Page 4 of Bearly Out Loud

“You’re welcome. I saved us twenty minutes. We can use them for dessert.”

“We’re revisiting this.” He swirled his sake. The candlelight caught his expression—the one that meant the supportive part was coming whether she’d ordered it or not. “You haven’t dated anyone since Parking Meter.”

“His name was Brendan.”

“His name is irrelevant. He was thin, metal, and provided zero warmth. Parking Meter. Before him, Podcast Guy, who talked over you in a professional setting?—”

“He interrupted me during a panel. At a convention. Into a microphone. To correct me about a characterI voiced.”

“And before Podcast Guy?”

“We’re not doing the full highlight reel, Takumi.”

“The last one asked you to be quieter during sex.”

Nari set down her chopsticks.Fine. We’re doing the highlight reel.

Takumi dropped a chopstick. Picked it up. Dropped it again, this time with theatrical intent. “He asked YOU to be quieter. The woman who gets paid to be loud for aliving.Who has been formally trained to fill stadiums with her voice. Who once made a sound booth operator cry with a single line reading?—”

“He cried because the performance was moving, not because I damaged his hearing.”

“A man looked at ALL of that and said, ‘tone it down.’”

“In fairness, it was more of a suggestion. A terrible, relationship-ending suggestion delivered with the confidence of a man who had never once been told his opinions were unwelcome.” She selected a piece of hamachi with surgicalprecision. “I dumped him over appetizers the following week. Used my outdoor voice. Inside the restaurant.”

“You didn’t.”

“The table next to us applauded.”

Takumi threw his head back and laughed—the full-body kind, loud enough to turn heads at three adjacent tables.

“I need that on a plaque.” He wiped his eyes. “‘Nari Wixx: received audience participation for a breakup.’”

“It wasn’t a standing ovation. Nobody stood. One woman clapped. Her husband joined in. Let’s maintain factual accuracy about my romantic failures.”

“Thepoint—” Takumi straightened, the laughter banking into the expression that meant the genuinely supportive part was arriving—“is that every guy who’s tried has wanted you smaller. Quieter. More manageable.”

She spun her sake cup between her fingers. The ceramic was warm.

“I know.”

“Do you? Because you keep picking men who don’t.”

Accurate. Annoying. Both. The Venn diagram of Takumi’s emotional observations is a single circle labeled “correct and infuriating.”

“New criteria.” Takumi refilled her cup. “The next man in your life has to pass the Volume Test. If he can’t handle you at full projection, he doesn’t deserve you at a whisper.”

“That is aggressively poetic for a sound engineer.”

“I contain multitudes.” He raised his cup. “To future men who are not intimidated by volume.”

“To the hypothetical and the brave.” She clinked her cup against his. “And the probably nonexistent.”

They drank. The hamachi was always transcendent. The hamachi was the most reliable relationship in her life, and she had made peace with that.

THREE

NARI