Silence.
Then Eve sighs. “I suppose it helps me out if I can track you both down in one place, but Tanner?”
“Yeah?”
“If you hurt each other, I’ll have no problem killing you both.”
She ends the call, and I’m bemused enough to be wide awake—mentally, at least. My body seems stuck in place. I drop my phone. I want to go back to sleep. But I feel guilty about upsetting Eve. I know she worries about me, and her dry parting shot reminds me I’m not the only one on her list. I’ve never seen her and Jax together. Sometimes I forget how close they are. That my friend Eve is his friend too.
A yawn escapes me as I consider my options. I should go home, shower, and get ready for work. More than that, I should find Eve and buy her lunch. But Jax’s bed sucks me back in, and for reasons I can’t explain, I fall asleep again.
It’s midday when I next wake up, and I’m so confused by life I walk home in a daze.
The Riesling delivery has already arrived. Rainn is putting it away. I shoot him an apologetic glance, but he has his headphones in and waves me off without complaint, and I remember why he’s my favorite bartender.
I shoot upstairs for the quickest shower known to man. Rainn is done by the time I get downstairs, so I pack him off to the bakery to take a break and get something to eat. With him gone, I’m alone again, and for the first time since I took the lifeline job at the bar, I don’t like it. Rainn doesn’t say much when he’s into his audiobooks, but even his silence is company.
I’m ridiculously pleased to see Molly when she shows up early for her shift. Pleased enough that I let her hug me and don’t comment on the fact that she’s clearly been crying.
“Wow.” She regards me over the top of oversized gold-framed glasses. “Did you get laid or something?”
“Watch your mouth.”
Her watery grin turns impish. She flits away to replace the tea lights on the tables and because I’m in the strangest mood ever, I follow her around. “What are you singing on Sunday?”
Molly scrapes wax from spent candles into the tin container colloquially known as the “melt bucket.” “I don’t know. My dorm mate was supposed to be playing fiddle for me again, but he’s rain-checked me until next month, so I’m stuck with my boyfriend playing guitar, and he’s flaky as hell.”
“I thought you played guitar?”
“I do, but I can’t sing at the same time because I’m a freak who likes to wave her hands around.”
“When you sing?”
“All the time, actually. It’s why I keep flinging napkins across the bar. I’m not just doing it to annoy you.”
“You don’t annoy me.”
“Yeah, well. I annoy everyone else. Ask my boyfriend. How’s Jax?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because he was staying with you all that time, so I figured you were friends.”
“We are.”
“So…?”
It dawns on me that she really does want to know how he is, and that she expects me to know the answer. More than that, she expects me to tell her, and there’s no logical reason why I shouldn’t. But when I open my mouth to speak, nothing comes out. I want her to know that Jax was smiling when he left his apartment this morning, and I don’t care that she’ll know I was there with him, but giving voice to what’s between us feels dangerous. As if talking about it makes it real enough to break it.
“He’s good as far as I know,” I say eventually. “He’s going to shoot the open-mic night, so you’ll see him then.”
Molly rolls her eyes. “I know that, you silly man. He told me last time he was here.”
She wanders off. I watch her go with too much Jax on my mind to decipher how I managed to screw up such a simple conversation. I miss him, and not knowing when I’ll see him again makes my stomach clench. I’m worried about Gabi too. I haven’t heard from him since he went dark and neither has Eve. It’s not an unusual situation—he’s been gone for six months at a time before—but my brain has forgotten how to think reasonably. I’ve seen the worst happen too many times to imagine the best, and even the sinful image of Jax coming in my hand isn’t enough to stop me from spending a perfectly chill shift stuck in my own head.
And you know what? It’s hella boring being a terminal drama queen.
It’s hungry work too. I take a break and go upstairs to raid my refrigerator. Eve has left enough mac and cheese for a small army, and there’s a note on the dish.
