Page 17 of Smoke and Glitter

"She told him he couldn't cite a code if he couldn't give her the number," Sam says, working the spatula beneath the next egg.

I lower my coffee. "She did not."

He glances at me. "You know Bex."

I do, which is why I start laughing before he gets much farther. The inspector wasn't prepared for her, Sam wasn't willing to rescue either of them, and nobody involved remembers how the argument actually ended. By the time he admits he's forgotten the rest of the story, I'm laughing hard enough that I have to put my mug down.

Sam glances over from the stove, and the smile he tries to hide before turning back to the pan tells me he's enjoying this more than he plans to admit.

A few minutes later he puts a plate in front of me and takes the chair across from mine. The eggs are better than the first casualty suggested they would be. We eat without talking for a while, my bare feet tucked beneath the chair and Sam's shirt brushing the tops of my thighs every time I move.

My own shirt is still on the kitchen floor.

I notice it every once in a while and leave it there.

When my coffee gets low, Sam reaches across the table for the mug and refills it without asking. I watch him set it back in front of me, and when his eyes lift to mine, I take another sip instead of commenting on the fact that he got it exactly right again.

His eyes stay on mine for another second before he goes back to his breakfast.

By the time we finish eating, the fire-inspector story has wandered into everything Sam would change about Vibes if he ever built another place. Smaller. No stage, no dressing rooms. Just a bar in Pilsen where he could know the whole room without running a show around it.

"Does this imaginary bar have a name?"

Sam takes my empty plate and stands. "Smoke."

I look at him over my mug. "That's annoyingly good."

One corner of his mouth moves. "Yeah."

My phone buzzes from inside my bag near the couch, and when I check the time, it's close enough to eleven that I have to move.

"Shit. My call."

Sam nods toward the chair I'm already sitting in. "Told you."

I give him a look while I pull my laptop out of my bag, but I stay exactly where I am.

The call runs longer than it should. Sam cleans up around me while I work, moving quietly enough that after a while I stop noticing when he leaves the room. At some point he disappears downstairs. By the time he comes back, I'm answering questions from three different people and have forgotten I'm sitting in his kitchen wearing his shirt.

When I finally hang up, I could pack everything away.

Instead, I open my email.

Sam doesn't comment on that either.

The morning slips into afternoon without either of us deciding it will. I work while he moves between the apartment and the club below, sometimes gone for ten minutes, sometimes longer. When he's upstairs, we talk in pieces around whatever I'm doing. Nothing important. Nothing that requires either of us to decide what last night made us.

Eventually I close the laptop and realize I've been staring at the same email for several minutes.

"I should go."

Sam is leaning against the counter with his arms folded. He looks at me for a moment before nodding.

"Yeah."

Neither of us moves.

I don't know what I'm waiting for, and I don't think he does either.