For someone with the innate social charm of a mounted fish (me), watching Miles befriend this stranger felt like seeing Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel: impressive, but also dizzying. Like any second, he might fall off his ladder and splatter on the marble below.
Gill kept buying us drinks, except for when the bartender, a cute redhead with a nose ring and a literal MOM tattoo, bought all three of us drinks.
Now, when last call rolls around, Gill shoves a twenty-dollar bill at us. “For the cab ride home.”
“No, no, no,” Miles says, pushing the bill back toward him. “Keep your money, Gill. How else are you getting to Vegas?”
Vegas, we’d learned, was his next destination.
But Gill tucks the bill in the pocket on Miles’s shirt, then claps one leathery hand on each of our cheeks. “Stay strong, kids,” he says sagely, then turns, tosses his beat-up leather jacket over one shoulder, and literally whistles a goodbye to the bartender.
By the time we’ve finished our last round, the rain has stopped, and the night is pleasantly cool, so we decide to walk home in a drunken zigzag, Miles’s arm slung over my shoulder and mine around his waist like we’re two old friends rather than very drunk, newly minted allies. “Does that kind of thing happen to you often?” I ask.
“What kind of thing?” Miles says.
“Gill,” I say.
“There aren’t many Gills in the world,” Miles replies.
“The free drinks,” I clarify. “The hours of stimulating conversation about crimes he may or may not have witnessed.”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Sometimes.”
“How often do you get free drinks, Miles?”
He casts a bemused look over at me. “It’s a friendly place.”
“MEATLOCKER?” I ask.
“Butcher Town,” he says.
I smack my forehead and he stops short in surprise. “That’s why it’s called MEATLOCKER,” I say. “I spent the whole night trying to figure out if it was a fetish bar or something.”
Miles tips his head back, laughing. “You thought I took you to a fetish bar?” He looks delighted. “Did Peter tell you I was into BDSM?”
“Wait, are you?” I ask.
“Not that I know of,” he says. “Why? Are you?”
“Probably not,” I say. “I think I’m pretty boring. In that realm.”
“What realm?”
“Sex Realm,” I say.
“Do you lie there and stare at the ceiling in silence?” he asks.
“Excuse you,” I say. “This is none of your business.”
“You brought it up, Daphne,” he reminds me.
“I don’t stare at the ceiling,” I say. We’ve reached our building. He opens the door for me, and we start up the stairs. “I just make utterly unblinking eye contact like any respectable woman.”
“See?” he says, gesturing for me to take the stairs ahead of him. “Not boring. Haunting, maybe. But not boring.”
“But how does that happen?” I ask, and Miles’s eyes widen, his mouth screwing up into something between a smile and a grimace.
“Well, when two people find each other attractive—”
“The free drinks,” I interrupt.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s not like I set out for it.”
I must be making a disbelieving face, because he frowns. “You think I’m some kind of con artist?”
“I think you’re a very charming guy,” I say.
“As far as insults go,” he says, pausing halfway up the stairs, “that’s a new one for me.”
“I’m not insulting you,” I say, though truthfully, I’ve never trusted people who are too charming. My dad’s a charming guy. Doesn’t mean he actually means anything he says. “It’s just—look, I’m terrible with new people.”
“Gill loved you,” he argues.
“Because of osmosis,” I say. “Because you were there. I love talking to people I already know, but when I meet someone new, half the time my mind goes blank, and the other half of the time, I make a joke that absolutely no one realizes is a joke, or I ask something way too personal.”
He glances sidelong at me as we start climbing again. “You didn’t do that with me.”
“You may have noticed,” I say, “I’ve barely spoken to you before tonight.”
