Chapter 16
BOOKER
“So, let me get this straight,” Seth said, perching himself on a bar stool.
“Are you capable of doing anything straight?”
“Miles stayed the night on Saturday—”
“Because he was too tired to go home. I slept on the couch.”
“—and then practically dragged you fishing—”
“Because he’d agreed to it in exchange for the free drinks thing.”
“—and then after you nearly drowned my rare, precious, highly decorative librarian—”
“I don’t think he’s technically your librarian.”
“—you had a movie night, made him dinner, and let him fall asleep on top of you for so long that you keep wincing when you move or bend,” Seth finished. “Did I miss anything?”
“Is any of that a problem?” I asked, focusing on polishing the bar instead of meeting Seth’s eyes. He’d read me clearly enough without giving him more to go on.
“No,” Seth said. “Except for the part that you obviously haven’t told him how you feel.”
“Sure I have,” I defended. “I told him he was my friend.”
Seth gave me a look that would have made almost anyone else cower.
“You know what he told me?” I asked him, finally risking meeting his eyes.
“He told me I was the only friend he’d ever made for himself.
And then he told me how safe he feels with me while he was more or less sprawled on top of me.
I don’t want to take that away from him. He needs me to be a friend.”
“What about what you need?” Seth asked.
I developed an intense interest in a spot of dirt on one of the brass taps.
Miles had asked me that. If I ever asked for anything for myself.
“I have what I need,” I said. The words came out easy—my mouth was used to forming them. I’d said them often enough that it was starting to feel true. If I said them enough times more, maybe it would be.
“What about what you want?” Seth asked. “Or… I dunno. Where is Miles, anyway? Don’t the two of you usually spend your lunch breaks together like a pair of codependent bunny rabbits?”
I shrugged. I’d seen Miles ducking out of the coffee shop this morning and waved, but he hadn’t noticed me. Too lost in his own thoughts, I figured. Which was fine. It wasn’t as though he owed me attention.
Secretly, I was terrified I’d done something wrong yesterday and now he was avoiding me. I’d been telling myself all morning that one missed wave did not a problem make.
Even if it was a little weird that he hadn’t dropped by for lunch. I’d kind of expected to see him with stitch ’n’ bitch flyers. Not that there was any rush on that. It was nice of him to offer to set it up.
“We’re not actually joined at the hip.”
“No, that’s exactly what I think ought to change,” Seth said. “I have no doubt that if you were sleeping with him I wouldn’t have to worry that he might leave. Who wouldn’t stick around for this?” he asked, waving a hand at me like a game show girl displaying a prize.
“Alex didn’t,” I said, grabbing a glass to polish now that I’d run out of tap handles.
“Okay, what reasonable person wouldn’t?” Seth corrected. “You can’t judge your value based on one extremely wrong assessment.”
“I can. It’s not even hard.” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure the assessment had been wrong. What did I have to offer?
I’d be forty in a few days, I ran a gay bar in a town so small GPS regularly couldn’t find it, and… what?
Everyone loved me as their favorite uncle, their confidante, their friend.
I loved that. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. I just…
“You have so much to give,” Seth said, as though he’d been reading my mind. I wouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn that he could read minds, but it probably had more to do with this not being the first time we’d had this conversation. “More than anyone else I know.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve established that it’s not enough,” I said. “I like Miles. I like spending time with him. I want… I want him to be as happy and comfortable with me as he is now, always. So, I’ll take what I have.”
Seth opened his mouth to protest, but the mail slid in under the door and stopped him. Instead of trying to convince me to take a risk I couldn’t see any point in, he hopped up off the bar stool and went over to collect it.
“Bill,” he said, shuffling the stack. “Junk, another bill, retirement home leaflet…”
I snorted. “My retirement plan is dropping dead behind this bar.”
“You’ve told me.” Seth smiled wryly, shuffling the leaflet to the back of the stack. “This one’s hand-addressed,” he said, passing it over to me and tossing the rest on the bar.
I took it with a raised eyebrow, then tore it open in a hurry when I recognized the handwriting, heart in my mouth.
“Birthday card?” Seth asked, leaning over the bar to get a look at the thick, folded cotton paper with silver-gilt edges that I’d ripped out of the envelope in a panic.
I swallowed my heart back down, where it sank into the floorboards under my feet as I looked at the paper in my hand.
“No,” I murmured after a moment, wondering if it was too early to have a whiskey for the shock. “Alex is getting married.”