I give him the smallest nod.
He goes back to making my friends laugh. McKenzie asks about the G-Wagon. Aarthi pretends she's not impressed but keeps glancing at the car. Bernard tells a story about Spinner that has both of them cackling, and I watch him work — this gift he has, this ability to make everyone feel included, seen, important — and I think about how nobody sees him.
They see Howie. The party. The fun.
They don't see Bernard, who woke up early to drive a woman to work because nobody else thought to. Who hung curtains without being asked. Who held my wrist while I came and then told me I didn't owe him a thing.
Chapter 12
Howie
The bar McKenzie picked has exposed brick, string lights, and a cocktail menu that Spinner studies like game tape. Mayhem takes up way more than his fair share of space in the booth and nurses a single beer, watching the room with a menacing stare.
I thought I could just confess my sins to him over meatballs earlier today, but in the end, I chickened out and just said it’s overwhelming sharing a two-bedroom apartment with three people. Except that the motherfucker read between the lines. I know it.
Ella sits across from me between her friends. She is killing me with that body of hers displayed in tights, and her cheeks are still flushed from the exercise. Every time she laughs at something McKenzie says, I feel it in my sternum like a body check.
I can't stop seeing her in the silk. The arch of her back. The line of her extended leg was thick and round in all the right places. The way she tipped her chin up and laughed and looked like something out of a painting, powerful and suspended, held by her own strength.
I want to put my mouth on the inside of her wrist. I want to trace the silk marks on her palms with my tongue. I want to…
"Howie." Spinner snaps his fingers in my face. "You in there?"
"Yeah. What?"
"I asked if you wanted another round." He gestures at the table, which has accumulated a modest graveyard of glasses. "McKenzie's buying."
"I absolutely am not," McKenzie says. "I'm a nurse with college loans. I make less than your dry cleaner.”
"Then I'm buying." Spinner stands, grinning, and McKenzie gives him a look that suggests Louisville may be permanently in her rearview. "What does everyone want?"
He takes orders. McKenzie follows him to the bar to "help carry," which fools nobody. Aarthi excuses herself for the restroom.
For approximately eleven seconds, it's just me, Ella, and Mayhem.
Ella takes a sip of her drink and looks at me over the rim. Her eyes say everything her mouth can't in this room full of people. I look back and try to keep my face in Howie mode, but I can feel it slipping, the mask getting thin, because earlier today this woman came apart under my hand and now she's sitting across from me in a crowded bar pretending we're just roommates.
"You guys are cute," Mayhem says, not looking up from his beer.
Ella's glass freezes halfway to her mouth. I feel my spine go rigid. "What?"
He waves a hand toward Ella. “You and the group." He takes a slow sip. "Nice that you’re making friends."
I stare at him. His face reveals nothing. Mayhem is either the most oblivious man alive or the most perceptive, and I have never once been able to tell the difference.
"Yeah," I manage. "It's good."
He nods. Sips. Stares at the table. Then, so quiet I almost miss it: "Be careful."
Before I can respond, Spinner returns with drinks and McKenzie on his arm, and the moment dissolves into noise and laughter and the safety of a group. Aarthi comes back and starts grilling Mayhem about what he's reading. Spinner tells a story about a road trip in juniors, that has McKenzie wheezing.
Ella laughs, and her knee bumps mine under the table and stays there, warm through my denim, and I leave it. I leave it right there and drink my beer and perform Howie Houser, life of the party, man with nothing to hide.
McKenzie asks Ella something about work, and Ella launches into a story about a patient whose roommate put glue in the toothpaste tube, and I watch her friends lean in, rapt, laughing, and I realize: she's funny. Not just dry-humor funny with me, but commanding-a-table funny. Her timing is perfect. She does voices. McKenzie throws a napkin at her, and Aarthi wipes her eyes. Ella glows with it, the pleasure of being seen as entertaining and interesting and wanted for something other than her proximity to a hockey player.
I could watch her all night. That's the problem.
Mayhem nudges my boot under the table. I tear my eyes away from Ella, and he gives me a look that says, louder than words: I said be careful.
