I've never had a best friend.
I'd said it under my breath as I rolled out of bed, and it had sounded different in my voice than it had in his. In Pratt's, it was a blunt fact. In mine, it sounded like a door opening on an empty room.
"What?"
Tomasz was behind me with the second crate of limes, edging past with his shoulder turned.
"Nothing," I said
"You said something."
"Talking to a lemon."
He grunted and kept moving.
Pratt had not tried to fix me. He didn't try to say he'd been there. He had not saidI get itorI understandor any of the small lies people offered when they wanted to be useful and didn't know how. Pratt waited me out, and when he finally said something, the sentence he chose was a difficult one.
We'd only been open an hour when Heath and Kieran walked in. Heath's face did its thing upon recognition, turning the glow up to high. Kieran, half a step behind him, scanned the room once and then took a seat on a stool at the bar.
"Hey, hey," Heath said, sliding onto a stool. "You're working."
"I am. What're you guys doing out?"
"Morning skate ended, and Varga wrangled the rookies for pizza. We escaped," said Heath.
I pulled two glasses off the rack. Heath was a bourbon guy by night and a beer guy by day. I had to think about Kieran for half a second. He had a Manhattan the first time he came in. On the second, it was whatever I'd put in front of him.
I built him a Paloma and slid it across.
He looked at it and looked at me.
"How'd you know?"
"Lucky guess."
"Educated guess," Heath said, reaching for his beer. "Don't try to figure it out, Kier. I gave up a month ago."
Three weeks ago, I would have leaned into the moment. I would have asked Heath how the team had taken the Nashville loss and let him tell me. It would be an excuse for gathering information about Pratt. I would have been good at making it look natural.
"Expecting a good day today?" Heath asked.
"There's always hope."
He grinned. "Fair."
A guy down the rail flagged me with a twenty, and I went to him. It was two beers, an easy ticket and back in forty seconds. When I came back, Heath was telling Kieran a story about somebody named Pickle and a hotel pillow. Kieran listened with the half-attention of a man who had heard every Pickle story Heath had but was willing to let this one happen again.
Heath wound down the Pickle story, took another sip, and looked at me.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, Heath."
Heath threw back a mouthful of beer. "You look tired."
