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“Hey,” he says to Don.
“Hey,” Don answers, friendly enough to count as progress and dry enough to remain himself. “Recovered?”
“Mostly.”
“Wonderful. I’d hate for you to miss the acrobatics.”
Don side-eyes me. I catch it but cannot translate it quickly enough. Warning? Amusement? Approval? Something worse?
Clint shifts his weight. The open shirt moves with him, exposing a line of stomach I have absolutely no business registering in front of my oldest friend.
I stand too abruptly.
“All right,” I say. “Cab should be here soon.”
Don smiles into his cup.
“Smooth.”
“I wasn’t trying to be smooth.”
“Good, because I was lying.”
Clint looks between us. “Are you two always like this?”
“Yes,” Don says.
“No,” I say at the same time.
Clint’s almost-smile turns real for half a second. And, for another second, he feels less like an awkward intrusion than just part of things.
The cab is too small for Clint.
I’m squeezed into the back seat beside him, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, with Don in the front prattling on about whatever, seemingly oblivious to the fact that neither of us is responding.
Clint’s knee angles out because there is nowhere else for it to go. His shorts ride higher. The open edge of his shirt shifts with every turn, giving me brief, unwanted information about his stomach.
Unwanted is not the right word. That’s the problem.
The cab leaves the Romantic Zone and heads toward the wider tourist strip, past restaurants, souvenir shops, families in matching vacation shirts, straight couples sunburned to a crisp. The farther we go, the more the night changes shape.
Clint leans closer.
His mouth is near my ear when he says, “I forgot to ask where this show is.”
Before I can answer, Don turns halfway around from the front seat.
“We’re joining the straights for a night of trapeze and mood lighting. Far too wholesome for the Romantic Zone.”
Clint blinks. “That helped zero.”
“It’s nothing crazy,” I say.
Don smiles. “Unless we bring the crazy.”
I laugh.
Clint smiles, but the uncertainty stays in his eyes.
