Hope you had the best night. Left you the good shampoo. You deserve fancy hair. — T
I shower with Tyler's good shampoo. Put on clean clothes, my own clothes, from my own small collection. The gray shirt. My jeans. My shoes.
I look in the cracked mirror. Same face as yesterday, same dark eyes, same jaw that Silas holds when he kisses me. But something's different. Something behind the eyes.
I look like someone who belongs to people.
The math is the same. The numbers tick the same way they've always ticked. But the context keeps shifting, expanding, filling in, gaining dimension.
I used to count down to survival. Now I'm counting down to something else. A life. A real one. With a man who reads my favorite books and a pride who saves me a mug and a best friend who leaves me fancy shampoo and a boss who feeds me pastries and a librarian who lets me touch the rare books.
I grab my jacket, my book, my bag. Walk downstairs, through the common room, past the kid on the porch who's still wearing headphones.
"Nice motorcycle," the kid says as I pass.
"Yeah," I say. "It is."
The walk to the café takes twelve minutes. Robin's already there, prepping for the lunch rush.
Robin grins. "Welcome to the family, Dev."
I tie on my apron. Check the espresso machine. Wipe down the counter that doesn't need wiping.
At 12:03, the bell chimes. Silas walks in. Sits in his booth. Opens his book, my book, the one I recommended, the one he's reading because I love it.
Our fingers brush when I hand him the mug. Two seconds of contact. His index finger against my knuckle.
I go back to work. He reads. The café fills and empties and fills again. The rhythm of it, steam, pour, tamp, pull, is the same as every day. But the frequency is different now. Higher. Warmer. Settled in a way it wasn't three weeks ago, when a quiet man with a fantasy novel walked into this café and ordered a large coffee, black, and I thought: oh no.
Oh yes.
Definitely, irrevocably, oh yes.
Chapter 16
Devin
Monday morning. Two days since I slept in Silas's bed and woke up with his arms around me and told him the truth about the lie and he held me tighter instead of letting go.
Two days since I walked downstairs into the pride and they handed me a dragon mug like I'd always been there.
I'm different. I don't know how to explain it except that the air moves around me differently now. I take up more space. Not physically. I'm still the same narrow-shouldered kid in a tshirt. But internally. Like there's more of me present. Less of me held in reserve for emergencies.
Tyler noticed last night when I came back to the shelter.
"You're humming," he said. "You never hum."
"I wasn't humming."
"You were humming something. Was it — Dev, was that the Lord of the Rings theme?"
"Goodnight, Tyler."
"It was! You were humming Howard Shore in the shower! That's a man in love!"
I didn't deny it. Couldn't, really. Not after Saturday night. Silas's body against mine, his voice in the dark, the way he said you don't have to edit yourself with me and something inside my chest restructured itself.
Now it's Monday and I'm at the café at 6 AM, because Robin asked me to help with a new espresso blend he's testing and because he's behind on prep and needed more hands. Thelibrary isn't open yet, so I read behind the counter between tastings and helping, one eye on the door.