kathy’s voice as she spoke, presumably, to Benny. You called out a soft, “Hello,” but you knew that there was no chance she heard it over everything else.

You carefully walked through the house. It looked pretty much how you remembered it—different knick-knacks and pictures scattered around but the setup was the same. She’d never been too much of a nester beyond what was practical and comfortable.

Just as you were getting to the kitchen, you heard her start talking again. This time you could actually make out the words she was saying. “I just worry about him, you know? I worry about what kinda girl he’s gonna shack up with. Betty was great, you know. She was somethin’ else. He needs someone else like that.”

“Don’t,” Benny said, voice firm but still relatively monotone.

“What? I didn’t say nothin’! I just think he could use someone nice. Don’t want him endin’ up like some’a those other bums in the club. Or with one’a them girls who, God, who’s gonna go on and on about somethin’ or other all the time.”

Realizing that you could only stand out of view and eavesdrop for so long, you stepped into the kitchen doorway and cleared your throat. “Hey, Kathy.”

Her head snapped in your direction, eyes wide as she smiled at you. “Well look who it is!” She dropped the dish that she’d been in the middle of cleaning, letting it clatter right back into the sink basin before grabbing a towel off the counter to dry her hands. As soon as she did, she tossed it right back and made her way over to you, wrapping you in a hug. “Was startin’ to think that you forgot how to get here.”

You laughed as you returned the embrace. There was something so comforting about her, always had been. “Took me a minute,” you joked, “but I figured it back out eventually.”

When you pulled away from her, the realization that there was someone else in the room hit you. It must’ve been on your face, too, because recognition came over her features as well. Her eyes darted over to the table where Benny was sitting before she placed a hand on your shoulder and gently maneuvered you so that you were facing him.

She was looking at Benny, and you noticed that sparkle in her eyes that you hadn’t seen in a long time, and not just because you hadn’t been in Chicago to see it for a few years. “Benny, I told you, yeah?” She gestured vaguely to you. “I don’t gotta…” she trailed off, opting to end the sentence with a dismissive wave of her hand instead. She looked at you and gestured to Benny instead. “This is Benny.”

You laughed, unable to pretend that you didn’t feel a little awkward about it all. You held your hand out for him to shake. “Nice to meet you. Kathy’s said some real nice things about you, y’know.”

He cracked a small smile as he reached and shook your hand. It wasn’t overdone but it still felt genuine. You could tell how he’d gotten Kathy hook, line, and sinker so quickly. “You too.”

Whether he meant it was also nice to meet you, or that Kathy had also said nice things about you, you weren’t sure. The fact that his attention quickly returned to his cigarette perched on the edge of the ashtray told you that you weren’t going to get any more clarification than that.

“How was the drive?” Kathy asked as she turned back towards the fridge. Before you could answer her first question, she followed up with another. “You want somethin’ to drink? Beer? Pop? Water?”

There was no point in trying to say no to everything outright—she’d make sure you got settled with something whether you wanted to or not. It still got a chuckle out of you nonetheless. “Water’s fine.”

She nodded, motioning for you to sit down at the table with Benny as she went to grab a glass from the cabinet. “So?” she asked as she turned the faucet on. “The drive?”

You were sitting across the table from Benny, but you were opting to stare at the back of Kathy’s head rather than at him. He was watching you—that much you could feel. It just seemed easier to look at her instead. “Wasn’t bad. Long, you know?”

“Yeah,” she said with a laugh as she turned the sink back off. “That’s what you get for leavin’ me.”

Both of you were laughing at the comment as she stepped over to hand you your glass. You accepted it with a quiet thank you before saying, “Yeah, serves me right I guess,” with enough humor in your voice to match her tone.

It got quiet for a beat after that, quiet enough for you to hear the ticking of the kitchen timer for whatever was in the oven. Kathy turned back to the dishes that she’d been washing when you walked in. The sink was almost empty—no point in abandoning it now. It wasn’t as though you and Kathy really had the relationship where you felt like you truly had to entertain each other on visits anyway. That type of ease and comfort was always something you appreciated about her. You appreciated it even more once you moved and realized it was hard to find other friends like that.

“So,” Kathy spoke over her shoulder back to you, “how long’s the visit this time?”

You chuckled, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot of commitment to it. The glass of water she’d given you bought you a few extra seconds as you picked it up and took a sip. At that point it was impossible to pretend that you didn’t notice the fact that Benny was looking at you again. It wasn’t creepy in the way that most men tended to stare—he wasn’t leering. But he was definitely trying to figure out something, and you wondered if you sitting there avoiding the answer to Kathy’s question was another part of the puzzle.

“Not sure yet,” you finally answered. You also noticed the way that your response didn’t seem to cause any change in Benny’s expression.

Kathy laughed as she picked up another dish. “What’s that s’posed to mean? You just tell your job ‘See ya sometime’ and take off?”

Embarrassment made a sick warmth creep up the sides of your neck. “Not exactly.”

“What—” she stopped herself short and turned around so that she was facing you. Luckily enough for her the dishes were done and she could put all of her focus on you. Walking over, she rested her hands on the back of Benny’s chair as she studied your face. The only noise was the ticking of the timer. “Out with it, then. What’s goin’ on?”

You knew that you only had a few seconds before she started in on you again. You went from looking at your half-empty glass of water to looking at Benny, like he was about to give you some kind of Hail Mary pass to get out of this entire conversation. The tiny raise of his eyebrows let you know that you were on your own.

Shifting your gaze from her husband back to Kathy, you sighed and said, “I quit.”

Kathy’s eyes blew wide open. She leaned forward, not caring at all that she was right by Benny’s ear as she said, “What?!”

He hardly flinched, and you wished that you could say that you had the same lack of a reaction. Instead, you recoiled. This wasn’t a conversation you were looking to have with her on day one of being back in Chicago. You didn’t really know when you were going to bring it up to her at all, actually, but you certainly weren’t planning on getting into it so soon. And in front of her extremely quiet husband that you’d never met before. What a first impression.

“I just, y’know what, can we not do this right now? Please? I just got here, Kath, and—”

“Yeah, no better time to talk about it, then!”

“I just—”

Your sentence was interrupted by the timer sitting on the counter. You’d never been so happy before to hear such a shrill sound. Kathy groaned and shook her head. She looked at you for another moment longer before begrudgingly turning so she could prevent dinner from burning. Judging by the look on her face as she turned around, you wouldn’t be surprised if she made empty threats about not feeding you and making you fend for yourself your first night back in town. She’d never follow through on it, of course, but it sounded good to say it.

While you could only hear every couple of words as Kathy grumbled to herself, it was enough to get the gist. She was shaking her head as she grabbed oven mitts and yanked the oven open. Taking a deep breath, you looked at Benny and gave him your best apologetic look and shrug. He cracked a smile at that and gave a tiny wave of his hand that was holding onto his cigarette. A wordless way of telling you not to worry about it. There was a little bit of amusement in his eyes to go along with the tiny smile on his face, the type of look to let you know he’d been in your shoes before and probably would be again.

When Kathy had mentioned over the phone that she was still going to be cooking when you got there, you hadn’t bothered to ask her what she was making. You knew it definitely wasn’t the time now to ask, but whatever it was smelled delicious.

 As you were trying to figure out how to navigate the conversation that Kathy wasn’t about to let you escape, you heard her sucking in a deep breath. You knew that sound—it always came right before some sort of onslaught that wasn’t going to let you get a word in edge-wise. You could rant with the best of them but if Kathy decided it was her turn up to bat, there was no stopping her once she got started. There was nothing for you to do except to sink back into your seat and get ready to listen.

It almost looked like Benny gave you a tiny nod as he reached and snubbed out his cigarette in the ash tray. Standing up from his chair, he stepped over and managed to catch Kathy right as she turned around to start peppering you with questions and opinions on the situation she didn’t have a full grasp on yet.

His hand landed on her hip when she turned, and he used the momentum of her little spin to get her all but tumbling right into him. She was huffing and rolling her eyes at him like she knew exactly what his game was, but she wasn’t trying to stop him or pull away from him. With the hand that wasn’t on her hip, he reached and tangled his fingers with hers.

“C’mon,” he spoke quietly, a little mumbled like he was still holding a cigarette between his lips but there wasn’t anything there, “’s been a long day, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

He kissed her temple, a quick little thing, just enough to interrupt her sentence. She made herself look annoyed with him for a respectable amount of time before she allowed herself to smile. Once he saw that Benny smiled right back, like he knew that the situation was handled at least for now.

“So don’t worry ‘bout it right now. Worry about the rest tomorrow or somethin’.”

She made a big show of rolling her eyes as she looked at Benny and then over to you. “This what it’s gonna be, then?” She looked back and forth between you again. “You come inta town and now it’s both’a you teamin’ up against me?”

Then the three of you were laughing and you were feeling a lot better about it all. You were thankful for Benny, because you knew there was no way you were going to weasel out of that conversation on your own. Even if all it bought you was an extra day, it was one you would take. Looking back and forth between Kathy and Benny, it was good to see her so smitten over someone. Even with her last husband you never remembered her looking at him like that.

“Alright,” Kathy pushed Benny away dramatically, “get some plates out for us then, ya big buffoon. Jeeze.” She looked at you. “I tell ya, this guy…” she trailed off as she started to laugh and shake her head.

You chuckled and took a sip of water. “Eh, he don’t seem too bad.”

Kathy was smiling as Benny set three plates out on the table for them. “I guess not.”

He stole another quick kiss. “I can eat but then I gotta go.”

“Everythin’ alright?” you asked out of habit. It was only after the words were out that you realized it wasn’t any of your business.

Benny didn’t seem fazed. Maybe being married to Kathy got him used to being around people who were full of questions and opinions to share. “Yeah. Club meetin’.”

You nodded like you knew what the hell he was talking about. “Oh, right. Yeah.”

He chuckled, able to see right through it. But he did you the courtesy of not calling you out directly.

Kathy stepped up, putting down silverware for everyone. “Yeah, big ol’ get-together for the club. Real fun times, you know.” Benny’s hand landed back on her hip again and before he could even say anything she held her hand up to stop him. “I know, I know. Met you after a meetin’ and all that. I’m just sayin’.” She looked at you. “I’ll bring ya to see what’s goin’ on.”

You chuckled. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She turned back to her pan that was starting to cool on top of the stove. “Not today, but you know, since you’re gonna be here awhile.”

You thought about making a crack about finding a husband of your own if she sent you stumbling into a place like that since it seemed to work out so well for her, but you figured that you shouldn’t push your luck just yet. Instead you just smiled to yourself and nodded even though she wasn’t looking at you. You heard a quiet huff that almost could’ve passed for a laugh and looked up to see Benny shaking his head at you as he sat back down at the table. He didn’t say anything, but the look he gave you let him know that whatever it was you were thinking, it was probably smart on your part to keep it to yourself.

+ bonus = hands