We both laugh, and for a second, it’s just us again. That version of us that existed in a quieter, braver corner of history. I sip my coffee, and the silence between us hums. Not awkward, not heavy, just…full.
“So,” I say casually, “what’s it like living in a gingerbread house?”
He groans, but he’s smiling. “Whimsical. Slightly haunted. I swear the doorknobs smell like vanilla.”
“They probably are vanilla,” I deadpan. “Liam got a deal on themed hardware one year and went feral on Etsy.”
“That explains the peppermint-patterned toilet seat.”
“Dear god, they kept that thing?” I shudder. “I tried to ‘accidentally’ break it last Christmas.”
He laughs again, eyes crinkling at the corners. That same expression from all those years ago, when I made him laugh so hard during theater warmups, he almost fell off the stage.
“You still into theater?” he asks, his voice dipping just a little.
I smile, my heart tugging somewhere sideways. “Sort of. Not in the Shakespearean monologue way, but yeah. Performance still calls me.”
He raises an eyebrow, curious. “What are you doing now?”
I toy with the rim of my coffee cup for a second. “I run a bar now. Took it over after my uncle Rudy passed. Remember him?”
Miles blinks, then his eyes go soft. “Uncle Rudy? God, yeah. He used to sneak us that one Miller High Life on Friday nights if we promised not to act like idiots.”
“And we always did,” I say, laughing. “Act like idiots, I mean. Flirting like no one could tell.”
“Everyone could tell,” Miles says, groaning into his coffee. “We were about as subtle as a fire drill in a church.”
“Yeah, well, it felt private at the time in our little secret booth in the corner.”
Miles looks up at me, the edge of his smile turning wistful. “It wasn’t just the beer. It was you. I never forgot about that booth.”
I feel it like a pinprick in my ribs. Sharp. Real.
He clears his throat gently. “So what did you do with the place after Rudy passed?”
I hesitate. Here we go. The part of who I am now that I have spent more nights wondering about how he would react than I will ever admit. It’s now or never, I guess…though part of me had secretly been banking on the ‘never’ part of that equation. “It’s changed a bit,” I say carefully. “Still has the bones of the old dive bar, but I renovated. Leaned in hard to the performance angle.”
Miles hums, interested. “Yeah? How so?”
I gesture vaguely with my cup, buying time. “Opened it up. Revamped the main space. Added a couple of lounge areas. Better lighting. Better sound. Made it feel less like a place you go to forget your problems and more like a place you go to survive them, escape them if we’re lucky.” I shrug. “And I fixed up the apartment upstairs. That’s where I live now.”
His eyebrows lift. “You live above the bar?”
“Yep. Very glamorous. I wake up to the faint smell of last night’s spilled cocktails. And I leaned fully into the gayness of it all. We are officially Sleighbell Springs’s first and only gay bar.”
He laughs. “That tracks. Rudy would’ve loved that.”
Something warm and bittersweet settles in my chest at the sound of my uncle’s name between us. “Yeah. I think so too.”
Miles takes a sip of his coffee, watching me over the rim. Not staring. Just noticing. He’s always been good at that. Too good. “So,” he says slowly, “you renovated, added lounges, live upstairs, and you’re still not telling me the whole story.”
I blink. “I’m absolutely telling you the story.”
“Uh huh.” He sets his cup down. “You’re telling me the brochure version. There’s more.”
Damn him. I open my mouth to deflect, to make a joke, change the subject, point out the snow or the croissants. But the words stall somewhere between my brain and my tongue. Because he’s right. And because this is always the moment where I decide whether I’m going to shrink or stand tall. The gay bar part doesn’t bother me. God, that’s the easiest sentence in the world. I’ve been out since my sophomore year. I came out with jazz hands and rainbow Converse…and literally no one in town was surprised. Miles knew that. Everyone knew that.
What makes my stomach flip is the other part. The part where I stopped being just Mason Beckett, a small-town queer kid with theater energy, and became something bigger. Louder. Shinier. A version of myself that takes up space in heels and lashes and doesn’t apologize for it.
