He’d floated one way and I’d floated another. We’d lived in the same city going on three years now—since he got back from attending an out of town university—but the first time I’d seen him since he and Ivy had broken up had been at his father’s funeral a month ago.
“No, I was downsized but I still do freelance design work for them and a couple other companies, but my primary job is commissioned artwork at Atra. I also help around the shop, doing bookings and stuff. Tonight I had a late consultation with a friend of Tucker’s. He owns the shop,” I explained and then shut up, not wanting to ramble.
Finn nodded as if he found this interesting. “Sounds like you are putting your talent to good use. I always thought your work was tremendous.”
“Thanks. So what brings you here?”
He looked around. The man hunched over his coffee at the counter hadn’t moved. “I just got off work too.”
“I thought you were flipping houses?”
“Like you, I had a change in jobs.” His voice was grim. It didn’t take a genius to guess the change wasn’t a good one like mine was. Or maybe he was just angry about life right now, which he had every right to be.
“I know this sounds like a stupid Hallmark card, but it does get better.” I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I placed my hand over his folded ones. “I promise.”
He tilted his head back, and his eyes fluttered closed, his ridiculously long lashes feathering across the top of his cheeks. Was he shutting out the pain or me? Or everything?
After long moments of silence, so long and so quiet that I could hear the hum of the refrigeration unit that held bottles of soda and beer behind the cash register, he spoke. “When I was thirteen, my dog Hunter died. Dad and I had bought him when I was four. He’d developed some kind of doggy liver disease, and we had to put him down. That was the worst kind of pain, I thought. But that was like a pin prick, while Dad’s death is like a dull knife dragging itself across my body one painful inch at a time.”
I bit down on my lip so I didn’t cry in front of him. I remembered that pain, and hated that someone I cared about had to suffer it too. “I’m not going to say it’s easy to get over a loss like that; only that it does happen—eventually.”
He snorted, a rough and unhappy sound. “I have been drinking. Not going to lie about that.” His eyes opened halfway, which was probably for the best. The piercing blue came off as too beautiful to be real and too mesmerizing to look away. “But not tonight. Tonight I decided to throw my bottles against the wall instead of drinking them, and because I’m a stupid fuck, I failed to realize I was standing in the splash zone.”
The food arrived before I could respond. He pulled a napkin from the tabletop dispenser and shoved half his fries onto it. “Eat or I won’t be able to.”
Obediently I put a fry into my mouth and watched him dig in. Grief or no grief, he was still eating, which was a good sign. And he didn’t seem drunk. No slurred words, no inappropriate comments.
“Sorry I jumped to conclusions,” I said after polishing off another fry.
“Don’t be. With your past, I can see why you’d be concerned,” he said between bites. My past. He was referring to dealing with my sister’s addictions, which had spiraled out of control after our parents died when she was nineteen.
“She’s better now,” I said. “If you were wondering.”
“Really?” Disbelief was clear in every long drawn-out letter.
“Really. She hit a bad place shortly after her release, but she’s been clean for…” I counted in my head, “almost thirty days.”
“That’s good. Good for her and for you.” He popped the rest of the burger into his mouth and washed it down with the entire glass of water.
“Did you chew that or inhale it?” I laughed, remembering the days he’d linger in our kitchen eating anything and everything Mom would cook.
“I haven’t eaten since noon so if I could have just pressed it into my face and absorbed it via osmosis, I would have.” We shared a laugh, just a small one, but I was breathless by the end. His smile was too much for me, and it was the first one I’d seen from him for so long. It lit up his eyes and revealed the deep creases on the corners of his mouth and his even, perfect white teeth.
“No burgers on the west side of the city?” I joked to disguise my growing and uncomfortable desire for him. Now was not the time nor the place. He was not ever to be mine.
His grin grew wider. “Why do you think I’m here? Trying to avoid being seen by my roommates. I don’t know if you met them at the funeral?” I shook my head. I’d only had eyes for Finn. “I live with four of them. Adam Rees is one.” Adam was a friend of Finn’s from high school. He had a famous father. That was about all I remembered, but I nodded anyway, and he continued. “Their idea of helping me cope is to get me involved in increasingly dangerous activities.”