“The sex was great, sure, and I am still really attracted to you. But this is my favorite part, the part where we laugh together and hold hands and act like…”
“Friends.”
“Yeah. Friends.”
My chest felt warm, and Irving closed his hands behind my head, his fingers folding together against my neck. We both leaned closer, our foreheads pressing together, and I knew that we were making the right call.
“That’s great,” I said, sitting up and regaining my coffee. “Because I have a project that I need a friend to help me with.”
Irving pushed back to his side of the couch, running a hand self-consciously through his hair. I smiled when he actually just messed it up a little bit by mistake, sending the part all wonky. Unkempt actually looked pretty good on him.
“What’s the project?” he asked. “I just turned in a massive block of coding to one of my bosses, so I’ve got some time to kill.”
“It has to do with Brick and with Justin Frisk.”
Irving crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t know if I want to get more involved with that guy.”
“Because he acted like a jerk at the bar one night?”
Irving sighed, then rose to his feet, pacing around the room. “As your friend—”
“Bottom friend,” I interjected, joking.
He stopped in his tracks, forcing down a grin. “Let’s just sayfriendfor now.”
I shrugged. “As my friend…” I prompted him.
“There’s a little more to the story. I didn’t just think he might be flirting with me. He did flirt with me, so much that he actually picked me up. We went to the supply room of the bar together to hook up, but then when we got there, he pushed me away and rejected me out of nowhere.”
“Wait, you and Brick went to the supply room of the bar to have sex?” I nearly yelped it, I was so surprised.
“It kind of just happened,” he said, running his hand along the shelf of records. “I can’t really explain. But it felt horrible afterward. I was already so out of my comfort zone. When he rejected me I convinced myself I had done something embarrassing or wrong.”
I stood up, crossing the room to join him. “Irving, that’s awful. I can understand why you would be so upset. It’s okay for a guy to change his mind and decide he doesn’t want to go through with something, but he at least owes it you to treat you with respect and not to just shove you aside.”
Irving nodded, still trailing his hand across the records, almost like they were giving him some comfort. “Thanks, yeah. I think I’m finally moving past it, but it really shook my confidence for a while.”
“I can imagine.”
“I’m sorry. I just probably won’t feel good trying to help with some project related to Brick.”
“It’s okay,” I said, squeezing his hand to make sure he knew I meant it.
“Who’s Justin Frisk, though?”
I waved my hand in the air, ready to move on from the subject rather than upset Irving. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s just that—remember how I told you that Brick stopped the vandals from messing with our shop last weekend? Justin Frisk was the name the kid yelled to scare Brick away. I googled it a few days ago and found out all kinds of wild shit.”
“Like what?”
“He’s some kind of crime boss in Philadelphia, mixed up in a bunch of bad news. I have no idea why some kid in Seattle is yelling his name at Brick, though. I was hoping you could help me figure out what was going on, considering how the comic book shop is somehow right in the middle of it all, but I don’t want to ask you to do anything that would make you uncomfortable.”
Irving headed over to his computer, a determination flying over his face that hadn’t been there a moment before. “If you just want more information on that crime boss, that should be easy. Let me at least look around for you.”
He plopped down into his seat at the desk, and his fingers started flying across the keyboard. On one of his monitors I saw a standard search engine, but on the other ran a bunch of text that was largely indecipherable to me.
I took a position behind him. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the screen.
Irving was squinting, reading the information and clicking around faster than I thought possible. It was kind of cool to see him step into work mode like that. Computers were such a mystery to me. All I could really do was work my apps and check my email. “I’m just searching some databases and digging up information that’s not readily available on the regular internet.”
