Sid frowned. “Hey,” he said again. “It’s okay, it’s just me.”
“Uh—” Dante squeezed his eyes shut. Hard. Opened them again to find Sid still staring at him. “I know it’s you.”
“Sure about that? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Dante shook his head. No fucking words.
Sid’s expression softened. “You don’t like it, do you?”
“Like what?”
“This.” Sid inclined his head in the general direction of their surroundings. “Being out. Too much? The space and noise, I mean. We talked about it before, right? I think? My memory is shit sometimes.”
“We talked about it.” Dante’s pulse, grounded by Sid’s strong grip on him, began to slow. “It’s complicated, though.”
“Isn’t everything? We can talk about it again if you want. Anytime you like. Doesn’t have to be now.”
Dante nodded, throat dry, and dove headfirst into Sid’s wildflower gaze, as if it could anchor him to the here and now and protect him from the past he deserved to remember.
Sid rubbed the bare skin he found where Dante’s T-shirt had ridden up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s eat.”
Dante’s stomach flipped, but he let Sid guide him away from the spot he’d become rooted to and across the road to the outdoor café Dante had never reached.
Sid pushed Dante into a chair at a vacant table. “Wait here a sec.”
Fresh panic seized Dante’s chest. “Where are you going?”
“Inside to get food. I’ll be back.”
Dante let him go and slumped into the chair. Numbness threatened the sharp edges of anxiety, but he fought it. If there was one thing worse than feeling like shit, it was not feeling at all.
He pulled out his phone for something to do. Three messages from Sid greeted him, sent and delivered ten minutes ago.
Sid:I can see u
Sid:you don’t have to wait, I’ll catch up
Sid:hey... what’s wrong?
Dante sighed, unwilling to contemplate what Sid had seen from who the fuck knew where to make him say those things, but somehow unable to stop. Embarrassment threatened the lingering agitation jangling his nerves, and he let it happen. Who the fuck cared at this point?
You do. Or it wouldn’t matter.
Another heavy breath left Dante’s lungs, and his head began to clear. He dropped his elbows on the metal table and braved a glance around. He was still in the hellish shopping district, but the market was a world away now, farther than Dante had any memory of walking before Sid had come up on him.
Brilliant. Dante had blacked out before, but it had been a while. Years, in fact. Maybe Rami had been right about triggers on the outside. Or maybe Dante had never really fixed what was broken.
“You like chicken, right?”
Sid slid a cardboard tray under Dante’s nose. It contained salad, a banana, and the tallest sandwich Dante had ever seen. He laughed. “That looks like you got it from a joke shop.”
“So?” Sid sat down, carrying another tray in a shaky grip. “A shit sandwich is the worst thing in the world.”
“Eat a lot of them, do you?”
“Before I came to Wilburn, I did.”
“Where were you before?”