Jonas comes back outside and sees Anders over at the charcoal grill.
“Yo! Step away!” he hollers. “Take these to the girls.”
Anders returns to us, rolling his eyes.
“Your brother is kind of possessive, huh?” I say as he hands me a glass of wine.
“Yeah. I’m lucky he didn’t stick me with his meat probe.”
“I beg your pardon?”
A laugh bursts out of him, which sets Bailey and me off, and then Jonas comes over, demanding to know what’s funny.
The tension is broken by the time we’ve all calmed down.
“Are you a goth?” Jonas asks me as we tuck into the mouthwatering meal he’s prepared.
He’s served the smoked barbecue ribs with grilled corn on the cob, homemade coleslaw, and buttery jacket potatoes wrapped in foil.
I pull a face, glancing down at my black playsuit. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Emo, then? Or is that the same thing? I’ve only ever seen you wear black.”
“No, it’s not the same thing. Emo stands for emotional hard core, which is a type of punk rock music that evolved in the 1990s. Goth is associated with gothic rock, a genre that emerged in the 1970s.”
“You’ve been asked that question before,” Anders says with amusement as he picks up his corncob.
I smile, beyond relieved that he’s relaxed back into my company. “It’s true, I have. And no, I’m not a goth or an emo, I’m an architect and we always wear black.”
Anders nearly chokes on his mouthful as he laughs and it scares me how light and jittery my heart suddenly becomes.
The “architects wear black” thing is a massive overgeneralization, but it did apply to more than half of my colleagues at my old London practice.
“No more black after Thursday,” Bailey says to me meaningfully.
“I never said I wouldn’t buy black,” I retort.
“What’s happening on Thursday?” Jonas asks us.
“We’re going shopping in Bloomington,” Bailey tells him.
“We’regoing to Bloomington on Thursday!” Jonas says.
“Really? What for?” I ask.
“Sales stuff. We can drive together, if you like?”
“Are you staying overnight?” Bailey asks hopefully.
“No, there and back in a day.”
“Ah, we’re hoping to stay with my friend and go out on Thursday night.”
“We haven’t had a drunken night out there in years.” Jonas kicks Anders’s foot.
“Did you use to go there a lot?” I ask them.
“Yeah, to see bands at the Bluebird, or to go to the comedy club out the back of Mother Bear’s Pizza.”
