“I’ll be here. That’s the thing about working at a bar. Very predictable location.”
He laughed, soft and warm, and something in my chest ached in a way I didn’t want to examine.
“Night, Jacks.”
“Night, Sky.”
Chapter 10
Skyler
The January air wrapped around me like a damp towel as I exited Barbacks through the front door. It wasn’t cold, not by any real standard, but it was cool enough that the warmth of the bar still clung to my skin as it faded.
Ybor hummed with the last gasps of a Friday evening and the first breaths of partiers arriving for their endless night.
Bass thumped from one of a half dozen clubs down the block, a couple argued in Spanish outside a pizza shop, the distant wail of a siren headed somewhere more urgent wailed blocks away.
The brick streets glistened under the amber glow of antique streetlamps, still wet from an earlier rain I’d missed while sitting in that booth. Somewhere nearby, a rooster crowed—because Ybor had feral chickens, and because Florida was a fever dream pretending to be a state.
The absurdity of it almost made me laugh.
Almost.
But I was too busy replaying one word in my head to notice much of anything else.
Sky.
Not Skyler. Not Shaw. Not Cap or bro or dude.
Sky.
Something spiked in my chest as Jacks’s voice echoed in my head. It was a warmth that spread outward, settling into my bones like the first sip of that night’s whiskey.
I strode down the sidewalk toward my car, keys in hand, trying to figure out why one stupid syllable had hit me like a slap shot to the sternum.
You’re being an idiot.I chuckled at my own stupidity.Everybody calls me Sky. My mom, my sister, Murph (when he was being sincere instead of chaotic), half the team. Hell, even Coach calls me that when I make a great play.
It was a nickname. A shortening. The kind of thing people did when they got comfortable with someone.
When they got close.
Holy shit.I stopped walking.
Was Jacks getting close?
I’d parked under a streetlight that buzzed with moths and couldn’t remember how walkingworked. I was halfway to my car.
Was Jacks getting close?
And more importantly, did I want him to?
“Yeah, I do,” I said to a passing rooster.
The rude fucker didn’t even look up.
But the answer had come so fast it startled me.
Of course I wanted him to grow close. Friends were close, right? Real friends, anyway.
