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“Nothing at all, I’m sure,” I said. “You’re going to wake up tomorrow morning hungover and still desperately wanting a fishtank.”
“Yes,” Harlan said, giving me a warm smile. “You understand me. Always.”
“I understand that I think it’s time to get you home,” I said.
“I have at least fifteen minutes left on my shift.”
“And yet you got here forty-five minutes earlier than your shift started,” I said. “Rush already told you to leave early tonight.”
“When you’re right, you’re right,” he said. His eyes were looking somewhere into the middle distance. “Let’s get out of here. I need you to take me home.”
Something in my heart surged. “Hop in the truck.”
In another minute, we’d said our goodnights and were headed out the front doors of the brewery. The moon shone high up in the dark night sky, and Harlan took a deep breath of fresh air as we walked to my truck. He seemed so impossibly at peace with everything tonight, and I didn’t think it was just the alcohol.
Harlan often seemed serious, especially while working in the brewery. Tonight, he was looser. Maybe he really had needed that kiss, earlier.
On the drive home, Harlan turned on the radio and sang along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” with the windows down, as free and happy as I’d ever seen him.
“I know what tonight needs,” he declared as I pulled my truck into the driveway at his house a few minutes later.
“If you’re about to say more whiskey, I’m going to fight you.”
“Not more whiskey,” he said, a devilish grin on his face. “Two words. Fire. Pit.”
In another moment he was out the passenger side door and making his way toward the front door of the house, fumbling for his key.
“We don’t usually do the first fire pit of the season ‘til at least late May,” I said.
“Nope. Tonight’s perfect for it. Air’s a little cold, but in front of the fire, we’ll be in heaven. If I can ever get this key into the damn door, that is—”
“I got it,” I said, gently putting my hand over his and sliding the key into the lock.
“That’s what I am talking about,” he said. “One step closer to the fire pit.”
The moment we got into his backyard, he was a man on a mission. A lumberjack on a mission. He’d hauled fresh wood and kindling into his fire pit faster than I ever could, drunk or not. Soon, a glowing fire was slowly coming to life, illuminating his small backyard.
I loved Harlan’s house, but sometimes I thought his backyard felt even more like home to me than the inside of the place. There were the usual pine and spruce trees dotting the yard, but Harlan had also taken great care of the place. There was a bird bath with a little fountain always trickling away at one edge of the space. There was a gravel path that wound its way through the yard, and little lanterns in various nooks and crannies. In the summer, once all the plants were back, there were beautiful flowers and shrubs, too.
It was a slice of Colorado paradise, complete with a fire pit and comfy chairs at the center.
“Feel that?” Harlan asked, holding his hands out to the fire. His face glowed in the brightening orange light.
“It really is nice,” I said. “Fine. I’ll say it. Good idea.”
His smile was radiant. “Want some lemonade?”
“Isn’t it going to be more of a hot cocoa and marshmallows situation if we’re sitting outside here?”
“Hot cocoa puts me to sleep,” he said.
“You need a good night’s sleep tonight,” I said. “Let’s have the cocoa. Maybe you should head to bed soon, even—”
“Hey,” Harlan said, his expression hardening a little as he searched my face. “Quit telling me what to do.”
I blinked at him. “Are you being serious?”
“Think I might be,” he said. “You’ve been acting this way all day, and I can’t tell why.”
I paused, not sure what he meant.
“How have I been acting?”
“You tell me I should date more, then tell me to flirt with Chase the camera guy, then you kiss me, for fuck’s sake,” Harlan said, raising an eyebrow. “Then you tell me I shouldn’t go home with Chase, and that I should go to bed early. What gives?”
I bit my lower lip, looking at the flames of the fire and then back at Harlan again. His words kicked up a storm within me, because I knew he was right.
I had been acting weird today. And I hadn’t realized it had been that obvious to him, too.
“I just care about you, asshole,” I said, trying to defuse the tension. “Usually you ask my opinion about ten times a day, so forgive me for thinking you might want it.”
“Bullshit,” Harlan said.
“You text me asking about what to get for dinner. What movie to watch. What flavors of beer to brew for the summer batches. Hell, a few weeks ago you texted me at night asking me if you should go to sleep or stay up and be rebellious, whatever the hell that meant.”
