I go back inside and my pork shoulder is cold.
I eat it anyway.
At ten fifteen, the last table pays. Grace locks the front door and turns the sign. The new bartender finishes his cleanup, grabs his jacket, and leaves through the kitchen exit. Danny's been gone since eight. Devon finished the kitchen and left at nine thirty. It's just us.
Grace walks to table four. She doesn't sit across from me. She stands between my knees where I'm sitting and puts her hands on my shoulders and looks down at me.
"Good shift?" I ask.
"Thirty-two covers. Eighty-seven percent tip average. Arthur ordered the eggs Benedict without arguing with me because he didn't have Helen to perform for, and then he argued with himself about it on the way out. The Sunday woman is reading a thriller."
She's talking more than she used to. Fuller sentences, more detail, more willingness to fill space with words. The wall she maintained for four years, the one that let people in exactly far enough, is lower now. Not gone. Lower. And the space behind it is occupied by a woman who is learning how much of herself she's allowed to show.
"You're staring," she says.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you're standing between my legs and your hands are on my shoulders. You're beautiful and I'm allowed to look."
Her fingers tighten on my shoulders. Her chin drops. Her hair falls forward around her face and she's close, close enough that I can feel her breath on my forehead. I can smell her shampoo and the garlic from the kitchen and the specific scent of her skin underneath all of it.
"Say something else," she says. "You've been doing five words or fewer for weeks. Give me more."
"What do you want to hear?"
" Something you've been thinking and not saying. I know you think in full paragraphs, Carmelo. I know the five-word thing is a choice, not a limitation. Give me the paragraph."
I put my hands on her hips. My thumbs find the gap between her shirt and her waistband and press against her bare skin, and she inhales through her nose, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
"I've been thinking about buying this restaurant," I say.
Her eyes widen. "What?"
"Danny wants to sell. The building is worth less than the liquor license. Leone wants me to establish operations in Philadelphia. The restaurant would be the base. Clean. Legitimate. Yours to run."
"Mine to run."
"If you want it."
She stares at me in disbelief. "You'd buy me a restaurant.”
"I'd buy us a restaurant."
"Us."
"Yes."
She lowers her face to mine. Her forehead against mine, her nose against my nose. Her lips an inch from mine and I can feel the heat of her mouth and the rhythm of her breathing. Her finger is tapping my shoulder, fast, the pace that used to mean anxiety and now means something else entirely.
"You're… something else, holy fuck… the restaurant… mine," she whispers.
"Yes."
She closes the inch. Her mouth lands on mine and the kiss is slow, deep, the kind of kiss that starts at the lips and spreads through the body. Her hands move from my shoulders to my head, palms on either side of my skull, fingers scraping across the buzz cut. She tilts my head back and opens my mouth with hers, her tongue slides against mine and I grip her hips, pulling her forward until she's sitting on my thigh, straddling it, her weight in my lap and her chest against mine.
She grinds against my leg, riding the friction as heat rises through her chest, landing on her face.
