Page 131 of Spiced!

Adrian was at the bar talking to Benji. He caught my eye across the room, and something passed between us. It was a small, specific warmth, the eye contact of two people who had found each other and noted it without making a big deal of it.

For some reason, that simple glance made my palms sweat. I picked up my whiskey, which was already down to the hockey-puck-shaped ice cube, a nice touch Benji came up with for our larger, more athletic brothers, and took a long, satisfying pull.

Jacks appeared and set a fresh one in front of me. “You need anything else?”

“I’m good,” I said. “You know you’re not working, right? This is a party for all of us.”

“It’s good. I like taking care of people, and you, well, I’m pretty sure you’re my people now, too. You belong here.”

This was a Jacks sentence, delivered with complete sincerity. I had been on the receiving end of enough of them to know that the correct response was simple.

“Thanks, Jacks. You’re my people, too.”

He nodded and went back to the bar.

The door swung open, and Mark entered, his hands completely empty.

“Where’s your laptop?” Benji asked before Mark had fully cleared the doorway.

“I left it at home.”

Benji blinked with wide, dumbfounded eyes. “You . . . left . . . your laptop . . . at home?”

“Yes.”

“Voluntarily?”

“That’s generally how leaving things happens,” Mark said.

“Mark.” Benji set down the bottle he was holding. “In the five years since we opened this bar, I have never once seen you without that laptop—not at staff meetings, not at closing, not at Peter’s birthday dinner when you said you were just stepping out to check one thing and came back forty minutes later because you’d found an anomaly in the Q3 beverage costs.”

“The anomaly was significant,” Mark said.

“It was eleven dollars,” Benji said. “And we were at a birthday party.”

“Eleven dollars per week is—”

“Five hundred and seventy-two dollars annually,” Chase said from the table where he waited for Finn. “He told us at Christmas.”

Mark looked at Chase. Chase raised his glass and smiled pleasantly.

“One night,” Finn said, appearing from wherever Finn appeared from when the moment required him. He put a hand briefly on Mark’s shoulder. “One night without the laptop. You’ve earned it.”

Mark scanned the room. He studied the tables pushed together, the family assembled, the bar lit warm and full. His jaw ticked, likely the ghost of a calculation that had nowhere to go without the spreadsheet to receive it. Then he went to his corner booth and sat, sans laptop. After another moment, Dante stepped through the front door, walked directly to Mark’s booth, and sat down across from him.

Mark looked at him, no hint of expression on his face. Dante set his book on the table between them but didn’t open it. They sat there in the easy silence of two people who had been in the same room enough times that the silence had stopped needing to be filled.

Benji watched this from the well for exactly three seconds before he turned back to his bottles. He did not produce the napkin. Some things didn’t need to be written down.

Peter arrived at seven-twelve, which was late for Peter. Benji’s entire posture shifted the moment he walked through the door, not dramatically, just the small adjustment of a person whose room had become complete.

“You’re late,” Benji said, though there was no scolding in his tone.

“I’m three minutes early,” Peter said. “The invitation said seven-fifteen.”

“The invitation said seven. I told you seven.”

“You told me seven-fifteen. I have the text.”