Mark: See you tomorrow at 1.
Mark: Columbia Café?
Mark: You’re buying me the salad. Theirs is the best on the planet.
Me: Yeah, that works.
Mark: Perfect.
Mark: Get some sleep, kiddo.
Mark: Tomorrow I’m going to save you from dying a slow corporate restaurant death.
I stared at that last message for a long moment, thinking about plastic mint leaves and mojitos made from mix and customers who called me “the help.”
Me: That’s a hell of a promise.
Mark: I’m a man of my word.
Mark: Well, sometimes.
Mark: Okay like 60% of the time.
Mark: But I’m serious about this one.
I smiled despite myself and put the car in drive.
Chapter 2
Finn
The Columbia Café was busy, packed with tourists in their Buccaneers and Lightning gear and locals who knew good Cuban food when they tasted it.
I spotted Mark immediately. He was hard to miss. Built like a brick wall with a smile that could charm a nun into sin, Mark Delgado took up space in the best possible way. His salt-and-pepper beard was neatly trimmed, and his tatted arms poked out of the rolled sleeves of a button-down that had probably been ironed that morning but was already showing signs of rebellion.
He sat at a table on the patio, already halfway through acafé con leche, and waved me over with the enthusiasm of a man who’d been waiting for hours.
“You’re late,” he said, grinning.
“I’m three minutes late.”
“That’s three minutes I had to sit here alone withmy thoughts, Finn. It was terrifying.” He gestured to the chair across from him like he was presenting a throne. “I started spiraling. Thought about getting another tattoo.”
“Please don’t.”
“A full back piece. Very tasteful. Maybe some dolphins or one of the dragons fromGame of Thrones—”
“Mark, no.”
“—or like a phoenix rising from the ashes, very symbolic—”
“Absolutely not.”
“You didn’t even let me finish!”
“I didn’t need to. The answer is no.” I slid into the chair and felt the familiar comfort of being around Mark. It was easy. It had been easy from the moment we’d met, that first night at the bowling league when we bonded over being the only two people under forty who actually wanted to be there—and our mutual inability to bowl above a seventy. If there was a Mendoza Line in bowling, we’d figured out how to limbo under it.
The server appeared, and I opened the menu even though I already knew what I wanted. My eyes went straight to the prices. The Cuban sandwich was fourteen dollars. Themedianochewas sixteen. Even the basic ham-and-cheese was twelve.
