Page 21 of Nine-Tenths

"Numbers One, Two, and Three of Hadi's Seven-Step Rules for Colin's Happily Ever After," I recite. Christ, I can't believe she made me memorize these. "Right now those are the only ones that apply."

"Good boy," Hadi says, smug. "Doesn't change the fact that he likes you. If you are gonna work beside him for a while, I want you to keep them in mind. Especially Rule One."

Right,I think.Don't get carried away.

"Fine. Thanks, mom-friend."

"Mom-friend? Clearly not. I am the wine-aunt friend if nothing."

"You don't drink."

"I can still be a wine-aunt."

The truth is, Hadi is more like some weird amalgamation of an older sister, mentor, and best friend than a boss. She's only two years older than me, and we’d been in the Environmental Tourism program at Brock University. She'd gone on to open Beanevolence immediately after graduation, with some serious grants from the city. They'd been impressed by her as-local-as-possible plans. Pretty much everything except the growing of the raw beans themselves happens within a few kilometers of the place: milling, roasting, fruit growing, dairy and milk-alternative production, all of it.

I'd been there from day one, her first eager little barista.

And it's been great. Okay, I didn'tdreamabout being a barista when I was a kid. Who did? But it pays better than minimum wage, Hadi lets me pick my hours, I'm practically managing the place myself, and all the nooblings have to obey me. It's worth holding on to. At least until I've found a real grown-up job.

Like the kind that Hadi made. Like the kind it seems that literally every other person I graduated withalready has. The kind that would mean I haven't wasted the last five years and the chunk of the money I’d inherited from Dad on tuition.

Ugh.

Adultingsucks.

It sucks even more when it seems like you had all thispossibilityandpotentialand then, like…nothing.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been actually for nothing if Rebekah and I had… Well, Hadi had been there for me then, too. Foreveryhorrific dating disaster I'd been through for the last five years, really. Thus, The Rules.

"Hey. Colin?" Hadi asks, uncertain in a way she rarely is.

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay? I mean really, are youokay?"

My breath catches in my throat, eyes suddenly burning. "Yeah," I choke out. My voice is still scratchy from the smoke inhalation. At least, that's what I'm blaming it on. "I'm fine. Really."

"I was scared," Hadi confesses. "I was so worried you'd been burned… and then when I saw all theblood… I'm coming over."

"I have no pants on."

"That has literally never stopped me before."

I groan and roll my head back against the bath pillow. "Okay, fine. But give me an hour, okay? No, actually two. I gotta figure out how to wash my hair." I turn to look at the bottles jumbled along the edge of the tub. It pulls on the wounds. "Shit."

"Have you taken your meds?"

"Forgot to get 'em," I admit. No point in lying to Hadi. She'd know.

"Your dragon didn't insist you stop at thepharmacy in the hospital before you left?"

"He's notmine."

"Sure. I'll swing by, grab your prescription, and pick 'em up for you. I've got medical EI leave forms for you to fill out anyway, and I'm buying you enough take-out to pack the freezer so you don't have to cook for a week."

Another hot surge of emotion crawls up my throat and I swallow it down roughly. I hate being treated like an idiot little brother who can't do things for himself. I hate being babied. But you know, sometimes someone just steps up because they care.

It's not that I subscribe to toxic masculinity bullshit about how dudes can't express their feelings. Nah. It's just that I hate to ask for help and she knows it. So she maneuvers me so I don’t have to.