I watched him over the rim of my mug.
The stories were good, and his timing was impeccable. What was off was the spacing. He left no gap between one story and the next.
Usually, when it was just the two of us, there was flex, a few gaps. Room for something to land before the next thing moved in.
He caught me looking somewhere else in the room after the Nora story. I shifted my attention back and listened as he kept going.
The stories tapered off around midnight.
"—and the guy tips forty percent, which, great, except he'd been so insufferable for two hours that Nora and I had to debrief afterward just to decompress. Like a trauma response, but for hospitality." He sipped from his mug. "She got the forty percent, for the record. I'm a firm believer in the tip going to whoever suffered most."
"That seems like a system that leaves room for disputes."
"Nora and I have a very sophisticated internal arbitration process." A beat. "She always wins. I let her. It's how the system works."
I smiled. He caught it, and for a moment something in his posture eased.
"There's also this regular," he said, shifting on the cushion. "Comes in every Friday, six months running. I figured out maybe three weeks ago that he's never ordered the same drink twice. He's working through the menu alphabetically."
"He told you that?"
"He didn't have to. I just—I started tracking it. Amaretto sour, Bee's Knees, Cosmopolitan." He paused. "That wasn't his speed, I could tell, but he ordered it anyway because it was next."
"What's he on now?"
Sully thought about it. "G, I think. Gimlet, maybe. It worked out for him."
He stopped. His mouth closed, and he looked at the coffee table. The story ended there, no landing or bridge to the next thing.
A gap opened. I waited, but he didn't fill it.
His foot moved to touch my thigh. My shoulder was close enough to his that I could feel the warmth of him through his sleeve.
Sully looked down at his hands wrapped around his mug.
"I haven't really stopped moving in a while," he said. "Like—actually stopped."
He didn't say more.
"I know," I said.
He looked at me, working out what I meant and whether it was accurate. He nodded once, slow.
Fleetwood Mac had looped around to "Songbird." I reached out for Sully.
My hand rested against his cheek. He leaned into it. We looked at each other.
He reached for the front of my shirt and pulled. He kissed me before I could say anything and flattened his hand against mychest. The other hand reached around to my back, trying to close any distance between our bodies.
I raked my fingers into his thick hair, starting at the base of his skull. He made a sound against my mouth that I felt in my chest. He worked at the buttons on my shirt.
Sully pushed me backward against the couch. He kissed my jaw and then my throat. He finished with the buttons and pushed the shirt open. I was back against the arm of the couch now, one leg still on the floor. My heart pounded faster.
"Hey," I said.
He stopped.
His weight was still over me, one hand braced on the cushion beside my shoulder. I cupped the back of his head, and he exhaled against my neck before pulling back to look at me.
