“Pale ale for me,” he says.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” I say, with a point at Lauro, which makes him laugh.
“So. Pretty gnarly scar,” Lauro says, with the sort of conversational rudeness that extremely hot and charismatic people get to use at will. “How’d you get it?”
“Shattered my arm in an accident about a year ago,” Raff replies easily, like he didn’t almost lose the hand. Like he, Vin, and I didn’t almost die. He lifts the hand and does a few stiffly crooked extensions with his fingers. “She ain’t pretty, but she’ll do.”
“I think functionalispretty,” Lauro says, and it might be the first genuine thing I’ve heard him say. He leans into me. “Hey, did you tell him about your epic discovery in class yesterday?”
I laugh and lift my face toward the heavens, grateful for the round of drinks the bartender has just delivered. “I left that part out, actually.”
“Oh, come on.” Lauro is grinning like a tiger.
“Okay,fine.Raff—oh, Lauro, this is Raffi by the way—anyways, Raff, I may have inadvertently discovered that all noses bear a passing resemblance to penises.”
Raff stares at me blankly for a half second and then his jaw absolutely drops.
Lauro leans back and howls with laughter.
“Roz. Roz.Roz.Did you just make it so that I can never look another person in the face without accidentally thinking of penises? Did you justruinfaces for me forever?” Raffi demands.
“By that logic she just ruined penises for you, too,” Lauro says, still grinning.
“No.” Raffi is shaking his head aggressively. “Nothingcould ever ruin penises for me.”
“A man after my own heart,” Lauro replies with his chronically flirtatious grin.
Lauro’s hand grazes my shoulder as he reaches for his drink and I straighten up. That prickly feeling is back, only this time I feel as if someone is staring at me with the fire of a thousand suns. I turn and quickly scan the room. No one is looking my way except for…oh.
I jolt when I realize that it’s Vin standing at the door of the bar, having just come in.
I’ve suddenly got cymbals where my heart just was. I haven’t seen him since I bolted from our apartment last night. I’m assuming he got out of the shower and turned into a human question mark when he saw that I was gone. I’m aware that we live together and that at some point we would be seeing one another again. But still, I did not expect him to be here. “Did you invite Vin?” I ask Raff, hopefully nonchalantly.
But it’s not exactly easy to be nonchalant when a man is cutting through a crowd like a great white shark.
“He texted me earlier to see if we were hanging out and I invited him. You made it!” Raffi says as Vin reaches us. He’s leaning backwards into Vin’s arms and reaching up to pat his cheek.
Vin texted Raff to ask if he and I were hanging out? Is he checking up on my whereabouts?
“Meet our new friend, Lauro,” Raff says. “This is my brother, Vin.”
Vin shakes Lauro’s hand, then leans against me in order to ask the bartender for a Guinness.
“I only have it in the can,” she says, clearly, loudly, in the queen’s English.
“Hm?” Vin says, then uses his shoulder to get in between Lauro and me so that he can lean on the bar and talk to the bartender.
Lauro raises his eyebrows and moves around to Raff’s other side, happily squeezing in next to him. Vin finishes ordering his drink and then straightens up. If this were a year ago, he’d have put a hand on the back of my neck and sucked on my bottom lip to say hello. If this were a year ago, he’d have put me on his lap on this barstool and whispered things in my ear while Raff entertained Lauro.
But it’s today. So he just stands behind me. “Hi,” he says next to my ear, not quite a whisper.
“Hi.”
He’s not touching me, but he’s notnottouching me either. He must be six or eight inches back but I can feel him. He reaches past me, to my drink, and I catch the quick breeze of his familiar deodorant. Even though we’re in shambles I could still, unfortunately, live in this man’s armpit. I would really rather he stood behind Raff. I want him where I can see him.
Lauro’s gaze is bouncing between the three of us. I canpractically read the ticker tape behind his eyes.Which one of these brothers is she fucking?
Neither, if we’re being honest, but I don’t care to satisfy his curiosity.
