“Then purgatory sounds peaceful.”
He laughed again. It was the other laugh, the one that came out before he could shape it, surprised and unguarded and warm in a way that made the empty bar feel briefly, startlingly full.
He caught himself, pulled it back, and took another sip of coffee.
“Saturday crossword,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to fix you, Peter Loupier. I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to fix you.”
“I’m not broken.”
“No, you’re not broken,” he agreed. “You’re just really, really committed to being a hermit, and I haven’t figured out whether that’s a choice or a habit.”
The sentence landed in the middle of the quiet bar and sat there between us, heavy and somber and proud. I could see it on his face, the moment he realized he’d said something that went past the boundary, past the banter, and into territory thatwas honest in a way our Post-it notes had yet to become.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was—”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
I finished my coffee, set the cup on the bar, and looked at him.
“I’ll see you at home,” I said, because it’s what I always said, and because saying it felt like the safest way to tell him that what he’d said hadn’t been wrong. I wasn’t angry, and the fact he’d noticed the difference between a choice and a habit was more than most people had ever bothered to do.
I drove home.
I did the crossword.
I fed the animals and made dinner for one, though I caught myself reaching for a second plate before pulling my hand back.
I’d been doing that more often lately, reaching for two plates or setting two mugs on the counter or making enough food for a person who might or might not be there. Maybe it was muscle memory from Portland, from the kitchen where David and I had cooked together every night, or maybe it was from something newer that was building without my permission.
I didn’t set out the second plate.
But I left the leftovers in the fridge with a Post-it.
Chicken and rice. The lime is in a separate container so it doesn’t get soggy. Hiro had a good afternoon. The crossword was excellent.
— P
Chapter 11
Benji
The first Paws and Pours happened on a Thursday evening, six weeks into my residency in Peter’s apartment.
Mia had spent the week building anticipation with a social media campaign that was, by any objective measure, a masterwork. She’d filmed short profiles of each adoptable animal using footage from Peter’s clinic and from the ongoing foster content on my TikTok. She’d even set everything to music that was carefully selected to maximize emotional impact without tipping into PBS fundraising levels of wallet manipulation. Each profile ended with the same card:
“Meet me at Paws and Pours. Barbacks. Thursday. 6 PM.”
The series accumulated over half a million views before the event even started.
Peter arrived at 5:30 with a clinic van containingfour dogs, three cats, and a supply of crates, leashes, treats, and paperwork that suggested he had prepared for this event with the same methodical thoroughness he brought to surgery. He was accompanied by Carlos, the vet tech I’d heard about but never met. Carlos was a calm, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties who seemed to communicate with animals through some kind of silent acumen that I did not have access to but deeply envied.
They set up in the area near the back of the bar that Finn had cleared for the event, arranging the crates and pens with a spatial efficiency that made it clear Peter had drawn this layout in advance, probably on graph paper, probably color-coded. Each animal had a printed card with their name, age, breed, temperament notes, and a photo that Mia had taken specifically for this purpose.
Mark surveyed the setup with the careful eye of a man calculating liability.
Finn, our resident leprechaun, leaned against the bar, his arms crossed and red hair blowing beneath the air conditioning vent. His eyes roamed between Peter and me, never straying from one of the two of us. It was unnerving, to say the least.
