Chapter One
There’s this thing in stories called the “inciting incident”.
And mine? It’s a goddamn doozy.
It’s the part of the book, right at the start, where you pinch the pages between your fingers, and whisper to yourself: here we go. It’s the bit where the lovers have their meet-cute, the farm boy leaves his family behind for the wider world, the Chosen One is attacked by her first evil monster, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean. It’s my favorite part of the book. It’s the place where everything opens up and you have no idea what you’re in for—only that it’ll be exciting.
I know all about Inciting Incidents because I was going to be a writer.
No, I thought I was going to be a writer. Historical romance, that’s my jam. Dukes, rakes, windblown-gowns, dropped handkerchiefs, cliffside confessions—I am a slut for that stuff. Forget real history (totally flunked ‘We’re-Feeding-You-Colonialist-Narratives-Disguised-As-Education 101’). Give me made-up kingdoms and far-flung pirates. Give me the fantasy of a happily ever after that lasts beyond ‘the end’. Give coffee and stories, and I am a very happy boy.
But right before he got sick, in the summer between my first and second year of university, my Dad and I had a serious talk about writing. How much work it is. How long it takes to start paying off, how little mid-list writers make. Backup plans.
And then… after, I thought, well, he wasn’t wrong. If life was going to be pointlessly, stupidly, cruelly short, then I should spend my time trying to do something good, right? I switched majors. Science makes sense. Science is logical. Science creates vaccines and saves lives. Science can bring species back from the brink of extinction.
Science doesn’t break your heart.
All of this is to say that I can—with complete and utter certainty—point to the exact moment when my life became a trash fire. It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and my big sister Gemma gave me the dumbest, but most totally plot-initiating gift: a sunrise alarm clock.
My Inciting Incident starts like this: in Mum’s pokey poppies-and-roosters kitchen, with Gemma turning over the box that the wrapping paper reveals, trying to figure out where the English description is hidden.
“It’s an alarm clock,” Gemma says, when I don’t comment immediately. She’s leaning on the back of my chair, the braid hanging over her shoulder long enough to tickle my neck. I flick it away.
“I have a perfectly good alarm clock.” I hold up my phone, then let it slap back down onto the plastic tablecloth. “Goes ding when there’s stuff.”
My sister heaves the kind of sigh only eldest-born siblings make, indulgent and frustrated at the same time. I love making her make that noise. It’s hilarious.
“It wakes you up gently,” Gem says. “So you’re not cranky.”
“M’not cranky in the mornings.”
Everyone laughs. I may have snapped at Stuart just this morning when he shook my foot through my childhood bed sheets like an aggressive chihuahua.
Okay.
So I’m cranky in the mornings.
“I don’t see how it’s supposed to work.” Stu grabs the clock. “How can you see the light if your eyes are closed?”
As the younger brother of twin siblings, I am used to having the toys I’m playing with getting pulled out of my hands. Instead of trying to snatch it back, I fiddle with the iridescent green bow that was on my gift.
“The same way you can see sunlight through your eyelids. It just works, okay? I’ve been using this exact same one for months. I promise you’ll wake up in a better mood.”
“You know, it’s rude to give someone a present that benefits yourself,” I say, playing with the tape on the bottom of the ribbon. I stick it to my ear. Mum smirks at my accessory, but otherwise her prim little ‘all my babies are home to roost’ face stays in place.
Makes me feel a bit shitty, because I’m the only one of us who went away to school, and stayed away. Gem came back to live with Mum straight after she finished her undergrad, so Mum wouldn’t be alone in the house after Dad. Stuart never left the city, though he’s got his own place now. But that’s why I stayed away after I graduated last year. Mum and Gem don’t need me, and if I came back, Stu would try to get me to join his construction crew.
To be fair, I do go weak in the knees for the kind of person jacked enough to pick me up and consensually throw me around. Standing on a roof next to a whole crew of pretty roughs trying to help them replace shingles? gonna lead to me swooning and dying of a broken neck. Stu doesn’t want that on his conscience.
Because she’s a bossy know-it-all, Gem takes my present from Stu and opens it to show me how it works.
Suddenly empty-handed, Stu helps himself to another piece of my birthday cake, licking the icing off his fingers and the serving knife.
Mum slaps the hand holding the knife, and Stu flushes up and sets it down. He descends on his third piece like a wolf, but at least now he’s watching his manners.
“There’s instructions,” I point out as Gem tosses the booklet on the table. “I don’t need you to do it for me.”
“The day you read the instructions,” Mum says, “is the day I’ll know for sure the fairies swapped you back.”
It’s an old joke, being the Changeling child. I’m the only one of them with dark hair. The rest of my family are blond as heck.
Mum’s grinning at her own cleverness, lips curving into that little curl in the side of her mouth that holds secrets. Dad always called it Mum’s ‘Peter Pan Kiss’. It’s the spot where her sense of humor lives. He’d wrap his arms around her waist and kiss that corner, and Mum would swat at him for ruining her lipstick.
Thinking about Dad reminds me that he’s dead.
I hate the swoop-and-stab sensation in my chest that comes with remembering. Especially when there’s a moment you want to share, and you think I should say that to Dad, and you straighten up a bit and take a deep breath, and turn your head to his chair and start composing the sentence in your head: “Hey, Dad, Mum’s doing that—” and then you stop.
You stop composing. Stop turning. Stop thinking about sharing. Stop breathing.
Because that chair is empty.
Dad’s dead.
And you’ll never get the chance to point out the Peter Pan kiss again. Or watch Mum swat him. Or listen to him tease us for falling for Mum’s Old World fairy stories. Or hear his stupid har-har-har donkey laugh, thick with his Lower Canada accent.
It’s my birthday.
He’s not here.
I’ll have another birthday, next year, and he won’t be there for that one either.
I try to control my breathing, but Mum hears it hitching. I’m already staring at Dad’s terrible empty chair, so it’s not like I can hide what I’m thinking about. Mum curls her fingers over my knuckles.
“I wish he was here too, mo leanbh,” she says softly.
Stu and Gem go quiet.
“Sucks,” I cough out, deciding to give no one the pleasure of watching me actually cry. I’ll save it for later, when I’m back in my own apartment. Not because of any kind of ‘real men don’t’ toxic masculinity bullshit, but because I hate the fuss. They take the shit my therapist tells them about being my support network too much to heart.
“More tea, Mummers?” I ask instead, standing, breaking her hold on my hand to pick up the teapot on the counter beside the decimated cake.
“Time for something stronger, don’t you think?”
“I’ve got it,” Gem says, leaping at the chance to be helpful. She pops my gift back into the box and pushes the whole thing into my arms, forcing me back down into the chair. “Four glasses?”
“Extra ice in mine,” Stu calls at Gem’s back as she breezes into the living room and over to the booze hutch. We all pretend Gem’s not wiping at her eyes. “I gotta drive home.”
“You’re not staying for dinner?” Mum asks him.
“One of my guys got in the weeds with something at the museum, and the city wants it done before the kids start showing up for summer camps.”
“But Colin’s come all the way from St. Catharines,” Mum protests. “I thought you’d at least spend the night.”
“I have a perfectly good bed a ten minute drive away, Mum.”
Mum’s lips pucker. I hate seeing her unhappy, but what am I gonna do? Tie Stu to the chair and not let him leave?
Ha.
“Could use your advice,” Stu says to me. “Figure out the best place to—”
“I know what you’re doing, and the answer is no,” I say, but I force a smile through it. “Try all you like Stu-pid, I’m not coming to work with you.”
“It’d be nice to see both my boys working in their Dad’s company,” Mum says, trying to keep the peace.
“I need a landscaper for the summer—”
“My degree is in environmental and sustainable tourism,” I remind everyone. “I wrote my thesis on biodynamic viniculture. Y’know, the science of biodynamic vineyards? Not grass-cutting.”
“It’s all outdoors and nature, isn’t it?”
“Give it a rest.”
“It’s just a job,” Stu presses. “I know you’re still figuring out the career thing, but you gotta make money in the meantime—”
“I have a ‘just a job’. Hadhirah pays as good as you, and I don’t have to get eaten alive by bugs in the backwoods—”
“Orillia is hardly the ‘backwoods’,” Mum tuts.
“I’m happy in St. Catharines,” I say, trying to stay firm but non-confrontational, like Dr. Chen taught me. “I like my friends, and I like Beanevolence. I don’t want to work for Stu when he has no idea what I actually do.”
“It’s not like I’m going to kidnap you and force you to wear a tool belt. Don’t get your feathers in a ruffle, mo leanbh,” Stu says, in his best imitation of Mum’s Scots brogue.
Mum was seven when she and my Nan emigrated to Canada to get away from Nan’s horrid husband, and Mum still has that pretty Scottish burr. Doubly so when she gets off the phone with her half-sister Patricia. I wish you could inherit an accent.
“Thank you for the offer,” I say, baring my teeth. “But I decline.”
“Suit yourself,” Stu says. He rubs his hand through my hair, which, rude! Some of us actually style our hair and use product, like civilized people, Stuart!
“Plan to.” I take a sip of my cold tea before I can say anything that will turn this into an actual argument.
“Need help, Gemmy?” Mum asks. As a way to change the subject, it’s not a subtle one.
“I’m coming,” Gem says, over the clink of glass tumblers on Dad’s mid-century bar tray. Dad had a thing for cocktails and James Bond. Mom has a thing for a good peaty scotch, so it was a match made in a shaker.
Gem sets down four Old Fashions, extra ice in Stu’s, and extra cherries in mine. Our “Slàinte mhath!” is maybe too forced, but whatever.
Casting around for something to start a new conversation, Gem says: “I like your shirt. It’s not black.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, stroking the olive button-down. It’s a tight fit, one of those tailored shirts that makes me look gawky and skinny, but Mum always appreciates the effort. Gem is wearing one of those cute dorky matching summer-dress-and-cardigan sets that makes her look like the librarian she is, and Stu is in a bright blue tee-shirt and dark jeans that are actually free of construction debris or paint. “Beks picked it.”
Mum perks up. “And where is Rebekah? I expected her to drive you.”
“Mum,” I groan, and it’s a waste of Dad’s good Scotch and Gem’s artful work, but I down the cocktail in one go.
“What?” she asks.
“They broke up last year,” Gemma reminds Mum gently.
“Doesn’t mean she’s not still your friend. She could have driven you up.”
“It’s five hours, Mummers,” I protest. “I don’t want to be in a car with her that long.”
“Maybe all you need is the chance to have a good conversation, sort out—”
“There’s nothing left to sort out,” I cut in sullenly. “Yeah, we’re still friends, but that doesn’t mean I can just let you ambush her—”
“Ambush!” Mum echoes, looking guilty enough that it’s obvious she totally had plans. “I would never.”
“You have,” Gem reminds her. None of us have forgotten Gem’s high school crush, and the inflatable kiddie pool.
“Well,” Mum says, flustered and caught-out. “It still would have been nice to see her.”
“You could have brought Caden,” Gemma says with a sly eye-side.
“Choke and die.” I offer up a sharkish smile.
“Colin!” Mum scolds.
“Who’s Caden?” Stu asks. My himbo brother likes gossip just as much as his twin.
“Breach of confidence!” I snarl at Gem.
“There was no NDA,” Gem says through her own knife-slice grin.
“Who’s Caden?” Stu asks again, amused.
“He’s no one,” I insist.
Gem scoffs. “That’s not what you—”
“He’s no one now,” I amend, fiddling with my glass, watching my ice cube melt and wishing I hadn’t drunk it all in one go. I always feel like a jerk if I get up and refill before everyone else has finished. I’m not, like, an alcoholic, but I don’t want my family thinking I am one. They already watch me like a time-bomb when it comes to mental-health shit.
“Oh,” Stu says, catching what I mean.
“You’ll just have to try harder next time,” Mum says. It’s meant to be pleasant and understanding, but I literally grind my teeth together so hard Gem shoots me a startled look. “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, that you can’t keep a partner, mo leanbh.”
“Gem and Stu are single right now too, Mum, it’s not like—”
“Just remember what Dr. Chen said about needing stability, Colin. It’s not good to jump from relationship to relationship like this.”
That’s skirting dangerously close to calling me a ‘greedy bisexual,’ I think, but don’t say, because that’s not a conversation I want to have right now.
“Cut Colin some slack,” Gem says gently.
“I just don’t know why Rebekah couldn’t come up with you,” Mum says, wringing her hands. “She was such a nice girl, and you were going to get—”
“You said you weren’t going to bring that up,” Stu stops her.
My stomach bottoms out, and I shove away from the table.
“Just forget I said anything, okay?” Mum says. She pats my shoulder lovingly, and leaves to go turn on the TV. I hate when she does that. Can’t argue at her back, ‘cause she can’t read your lips that way. Mum keeps her hearing aids turned down so she can’t hear anyone or anything that isn’t directly in front of her. It always bugged her when we screamed across the house.
The TV flicks on, the channel flips, and Stu stands up to peer into the living room when it stops on a program with someone singing in that high, signature ‘70s tone we are all very familiar with.
“Mum’s watching Lawrence Welk reruns again,” Stuart says accusingly as Gem starts to tidy up.
“Rebekah broke up with me,” I snap.
“We know,” Gem says. “Stu, when are you planning to leave?”
“Might as well be right now,” Stu grunts. Then he comes around the table and wraps me up in a huge bear hug that has me dangling a few inches from the floor. “Have a good trip back tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” I wheeze, nose smooshed.
He sets me down and slaps my shoulder in a manly, hetero way. “Happy birthday.”
“Just one year away from my quarter-life crisis. I’m thrilled.”
“Will you have figured out what to do with your fancy degree by then?”
“Har har.”
“Oh!” Gem says, and turns away to rifle the junk drawer. She sifts through archeological layers of take-out menus, dried up pens, and loose Canadian Tire money and emerges with a rumpled, used-to-be-white envelope. “This came for you. Like, last year.”
“Why didn’t you forward it?”
“I’m not your secretary.”
I take the envelope. “I was here at Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And Easter.”
“I’d forgotten. Mum found it when she was looking for the birthday candles.”
I slip the letter out of the envelope. The paper is textured and expensive. The letterhead is crowned with maple leaves, and a little flame. Underneath it says, From the Office of Lt. Gov. Francis A. G. Simcoe.
Dear Colin Fergus Levesque; the letter reads, in a computer-generated handwriting font. On behalf of the office of the Lieutenant Governor of the province of Upper Canada, and in the name of her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth Regina, we are pleased to congratulate you on the occasion of your graduation from your post-secondary studies…
…blah blah blah.
“What is it?” Stu asks, looking over my shoulder. “Oh, one of those.”
“Yeah.” I chuck it into the recycling bin under the sink. “Just the same thing the dragons always send. Nothing special.”
Chapter Two
Someone shouts “surprise!” from behind my sofa as soon as I shoulder open my apartment door.
“Shit!” I drop my bag on my foot in shock, grabbing at my shirt over my heart.
The shout is followed by coughing, which doesn’t surprise me. It hasn’t been vacuumed back there since my roommate Katiya left on her Grand Backpacking-and-Smelly-Hostels Tour of The Continent with her fiancé. Happily, this means I get the place to myself for the rest of the summer. Even more happily, it also means she’s not bugging me to spin the chore wheel every weekend.
Less happy for Dikembe, my fourth year lab partner, who is crawling out from behind the sofa, streaked with gray dust.
The “surprise!” is echoed from a few other hiding places around the apartment—not that there are many, it’s just a two-bedroom, first floor of a crummy, crumbling row house in the student-ghetto part of downtown—and two more people tumble laughingly into the front hall.
“This is a gross misuse of the emergency key I gave you,” I say as Hadi steps out of my front closet.
“Happy birthday!” she jeers, detangling the back of her purple hijab from the Velcro on one of my coats.
“Keep your shoes on,” Dikembe says. “About face.” He pushes at me until my nose is nearly against the front door.
“No, no, no,” I complain. “I’ve been on a train for five hours. I want to go to bed.”
“You want to go with us to the bar and get waaaaaasted!” Mauli says, coming in from the kitchen. They’re in their Party Skirt, the sparkly blue one, which means they are planning to really properly drink tonight. Shit, is that the last of Katiya’s vodka swinging from their fist?
Dammit, I’m gonna have to buy a new bottle before she gets home. Make it an apology present to sweeten her up to the idea that I might not be moving out right away after all. The hope was that I would find a job and be outta her hair before January. But I’m starting to think that won’t happen.
“It’s a school night,” I protest.
“You graduated a year ago!” Mauli reminds us.
“So it’s a work night.” I aim an elbow at Dike so he’ll back up.
Hadhirah makes a noise like an old-fashioned telephone and lifts her palm to the side of her face. “Hello? Yes? Hmmm, you don’t say. I’ll let him know.” She drops her hand. “Your boss says it’s fine.”
“Har har.” I let them manhandle me outside and down the grungy cement porch to the broken sidewalk. “Just don’t be on my ass tomorrow if I’m hungover.”
“Hey, they’re not my tips at risk.”
⛾
We end up at The Brass Monkey, just down from Beanevolence. My apartment is a few blocks north of the main street, where both the bar and the café are located. It’s one of the few advantages to living in a place where the smells and stains of a hundred students who rented it before me are ground into the carpets.
Hadi spends a few minutes chatting with the bartender, while Mauli opines on the wonders of microbreweries. Dikembe makes eyes at the girls at the table next to us, and tries to look as cool as he can with a Chez Levesque dust bunny stuck in his twists.
One of the other nice things about living and working within the same few blocks is that you get to know everyone else who does the same. And sometimes, because of it, they give you free shit.
“Turn that frown upside down, grumpy gus,” Hadi says in a syrupy voice when she comes back with a basket of ‘Happy Birthday Roasted Cauliflower Bites. There’s a candle in the curry mayo. “Look, on the house.”
I didn’t realize I was frowning. The train trip must have worn me out more than I thought. I blow out the candle, and Mau and Dike pound me on the back like I’ve scored a winning touchdown. Our tasting flights come with an extra shot of Jaeger for the birthday boy, courtesy of the table of girls, and I tell Dike to go thank them for me. I even brush the dust bunny away first.
“You’re not going with him?” Hadi asks as I down the shot.
“Nah, too bagged. Long day, crappy travel.”
I’m not…
I’m not going to do it.
I’m not.
Somehow my phone is in my hand already, though, and from a distance I hear myself saying: “Rebekah usually has Mondays off. I could—”
“No!” Hadi shouts, so quick it’s actually kinda insulting.
Mau pulls the phone outta my hands. They’re tipsy enough that they fumble it. If they drop it into one of their glasses, I’m going to eat their soul. But they shove it down the front of their skirt instead, right into the boxers below it.
“Don’t think I won’t go in there after it,” I say, pointing at their nose. “You know the saying about a bi person sticking their hands in someone’s pants and being happy with whatever they find.”
“Buy me dinner first,” Mau says, sticking out their tongue. I make a swipe for it and miss.
“What do you call this?” I Vanna White the cauliflower.
“Didn’t buy it. No Gs, No Os.”
“I can get my own Os!”
Hadi snorts, and I realize what I just said.
“I can do that, too,” I say, leering cartoonishly. “Masturbation is a normal and healthy part of—” She shoves me. “Abuse! Abuse! This is homophobia!”
Hadi finally breaks out a real smile, instead of that tight, sardonic thing she likes to call one. Score.
“If you can get your own, go get one from them.” Mau leans across the table and flicks their eyes at someone at the bar. Their back is to us, but they’re still moving enough to make it clear that they were turning away quickly. Like they didn’t want to be caught. “They’ve been staring at you since we got in.”
I turn to glance over my shoulder and—
It’s him.
My heart jumps into the back of my throat, and I’m halfway off my stool before my brain catches up with what I’m actually seeing. In the light of the overhead lamps, the guy at the bar’s hair only looks ginger, their dirty blond hair reflecting the reddish light of the barback.
Not him.
“Snacky,” I stage-whisper all the same, committed now that I’m on my feet. Mau drops my befouled phone into my hand.
“Colin,” Hadi says, grabbing my sleeve before I can head over. “Hey, be smart, okay?”
“The Rules?” I tap my temple.
“The Rules,” she agrees, and lets me go.
As I work my way through the crowd, I try to shove away the weird flutter that even thinking I had spotted him caused. It’s a stupid thought. There’s no way someone like him—upright, posh, snobby—would sit and shoot the shit with the bartender for funsies.
So why had I been excited when I thought it was him?
People like him don’t date people like me.
Do they?
It’s just curiosity. It has to be. Because of the access, right?
It would have been the perfect excuse to finally bridge that customer-service gap. Sidle up to him, actually meet in a place where I didn’t work to distract me, where I could casually drop the fact that it was my birthday and I wouldn’t say no to a celebratory drink.
Actually get a conversation out of him.
Yeah, right.
He never talks to me. I stopped trying to have a conversation with him over a year ago, because he’d always looked like I’d smacked him between the eyes with a wet fish whenever I tried. It seemed kinder to just let him hide behind his newspaper—an honest-to-god paper paper—and stare at me.
And he does stare.
Sometimes I think the staring is the kind you do when you appreciate the look of another person. Sometimes, I think it’s some weird split-tongue thing. It’s gotta be, ‘cause if he was into me, he would’ve said something by now, right?
The part of me that’s still a writer sometimes makes up stories about my fussy regular. Why he’s here. What he’s thinking about. Whether he really sleeps on a pile of gold (if that’s not a speciesist stereotype.) What the no-doubt beautiful maiden he goes home to every night thinks of his morning routine. Or if maybe he’s into something a little more me-shaped.
Oh my god, I am such a romance novel cliché right now.
Also, dammit Colin.
Maybe focus on the dude you are actually trying to get between the sheets?
“Hi.” I slide onto the bar stool beside the guy.
“Hi. I hear it’s your birthday.”
“Yup.” I flash him a smile.
It’s about half the wattage I can usually manage.
I’m tired. The long train ride, the unexpected surprise… and I remember doing this with Caden. And from Caden, my brain jumps to Rebekah, and how last year for my birthday we’d done one of those boat cruise dinners at Niagara Falls, and I’d had a ring burning a hole in my blazer pocket, and…
… I just don’t wanna anymore.
“Sorry,” I say, before he can suggest anything. “I thought you were someone else. I shouldn’t have… my bad.”
I don’t wait for his response and slink back to the table.
“Not into you?” Mauli asks.
“I’m not up for it.”
“Up for it,” Mauli snickers, and I pinch them hard on the shoulder.
I leave at closing time, after a few beers too many, frustrated and manhandling Mauli into one of the cheap cabs that prowl St. Paul street for desperate fares. Dike had headed off with one of the ladies hours ago, and Hadi had bailed before I’d even returned from my failed attempt to hit on the guy at the bar.
Happy birthday to me, I think morosely as I trudge home.
Alone.
Chapter Three
You remember what I told you about the Inciting Incident? Well, this is where it matters.
Because that alarm clock?
It sucks.
Stu was right, and I can’t tell when the light gets bright. I am stupid-lucky my brain wakes up on its own, shouting something is wrong! It takes me thirty solid seconds of staring at the display to figure out what ‘something wrong’ is.
I am very late.
I am also hungover as hell.
I run the four blocks to Beanevolence, throbbing head down, gulping on air to keep from puking, and hoping I don’t bowl someone over. I’m envisioning a line of pissed off suits waiting by the door, tapping expensive shoes on the filthy pavement. Or Hadi writing out a pink slip to fire me. She’d do it, too, even if she had to go buy the pink paper specifically for the dramatic gesture.
Rounding the corner, I’m both relieved and horrified to see there’s only one person waiting. Shit. I’ve totally screwed the morning rush. That’s hundreds of bucks Hadi is out.
Hard fail.
Then my stomach swoops, because it’s him. The guy I’d thought, for a hopeful split-second, had been at the bar last night.
Now is not the time to be kicking yourself.
Now is the time to open the goddamn door, and make some coffee, and steal some of the weapons-grade painkillers Hadi keeps in her desk. Hangover Headaches are the worst. The fact that I did it to myself makes it even worse-er. Worser? Whatever, I hurt too much right now to care whether that’s a real word or not.
Worser-er than even that is that I look like something that crawled out from under my bed, and he looks unfairly delicious.
He’s in his usual uniform again today: a button-down, and a matched tailored-within-an-inch-of-its-life waistcoat and dress pants. This time it’s the hunter green with the yellow oversized check and matching shirt. Flattering, but not my fave of his looks.
The newspaper under his arm is in French today. He looks slightly desperate for his caffe tobio. That’s a short pull of espresso doppio’d into drip-coffee in equal amounts. Hard core. If I didn’t know what he was, I’d say it was a macho drink ordered to intimidate, like dudes who eat hot sauce that’s too spicy to look cool. But who knows what caffeine does to people like him? Maybe coffee alone isn’t enough to give him his morning perk. Maybe he just likes the taste.
“Sorry,” I say, as I swoop in.
The split-tongue steps back, gesturing to the door. This close to him, I can tell he’s got that weird aftershave on. It’s smoky-amber, with musky deep undertones of fermenting grapes that one field trip too many to peninsula wineries has tattooed on my brain.
“You’re late—” he starts, and I shouldn’t call him a split-tongue, even in my own head. He doesn’t lisp.
What he does do is talk in a skin-tinglingly precise accent that’s British in the vowels and hard Canadian on the consonants. It’s arresting, and lyrical. He even rolls his ‘r’s a little and, okay, I have wondered how you get a forked tongue to do that. The point is, it’s the kind of accent no one else has had in decades. Maybe centuries, I don’t know.
I mean, I have no idea what the dude’s name is, let alone his age. Kind of a rude thing to ask.
“I’m aware,” I grunt.
“Allow me—” It takes me a second to realize he’s trying to get at the door to, what, open it for me? Like some sort of romantic hero?
Oh, no.
No.
That’s cute.
That will not do.
This close, I can feel his body heat , and my brain is seriously not online enough to separate last night’s fantasies from reality, and arrggggh, it’s too early for this.
“I got it,” I say, a bit stronger than is polite.
His eyes snap wide. This close, the sunflower yellow of them is flecked with sparks of warm amber. He blinks a few times, the gold-leaf freckles that dance across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose getting lost in a mortified flush.
Shit, I’m being an asshole.
“Sorry,” I say again. “Can you just… let me actually unlock it?”
He stands there, all handsome and forlorn. “I thought you might be ill—”
I drag my under-caffeinated gaze from his mouth—this close I can see that the upper peak of his lips are so perfectly shaped they look like they’ve been tattooed there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his elegant face composed into anything except a politely thoughtful expression of near-nothingness, sort of like if resting bitch face had a refined older brother. But now he looks hang-dog.
I want coffee.
I want him to back off.
(I want to kiss him.)
I’m so hungover.
He is so pretty in the morning light.
I’m being so uncooly feral.
What is wrong with me today? I bet if I’d actually gotten laid last night I wouldn’t be staring at him like he’s the last donut.
“Alright, come in.”
He heads for his usual front corner table. He must know he looks good sitting there. Possibly he likes this table because he likes his back to the wall, and a full view of the street. Hadi painted the support columns of the old black building the same blazing bronze as her logo, and they do frame the view of the street nicely. And the view of him, from the sidewalk. Or maybe he just likes the warmth from the windows—it could be a cold-blooded lizard thing. But honestly, I really think he’s doing it just to torment me.
‘Cause when the sun hits the front of the building just right, it sparks off his spun-copper hair, lines his high cheekbones and beaky nose in gold, gilds his shining freckles, and lends a flush of warmth to his otherwise cream-pale skin.
(What? I’m still a writer at heart. I’ve already decided exactly how I’d describe him on paper. Don’t judge me.)
God, I’m thirsty.
I lie to myself and pretend I mean I need something to drink.
The fact that I can almost hear the syrupy anime love theme every time I look at him is the unfairest kind of bullshit imaginable. I am a trashperson, lusting after him when the most we’ve ever spoken before today was the time he miraculously asked for a second caffe tobio (he’d had bruises under his eyes like thumbprints. I’d wanted to ask him if he was okay, but he was back to his table so quick and—)
Maybe Gem is right and I do need to lay off the romance novels.
(Never.)
Thirsty. Focus on the coffee.
Right.
Maybe I need a glass of ice-water instead.
Maybe just a whole-ass cold shower.
I get all of the gear flicked on, checking water levels and pulling the wands out of the sanitizer, then grind the first pot for the perc. As the espresso machine chugs its way to wakefulness, I peer into garbage cans and inspect tables. The till is all counted out neatly, with a post-it note reminding me to buy a roll of quarters stuck to the crisp purple stack of tens.
Obviously Min-soo closed last night, ‘cause she always kills it.
In the dark kitchen, I crank the industrial oven up as high as it will go to pre-warm, scoop dough from the huge bowl Min-soo left in the fridge last night onto trays, and climb the ladder to dump a burlap sack of fresh beans into the massive stainless steel bean roaster in pride of place in the corner of the kitchen.
In my back pocket, my phone starts playing a punk version of You’re the Cream in My Coffee. Shit. That’s my alarm to start the second batch of scones. Dammit. I don’t have time to let the oven preheat properly. I shove the tray in.
Then it’s back out to the front, where he is sitting primly in his corner, eyes on his newspaper.
Yeah, I’m a basic bitch and prefer coffee that’s more sugar and froth than bean juice, but there’s something so good about fresh-brewed black coffee first thing in the morning. That’s art in its own right, my loves. I interrupt the drip machine to pour myself a mug, and take one selfish minute to revel in a perfect sip.
But what is usually a soft symphony of my mornings is instead a self-inflicted cacophony. The plink of coffee into the carafe, the hiss of the espresso machine, the hum and clunk of the bean-roster in action, all punctuated by the crisp rustle of his newspaper? Agony.
A year ago, I would use this quiet time after the morning rush to work on my thesis. Before that, it would have been an essay, or a lab, or something else I’d procrastinated. Now, I have nothing to work on. Nothing to do but this. Nowhere to go but here. No career, no demand, no drive, just…
Me.
And him.
And the stretching, hissing, clunking, dripping, painful silence.
“Ugh, get your ass in gear, you embarrassment,” I mutter to myself.
“Beg pardon?” he asks, voice raised politely.
Shit.
“I said, uh, the espresso machine is warmed up. Caffe tobio?”
“Please.” He crosses his legs. There’s a flash of turquoise at his ankle. I only catch it for a second, but it looks like he’s wearing socks with cartoon dragons on them. Huh, okay… that’s more playful than I expected him to be.
“Coming right up.”
“I appreciate it. And you are well?” he says, which is the longest string of words I’ve ever heard out of him.
“Yeah.” I turn to the machine, tapping out a careful twenty-seven seconds with the toe of my chucks, timing as the espresso fills the demitasse. So I’m completely in my head, and totally not expecting it when his voice comes from somewhere much too close, just over my left shoulder.
“Oversleeping could be the sympto—”
“Gah!” I shout, and Christ no, the wand in my hand goes flying up, up, sprinkling boiling-hot grounds like freaking pixie dust.
He ducks and snaps the newspaper over his head as they rain down. The sharp clatter of the wand hitting the tile makes us both wince. In the aftermath we stare across the counter at one another, eyes wide, with what I assume are matching shocked expressions.
“Are you—” he starts again and I hold out a hand to stop him.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ve never known you to—”
“Shit, you’re chatty today,” I say, and it’s accidentally catty. He flinches, stung. A glob of espresso grounds plops off his shoulder and splats on the tile floor. “Sorry, sorry! That came out wrong. I’m not… I’m not having a good morning.”
“My apologies,” he murmurs mournfully, and aw, no.
“I’ll make you another one,” I say quickly. “On the house. Just… sit, and I’ll—”
“Perhaps I should go.” He lowers his paper and flicks grounds off the toe of his shoe. Oh, shit, are they expensive? Am I going to have to pay for, I dunno, shoe dry cleaning?
“No, please.” That lurch in my stomach again, and it’s only because a morning that has started terribly (and has only gotten worse) would really become awful if he wasn’t sitting in the sunlight, glimmering and reading. “Please stay.”
It would be just wrong.
“If you are ill, you ought to be taking care of yourself first,” he insists, instead of acknowledging my plea “Don’t you have a colleague who could cover—”
“I got a new alarm clock, I didn’t wake up, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” He crunches the ruined paper in his hands, flexing and twisting. “In fact, I, er, perhaps it is time I confessed that… I smell something burning.”
“You smell burning?” I swig another mouthful of coffee from the mug I’d left by the till, and take a deep breath to calm myself. Wait. “I smell it, too.”
His gaze flicks to the door behind me, slit pupils dilating. “The kitchen.”
“The scones!” I squawk and spin on the spot. I slip in spilled espresso, toppling sideways. Before I can hit the ground, he lunges across the countertop, catching my arm in a grip that’s stronger than I think he realizes. It also prickles.
Trying to get my stupid feet under me, I catch the barest flash of red scale and black, long-tipped nails. Then his hand is back to a perfectly pale peach, fussily manicured, and human.
I shrug him off and push through the door. I shouldn’t have gasped, that was a stupid thing to do when the air is heavy with smoke. But I do, and jerk to a stop, folding double, coughing. He runs into me. I nearly topple. That prickling grip pulls me upright again.
“What can I do to—” he starts, but the fire alarm cuts him off.
“I forgot to turn down the goddamn oven!”
“I’ll get it.” He reaches out with his free hand. It’s covered in deep red scales, his fingertips ending in delicately curved claws.
Holy crap.
He’s dexterous, able to work the knob, then swing down the oven door. Black smoke, oily with burning fats, cascades into our faces. I cover my mouth and nose with the edge of my Henley, eyes burning.
“Oven mitts!” I warn.
“Not necessary!” He’s got the tray balanced in his claws. “Where should I—?”
And that’s when the fire suppression system kicks in.
It lets out a sharp, high whistle that startles him so badly the claws of the hand holding my arm spasm. They go right through my shirt and into flesh.
I holler.
Five things happen at once.
First, he drops the tray of scones. It clatters off the tile, sending burnt pucks of dough into the air. One smacks into my leg, and two pelt him as we dance away.
Second, he yanks his claws out of my arm, blood on the tips, and freaking hell, it stings.
Third, white foam pours from the pipes that ring the kitchen ceiling, coating every surface in a bitter-tasting cloud. Including us.
Fourth, the guy makes a sort of gurgling belch noise, then a sharp bony click accompanied by a spark that looks exactly like the kind you get from a lighter.
Fifth, he spits fire.
Right into the corner. Where the giant custom bean roaster is. The drum is perforated, and the beans inside it immediately go up in flames. They’re so hot they burn blue. The steel drum starts to goddamn melt.
“Coc y gath,” he gasps in horror, dithering on the spot.
“Holy shit,” I say, clamping my hand down over the punctures in my arm.
“I’m terribly sorry!” he shouts over the sound of the alarm and the hiss of the foam deflating around us. “I didn’t mean to—I was startled!”
The urgency of the situation suddenly hits home, fire crawling up the wall toward the ceiling, and I scream: “Put it out!”
“What do you want me to do? Suck it back up?” he shouts back, all his cool calm evaporating in the heat of the inferno. “I’m a dragon, not a fire extinguisher!”
Well.
Fuck this meet-cute straight to hell, then.
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