Page 132 of Spiced!

“I told you seven knowing you’d interpret it as seven-fifteen. I was compensating.”

Peter looked at him steadily. I was fairly certain he was biting back a smile. “You scheduled me with a fifteen-minute buffer?”

“I scheduled you accurately for who you are. I know my people.”

“That’s either very loving or very insulting.” Peter’s smile finally emerged.

“It’s efficient. Don’t make me walk back to the office and get Post-it notes,” Benji said, his own grin surfacing. He handed Peter a drink as Peter settled onto a stool at the bar, as close to Benji as he could get without climbing over the counter.

Skyler and Jacks had claimed the end of the pushed-together tables, which put them near Finn and Chase, which meant the four of them were in the formation of two married couples who had been friends long enough to have a shorthand of their own. Finn was saying something that made Chase put his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. Skyler was listening to Jacks with the attention he always gave Jacks, which was the complete and total kind, as though Jacks were the most interesting person in the room, which to Skyler he clearly was. That, given all our affection for Jacks, made my heart warm.

Erik stepped up and sat at the bar beside Peter. The pair dove into a conversation that seemed, from where I sat, to involve something Erik was explaining at length and Peter was receiving with a silence he brought to information he found useful. I was fairly certain I heard the words “yurt” and “skull,” though I could’ve been mistaken.

I leaned slightly toward Adrian, who had come to my booth.

“What are they talking about?” I asked, nodding toward Erik.

Adrian glanced at them. “No idea, but when Peter goes quiet like that, he’s either bored or fascinated.”

“Which is this?”

“He hasn’t checked his phone,” Adrian said. “I’d say fascinated.”

Tyler was everywhere simultaneously, at the tables, at the bar, back at the tables, and telling a story to Jacks that seemed to require both arms and most of his upper body to tell. Jacks was laughing with the innocuous, unrestrained joy he brought to most moments. Skyler watched Tyler with the fond exasperation of a man who had made his peace with his craziness and found it genuinely endearing.

At some point, I’m not sure when, Rod emerged from the kitchen. He actually left the sanctity of his pass-through and walked into the bar-proper. Benji saw him first, his mouth opening slightly, then he reached under the bar, produced a glass, and poured something without breaking eye contact with Rod. Rod took it, and they stared at each other for a moment in companionable silence.

“You came out,” Benji said.

“Yes,” Rod said.

“Do you want a chair?”

“No.”

“Do you want to come sit with—”

“No,” Rod said. “I can see from here.”

He raised his glass.

Benji raised his.

They each took a sip.

Rod went back to the kitchen.

Benji stood and stared for a moment.

“That,” he said, to nobody in particular, “is the most emotional thing that man has ever done.”

Finn’s toast happened at eight, which was when Finn had scheduled it on the timeline, because Finn’s emotional moments ran on time even when everything else didn’t. He stood at the end of the tables with a glass raised in one hand and his clipboard on the table before him.

“Five years ago,” he said, “Mark and I opened a bar because Mark said the numbers made sense, and I hated my job, and we both thought Ybor needed something. We were both probably wrong about our reasons but completely right about the outcome.” He paused. “I had a speech prepared. It was on the clipboard.” He motioned to the clipboard with his glass.

“What happened to the speech?” Benji asked.

Finn took a sip, then glanced at Mark. Mark gave him a nod and the slightest of smiles. Finn swallowed hard and returned his gaze to us.