At that, Aaron waggles his fingers. “That’s me. I’m the brains at Pacific Creative.”
“What’s that?” Brennan asks.
Aaron looks a little surprised. “Jude’s work? We’re both in creative there, copywriters.”
Brennan raises his brows. “I didn’t know you were a writer.”
“I’m not really,” I say quickly. “Just copy. And Aaron is actually a senior copywriter, so technically my boss.”
“I thought you two were friends,” Aaron says over his clamshell.
“We are,” I rush to answer.
“We’re still in the getting-to-know-you phase,” Brennan adds.
Aaron nods but doesn’t look convinced. “So how did you meet?”
Brennan flags down a waiter and orders something with coconut milk and rum. Then he turns back to Aaron. “A mutual friend introduced us,” he says coyly, giving me a look I can’t decipher.
Aaron sips his drink. “Mm… another mysterious friend. Where have you been keeping them all, Jude?”
I smile nervously. “I’m kind of shy at work,” I tell Brennan, as if he doesn’t already know.
His drink arrives and he takes a long, exaggerated sip through his straw. “Pity,” he says, winking at Aaron. “You sure weren’t shy on the dance floor the other night.”
“I knew it!” Aaron shouts, slamming a hand on the table andmaking our cocktails jump. He grins conspiratorially at Brennan. “I’d pay good money to see Jude Clark actuallydance.”
Brennan breaks out in a devilish smile. “Oh, I can arrange that.”
“Yes, please,” Aaron says. He couldn’t look more thrilled. “I heard you took our shrinking violet to Medusa last night. That’s a very exclusive club. How’d you get in?”
“Brennan knows the owner,” I blurt, increasingly uncomfortable with Aaron’s sharp gaze.
“Is that right?” Aaron asks, leaning back in his booth. “What’s he like?”
Brennan smiles. “Jude can tell you. She knows her.”
“Aaron says there are rumors about Medusa,” I tell Brennan, more to avoid eye contact with Aaron than anything. “That it’s…badfor people.”
He acts unsurprised. “Medusa is a club like any other—a good DJ and a hot aesthetic, a few signature drinks, and the right people slinking around the bar. The illusion of exclusivity.”
His description puts me at ease. Maybe I’ve been making too much of everything, reading too much into every detail and gesture. Maybe Medusa is a normal, if exclusive, club and Arla is a normal, if unusual, person. Maybe we have a little bit of magic that will someday be explained by science. Maybe we’re just a circle of friends and nothing more.
“It’s what’s underneath that counts,” he continues.
At that, my skin goes cold and clammy, the breath of the underground not forgotten, the poster on the wall. Brennan’s signet ring glows orange under the colorful lights, the dragon twirling like the symbol on the note cards, like the many tails of the woman on the poster.
“I like you,” Aaron says with a laugh, oblivious to my unease. “You’re a bad influence. Jude needs more of that in her life.”
For a second, Brennan seems to blush, but it’s hard to say in the strange, rainbow lighting of the bar. “I like you too,” he says to Aaron. “Not every man can wear purple.”
They spend the rest of the night swapping stories about ex-boyfriends and requesting increasingly deranged mixed drinks from the menu. By the end of my second fishbowl—which I’ve been nursing slowly but steadily—I’ve put Brennan’s eerie words behind me, and I’m starting to feel like a third wheel. And then Aaron pulls Brennan onto the floor so they can slow dance to a cover of “Tiny Bubbles” by Don Ho, and they never come back.
In all honesty, I’m just glad they’re getting along. I close out our tab and leave a tip on the table before sliding out of the booth. At least I can tell Arla I completed her little task, spying on Brennan in the wild. He’s harmless, unless you count the intensefuck-meeyes he’s leveling at my coworker. Though, who can blame him? Aaron is an eight on a bad day.
I tap Aaron on the shoulder on my way to the door and explain I’m heading back to his place for the night. When he makes a pouty face, I reassure him. “Have fun! We’ll catch up over coffee in the morning.”
Brennan flashes me a thankful grin. We all know I won’t be seeing Aaron again this evening.
