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North stared at the vet.
Big drops of sweat were breaking out on Tean’s forehead, and North was willing to bet they were only partially connected to the simmering evening heat. Tean stammered, “We were wondering—”
“I,” Jem prompted from the bottom of the stairs.
Tean shot a furious look toward the voice, but he started over. “I was wondering if you and Shaw would, um, want to get a drink. With me. At a bar.”
“You don’t drink,” North told him.
Tean stared at him for a heartbeat. “It is really hot out here.”
Jem sounded like he was about to pee himself.
“Oh my Christ,” North muttered. “Shaw, wake up. We’re going to get a drink with Tean.” He pitched his voice louder. “And Jem.”
“’mwake,” Shaw snorted as he sat up. Then, blinking, he added muzzily, “Hi, Tean. Is it morning already?”
“Morning,” North said as he pulled on the Red Wings. And then, a little louder than necessary, “I thought you were meditating.”
“I was meditating, but then I went on a vision quest—”
North pitched a pair of lime-colored capris at Shaw, followed by some sort of creamy silk tunic thing, and then his Chacos. Shaw struggled into the clothes—literally.
“Ok, this tunic is definitely cursed because the neck hole keeps changing into the arm holes—” He was, as a matter of fact, stuck inside one of the arm holes in question when he pushed back some of the fabric, peered out, and said, “Hi, Jem!”
“I think this bar has a rule about pants,” Jem said from where he’d moved to the landing.
“He’s going to wear—” North stopped the shout. No shouting. Not anymore. No snapping, either. No barking. No growling. Maybe, in a few years, he could work his way up to yipping, like the puppy. In a calmer voice, “He’s going to wear pants, Jem.” North was feeling quite proud of himself because he even managed not to say,Obviously.
“Commando?” Jem asked.
North had to leave the room.
He was down in the parking lot, contemplating the possibility of a quick smoke—better not, he decided; Jem had an uncanny way of showing up where he wasn’t supposed to be—when the other three joined him. They rode in the rental Jetta across town, and North focused on Tean’s remarkable obedience to traffic lights so that he wouldn’t comment on what their choice of rental car—a base-model Jetta, for Christ’s sake? And white?—said about them as human beings. He did almost lose it the third time Tean stopped at a green light—not red, not even yellow—but he managed to swallow the comment.
A little noise must have escaped him, though, because Tean mumbled, “It looked like it was about to turn yellow.”
North didn’t say anything to that either. He even managed a noise that, under the right conditions, might have sounded like acknowledgment.
When they got to the Pretty Pretty, the club was doing steady traffic without being busy. North had driven past the club; he recognized the industrial-chic exterior, and he knew it was Wahredua’s only gay bar. He’d never been inside, so once the bouncer waved them through, he was only partially prepared for the contrast: mirrors, colored lights, the blast of dance music, the heat of bodies making the mixture of body sprays and colognes steam in the air. He’d been in plenty of clubs—gay and straight—before, and the Pretty Pretty struck a nice balance between over-the-top campiness and unexpectedly comfortable.
The other guys were already at the bar. A chorus of greetings met North and Shaw as they joined them, and North found himself on a stool with Auggie on one side and Jem on the other. The bartender was pretty and dark haired, and he kept glancing at Emery with the kind of wariness that suggested the possibility he’d been punched at least once. North asked about the beers on tap and was trying to decide when he caught a fragment of the conversation next to him.
“Colt is spending the night at Ashley’s house,” Emery was saying, “and Evie and Lana are with Foley—he’s got a million fucking kids to wear them out. Are you ok there?”
“Fine,” Auggie said. “It’s a little bit of a stretch. My toes can touch the floor if I scoot all the way to the edge.”
No, North thought, and he threw up a mental wall. No comments. No jabs. No jokes. No picking on anyone, not even Auggie, not even when he deserved it. North asked for an IPA, nodded at whatever the bartender said back, and tried to focus on the music.
That, of course, was when Theo said, “Darn it, I forgot my cheaters.”
For a moment, the unfairness of it all washed over North. Not just his reading glasses. Hell, not even justmy cheaters. He’d saidDarn it. Right out loud. In public. And North couldn’t say anything about it because—
Because he was going to be nice. He was going to be a decent human being. He could—and would—make friends. Even if it killed him.
“I know it’s lush,” Jem was shouting over the music, running both hands over his beard as he spoke to Shaw. “But do you think it’s too lush? Or does it need to be lusher? More lush? Like Theo’s?”
That one almost got North; the words were right there on the tip of his tongue, something about Gramps and Brylcreem, or maybe Vitalis—but at the last moment, he hit the brakes.
