Page 68 of Spiced!

My face did a thing. I felt it do the thing, and couldn’t stop it fast enough, which was the most embarrassing thing that had happened to me in recent memory—and I once had my backside grabbed by a bride in front of her entire bridal party.

“There it is,” Benji said.

“There what is?” I said to the floor, because looking at Benji directly was no longer an option.

“The blush.”

“I’m not blushing.”

“Adrian, mi amor, you are deeply, magnificently, brighter than the island sun, blushing.”

“I’m warm. I’m warming up. It’s a warmth thing, not a blush thing.”

“It’s sixty-eight degrees—”

“I heard you the first time.”

Jacks set down his second glass and watched this with the bright, invested attention of someone watching a very good game. “So it was the vet.”

“Fine! I went to the vet’s place,” I said. “He grilled. We had lunch. It was very normal.”

“A lunch that has you glowing and humming and blushing?” Benji asked rhetorically.

“People have lunches. I work out; therefore, I eat. Lunch is a meal. It’s a very important meal, right up there with breakfast.”

“Oh, so you had breakfast with him, too?” He crossed his arms. “Did Mofongo like him?”

This was a tactical shift. I recognized it for what it was and answered anyway, because I was apparently incapable of not answering Benji’s questions. “Puck sat on Mofongo.”

Benji’s face transformed completely, then he burst out laughing. “Puck sat on the dog.”

“He decided Mofongo was his. He just mounted him like a horse.”

“That’s probably Puck’s highest compliment,” Benji said. “If Puck sat on Mofongo—” He stopped, then started again. “Adrian, Puck approved of your dog. That’s it. That’s the whole story. You’re done. You’re gone. It’s over for you.”

“It’s not—”

“Done. Gone. Over.”

Jacks nodded sagely.

I looked to Finn for support.

He merely shrugged, the fucking leprechaun.

Then Jacks and Benji began chanting, “Done. Gone. Over. Done. Gone. Over. Done. Gone. Over.”

I looked at the two of them, Benji triumphant, Jacks exuberant, both of them chanting at me with the warm, invested, completely invasive attention of people who considered my romantic life a team sport.

“Can we please talk about something else? And not chant?”

“Absolutely,” Benji said. “After you tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“Did you stay?”

I looked at the bar surface. Then I looked at my Fanta. Then I looked at the ceiling.