Page 50 of Bounced!

I knew because I watched him do it, watched him fight it like a man holding back a sneeze in church, going redder and stiffer by the second, while Rod put away the market haul, and Jacks rolled in yawning, and the bar filled with its ordinary afternoon noise.

Benji had promised. Benji had sworn on Reina, on his own life, on the group chat. And Benji had a face that couldn’t hold a secret the way a colander couldn’t hold soup.

What broke him wasn’t even a big thing.

Dante came down the bar with two coffees, set one in front of me without a word, black with the one Splenda, already stirred, the way he’d been doing for weeks. I’d been too dumb to notice it meant anything. He let his hand rest on my shoulder for about a second longer than a man rests a hand on his boss. One second of hand. That’s all it took.

Benji made a sound like a balloon giving up.

“I CAN’T!” he announced to the entire bar. “I’m sorry. I made it eleven minutes. That’s a personal best. Somebody should be proud of me, but I can’t watch Dante bring Mark his little coffee and touch his shoulder and act like I don’t know—”

“Benji,” I said.

“THEY’RE TOGETHER!” He flung an arm out at the two of us like a magician revealing the trick. “Mark and Dante . . . last night . . . at a leather bar. I walked in this morning and they were—they were—” His voice dropped to a horrified church whisper. “They were on Reina.”

Silence.

Then Jacks, from the end of the bar, lowered his energy drink very slowly.

“Wait,” Jacks said. “Together on what?”

“Together together, Jacks.”

“On Reina?” He looked down the length of the bar as though he could see through the kitchen wall and peer at Reina. Then he looked at us. “Like, they were fixing her? Was she broken again?”

“No, Jacks.” Benji smacked his forehead.

“Because I can call the guy—”

“They’re dating, Jacks,” Benji huffed. “Mark and Dante are romantically seeing each other. They kissed. They are, as we speak, boyfriends.”

Jacks blinked at us.

His mouth opened.

Closed.

He looked at me.

He looked at Dante.

He looked at me again, doing the math with his whole face, the numbers plainly not carrying.

“But Dante works the door,” he said, as if that settled it.

“He can do both, buddy,” I offered, lifting my coffee.

“And Mark’s the boss.”

“Not of Dante he isn’t, not anymore.” Finn set the rack down and looked at me over it. This wasn’t a joke. It was the flat, final voice he used maybe twice a year. “Dante’s hours, Dante’s pay, anything that used to run across Mark’s desk, it runs across mine now. Starting today, Mark doesn’t schedule him, doesn’t sign his checks, doesn’t write him up if he mouths. I do. That way nobody in this bar ever has to wonder, and neither do the two of them.” He picked the rack back up. “Love finds a way. I just gave it a better path, with paperwork.”

I could see the exact instant it landed with Jacks. It came up behind his eyes like a sunrise happening to one specific person, slow, then all at once. Jacks gasped, the full-body gasp, and slammed his energy drink down.

“You’re together?” He was already coming around the bar. “You’re together! I—wait, is this new? Is this a today thing? How long? I said it. I said to Skyler, ‘Those two have a vibe,’ and Skyler said I say that about everybody, but I meant it. This time I really meant it—”

And then he was on us, all arms, thrilled past reason.

Jacks got a hold of Dante, who bore it with the stiff patience of a lighthouse being climbed by a child. Benji got the other side. Finn stood back with his arms crossed, that dry glint in his eye. I stood in the middle of my own bar getting congratulated at two in the afternoon, and the thing that got me, the thing I hadn’t braced for, was Dante’s face.