"Something like that." Martin's wire transfer is still sitting in my banking app. Fifteen thousand dollars and a one-word memo.Contingency.The language of a man who learned to say I love you in transaction codes, and a nephew who's finally learning to read them. "I think he was always a person, Cass. I think we were both too far gone in our own heads to notice."
She's quiet for a beat."What are you doing right now?"
"I'mbeing."
"Being what?"
"Just being. Ezra said—"
"Who is Ezra?"
"He's—" I look at Ezra on his stool. He's pretending not to listen, which is pointless because he's a lion shifter and the phone is two feet from his ear and he heard every word of last night's activities through a wall. "He's someone I met here."
"The spreadsheet bartender."
"Don't call him that."
"Is he your boyfriend? Oh my God, Nico, do you have aboyfriend? I'm coming to visit. When can I come? I have two weeks before university starts, I can fly over—"
"Cass—"
"I'm serious. You quit your job. You have a boyfriend. This is the most interesting you've been in years and I want to see it in person."
I look at Ezra. He's looking back at me now, not pretending anymore. His expression is open, warm, the half-smile that I've cataloged and counted and am now adding to my list of things I want to see every morning in a bar that smells like coffee and oak.
"Let me get settled first," I say. "Then... yeah. Come visit. I was going to see you anyway before you left for uni. This works too."
"Really?"
"Really."
"NICO." She's shrieking. Actual shrieking. Ezra winces. Shifter hearing plus eighteen-year-old vocal range is apparently a physiological event. "I'm booking the flight tonight. I'll send you the details. Tell Ezra I said hi. Tell the nachos people I'm coming. I'll tell Uncle Martin I need his card for the ticket."
"You are not putting a transatlantic flight on Martin's credit card."
"He said to call if I needed anything! I need to see my brother! That's a need!"
She hangs up before I can argue. My phone screen shows the call lasted four minutes and twelve seconds. Maximum Cass efficiency.
Ezra is looking at me with an expression that I can only describe as delighted. Not the half-smile. The full thing. The one that changes his whole face and makes my chest do the thing that I've stopped pretending is about anything other than what it obviously is.
"She's coming," I say.
"I heard."
"She's a lot."
"I heard that too."
"She's going to interrogate you. She will ask about your intentions. She will judge your shoes. She will decide within thirty seconds whether she approves and her approval is non-negotiable."
"I look forward to it."
I put the phone down. Facedown, habit. Then I pick it back up and set it face-up on the bar, because I don't have anything to hide and I'm not expecting a call from anyone who scares me and the screen is just a screen.
Small thing. Probably no one notices. But Ezra's eyes track the gesture — the flip, the decision, the phone sitting open on the oak — and his mouth does the private thing again. The one that's not for anyone. Except it's for me.
* * *
