For the next hour, we were busy enough that further interrogation was impossible.
Customers trickled in. It wasn’t the flood of a game night, but it was enough to keep us moving. I threw myself into work, grateful for the distraction.
Stock the cooler. Wipe down tables. Run food. Repeat.
But during every lull, every quiet moment between orders, Finn or Benji would appear at my elbow with another question.
“So when he brushed the hair off your forehead,” Benji asked while I was slicing limes, “was it, like, tender? Or intense? Or tender-intense?”
“I don’t know. Both, maybe? Neither? It was . . .” I couldn’t find the right words. “It felt like he was terrified, like he was jumping off a cliff and didn’t know if there was water at the bottom.”
“Was there water?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
Later, while I was restocking the napkin dispensers, Finn sidled up with faux casualness.
“Did he say anything? About what this means for him? His identity, I mean.”
“Not really. He said he was scared and that he didn’t know what he was doing.” I straightened a stack of napkins that didn’t need straightening. “I told him we didn’t have to figure everything out tonight.”
“That was good. That was the right thing to say.”
“Was it? I have no idea what I’m doing either, Finn. I’ve never been someone’s . . . sexual awakening, or whatever this is. What if I mess him up? What if I push too fast or not fast enough or—”
“Hey.” Finn put a hand on my shoulder. “You can only control your own actions. Be patient. Be honest. Let him set the pace.”
“And if the pace is glacial?”
“Then you buy a warm coat, enjoy floating on the ocean, and wait.”
Around eight o’clock, the rush died down, leaving the bar in that strange mid-evening lull between happy hour and the late-night crowd. A few tables were occupied, but nothing demanding. Benji cornered me yet again by the dish pit.
“Okay, but I need more details about the actual kissing,” he said. “Was there tongue? There was tongue, right? Please tell me there was tongue.”
“Benji.”
“What? I’m invested now! This is better than any reality show. Fuck, this isHorny Rivalsright here in our bar! This is real-life gay hockey romance, and I need to know if there was tongue.”
“Yes,” I admitted, my face burning. “There was tongue.”
“I knew it! How was it? Scale of one to ten?”
“I’m not rating his kissing.”
“Then I’ll assume it was a ten. Was it a ten? Blink twice if it was a ten.”
I blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Benji clutched his pearls. “I’m going to die. I’m going to die of vicarious romantic fulfillment. Put it on my tombstone: ‘Here lies Benji. He died because Jacks got a ten-out-of-ten kiss from a professional athlete.’”
“You’re being dramatic, which is saying something for you.”
“I’m beingappropriatelydramatic for the circumstances!” He grabbed my arm. “Jacks, my sweet summer child, you have been pining over this man forweeks. Weeks. Now he’s kissed you in his apartment for hours while cuddling. That’s not nothing. That’severything.”
