Page 7

Chapter Six

T he doctor had put neat little stitches into each of the five puncture wounds, and assured me I was going to heal up perfectly fine, with no danger of nerve damage. I'd also had a tetanus shot, just to be sure. Which was a bit insulting to Dav, to be honest.

"I'll walk," I say as I sway to a stop on the evening-cool sidewalk.

The sun is setting. How had we been in the hospital that long?

"You will not," Dav counters, already thumbing at his phone. "What's your address?" He makes a face when I tell him.

"It’s cheap. And my roommate's backpacking through Europe. I have the place to myself until January."

Although, how I'm supposed to save up to move out now, since I have no workplace and, shit, likely no job, I have no idea. Ugh.

Also, I am not leaning on Dav to stay upright.

It may look like I am, but I'm actually not.

It's just… it's been along day, okay? So what if he's the perfect height for my head to rest on his shoulder, it's not a big deal, and I still haven't had any coffee . Tragedy. I can be excused.

Dav slips an arm around my shoulder, careful to place his hand on my ribs, rather than my bicep. Gosh, he's so warm. June though it is, this is Canada. It’s chilly when the shadows get long. And I hadn't worn a jacket to work because I’d expected to be home by now.

When the car arrives, the posh bastard opens the door for me.

Either it's the second round of painkillers talking, or I'm starting to like him.

Once we're settled and I've won the silent battle of wills to strap my own damn self in with the seatbelt, Dav fills the awkward silence by staring a hole through his phone.

Right, fine by me. I can just lean back and close my eyes and…

My stomach grumbles.

Mortifying.

Dav jerks his head up, startled. Then his expression melts into something closer to amused.

"No," I say immediately. "You don't have to order me dinner."

"I haven't even—"

" No ," I repeat. "All I want to do is go to bed." I don't add: And I don't want your apology-money or pity-time , because that's what I fear this actually is. I don't want it to be that, even though I can't define that right now, because I'm...

I like spending time with Dav.

I like his gentle manners. I like his precise way of moving, as if every gesture is calculated for maximum elegance and efficiency.

I like his fussy clothes and his stupid hanky.

I like that he's the right height to lean on, and that his very presence makes the chill evening air tolerable.

I like his voice when he is reading me romance novels.

For a dude who hates to be fussed over, I'll admit…

I even kind of like Dav's fussing. 'Cause when he does it, he enjoys it. He’s not just doing it because he thinks he should.

Dav is nice, but like, thoughtful nice. I used to worry he was a split-tongued creep, but he's never actually done anything creepy. Just sat in the corner and read.

I might even be enjoying today, in a masochistic way.

It— stupidly —feels like a date. A date that started with impatience and flying espresso and fire, and is ending with blood and localized freezing and stitches.

But honestly? It's still not the worst I've ever been on, and nope, this is dangerous territory to be letting my drugged-up brain wander into.

I have been burned by thinking there was something there before.

Many, many times before. This is why I have The Rules.

So no, I am not going to let him buy me dinner because he feels bad about lightly stabbing me by accident.

Dinner would be way too actual date-y. It doesn't matter that he's now 'Dav', the handsome and well-dressed dragon who beleaguers nurses on my behalf, and buys me candy when I am hurting. He is still just a customer.

That's all.

He actually harrumphs. "Very well."

Victory.

He turns his attention back to his phone. After a long few moments, he makes that annoyed, put-upon kitten-purr-growl noise again. Does he even realize he's making it? It's… adorable.

"What?" I ask, because I’m a glutton for punishment.

Get it together, Colin.

"Hadhirah Bakush, your boss," he starts, then stops and makes the sour-lemon face again. "As you're already aware she is…"

I cover my mouth as I chuckle, afraid he'll think I'm laughing at him. "Yeah?"

"She has spoken to her supplier and the bean roaster can't be shipped for at least a month. She's checked all the other national suppliers at my behest, and it seems that anything large enough to be worth her while are all similarly unavailable."

"Like there's some sort of global shortage crisis?" I ask.

"Evidently," he sneers at his phone. "How inconvenient."

"Bad news," I agree, slumping back in my seat and imagining how blue the air around Hadi must be. "We have an ancient manual, but it's tiny . There's no way to make the quantities we need on a daily basis."

"Surely you can buy pre-roasted beans?"

I make a show of clutching my non-existent pearls.

"I'll take that as a no, then, shall I?" Dav says, arching his fussily shaped eyebrow with sardonic nonchalance.

My heart goes pitter-patter.

Fuck.

What, I like the dry-humored straight-men types, okay? I am a smol bi disaster bebe and sass is my domain; my partner has to be someone I can springboard off.

Not a date!

God, I need sleep. And food. And sleep. And water. And sleep. And to text Hadi to tell her the doc said I had to be off for at least a week. And sleep.

"Is the only issue with the manual roaster the quantity?" Dav asks as the car pulls onto my street.

"We'd need two people on shift to use it. Except this time of year, without the students at the university, Hadi can only afford one opener."

Dav pets his floppy hair back again irritably. Then he says, slowly, "What if I were to, ah, volunteer my services?"

"You?" I squint, trying to gauge his expression in the passing pools of lamplight.

"I am usually in the café all morning, anyway. How difficult would it be for you to show me how to make the beverages, and work the till so you could be in the kitchen?"

"Oh, the till?" I say, as the car slows to a stop. "That's not what I thought you were going to say."

Dav's shoulders jump up to his ears, defensive. "What did you think I was going to say?" he asks softly.

A sound that’s closer to a giggle than I would like to admit flitters out of my mouth as I unbuckle. "Maybe it's the meds talking, but I just had this sudden, stupid vision of you, I don't know, doing your fire spitting thing and roasting the beans yourself."

Dav smiles at my glee, the deep-cheeked sweet one that turns his furrows into full-blown dimples. "If you had a stockpot sturdy enough, I could likely do so."

I pause halfway out of the car. "What, really?"

"Really," he says, holding out the dog-eared romance novel.

"Keep that. You can read me the rest during the next time it’s slow at work," I say, before my brain can catch up to my mouth.

Oh brilliant, Colin.

Idiot.

"Oh. Well." He retracts the book awkwardly. "Yes."

"Uh. I'll, um, check in with Hadi, and let you know."

"You'll need my contact information." He hands me his phone. "Put yourself in, and I'll text you."

Not a date, not a date, not a date , I scream at myself as I poke at the screen one-handed. "So, um, should I EFT you for my part of the ride or…?"

Dav snorts like I've made the funniest joke he's ever heard.

"Good night, Colin," he says gently.

"Good night, Dav," I reply, hand him back his phone, and shut the door.

My phone buzzes while I'm toeing off my chucks and kicking them into the front closet. The text reads: Take care. I'm sorry.

I save him as Snacc-Dragon.

What?

Don't judge me.

In the cold light of day, my head unclouded by pain-meds, it's a stupid idea. Hadi disagrees.

"I'll take his free labor," she says over speakerphone. I haven't told her about the part where Dav thinks he could roast with his breath, just the java-slinging. "How long will you be armless?"

"I haven't lost a limb." I'm laying in the bathtub, puncture wounds and gauze wrapped in cellophane. My phone is on the closed toilet seat, and I've tied my sling to the towel rack so my arm is supported. "I just can't do any heavy lifting or stretching, anything that'll rip the stitches."

Hadi makes a grump noise that reminds me, sharply, of Dav’s annoyed growl-purr. That gets me thinking of Dav's smile, Dav's mouth, the light dusting of ginger beard that had appeared on his cheeks at the end of the day…

Not a date!

"How long will that be?" The way Hadi says it makes it clear she's repeating herself.

I blink back down to Earth. "Uh, two weeks? Probably?"

She grumbles again and I stare at the cracked seafoam-blue tiles to keep my mind on the conversation.

There's a prescription for pills balled up in my jeans pocket.

I should fill it. Ugh, but that means putting on clothes and shuffling to the pharmacy, and that's all the way on the other side of downtown, and ugh.

"I guess that's not so bad. We can't open until it's been cleaned, and we've been inspected by the city. The rest of the kitchen is fine, but that whole wall needs to be taken back to the studs. Thank god for oldey-timey architecture, because they’re iron and not wood."

I wince. I haven't admitted it's my fault the scones got scorched in the first place. Maybe in this situation it's best not to fess up. The real damage came from what happened after, anyway.

"How long will that take?" No Beanevolence means no pay cheque.

"Not as long as it could have," Hadi says, and I detect a note of grudging respect. "Your boy must be as rich as they say dragons are, ‘cause I've never had contractors hop to it so fast."

"He's not mine ."

"Ten bucks says he'd like to be."

Not you too. First I'm being bullied by my own hopeless romantic tendencies, and now my boss.

"How long?" I growl.

"About a week for everything but the bean roaster. That could be a few months."

" Months with the old manual?" I blow out a breath. "Gross."

"A few months of being cooped up in the kitchen with your dragon," Hadi says, warming up to the fantasy of some sort of clandestine affair between us.

"Stoppit," I grump. "I have learned my lesson."

"Oh? And what lessons are those?"

"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't dream about 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 with already 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.

Adulting sucks .

It sucks even more when it seems like you had all this possibility and potential and 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. For every horrific 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 you okay ?"

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 the blood … 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 not mine ."

"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.

Thoughtful bitch.

I love her.

"Don't you have shit to manage at the café?" I ask, instead of blubbering.

"It's all over the phone at this point. I can do that from your horrifying sofa."

I chuckle. It is pretty awful. My first roommate and I had saved it from the curb, and it looks like the ‘70s had vomited all over it. "Pfft, see? I was right."

"About what?"

I swish the water around, stirring up the glitter from my bath bomb.

"You're totally the mom-friend."

"Lies and slander," Hadi says, and hangs up.