“Thanks?” Alex says.
“Sympathy drinks.” I snort a laugh, folding my arms on the bar and dropping my head into them. “We’rethatpathetic.”
Alex straightens and swivels on his barstool toward me. “Come on, Ted. We’re not pathetic.”
I peer up from my arm cave, frowning. “We aren’t?”
“We aren’t,” he says. Alex’s lifts his glass into the air. His hand wavers for a moment, like he almost doesn’t have it in him to keep holding steady, like even just a perfunctory cheers is too much cheer to manage.
Guilt slugs me as I look at him. He’s trying so hard. And I’m not.
I sit up, too, sweeping my drink off the bar and clinking it with Alex’s, a bit more forcefully than I meant to.
“Shit,” Alex mutters, before licking along his wrist to catch the whiskey sour sliding toward his sleeve. I’m sad-horny again, and a flicker of lust catches to a flame inside me as I watch him.
“Sorry,” I tell him sheepishly. “Want me to help?”
Alex laughs faintly. “Help yourself, instead. You’re just as bad as me.”
I peer down at my hand, the whiskey sour covering it. “Huh. Guess you’re right.”
I lick at my wrist, too, and our eyes catch. Alex snorts. I snort louder. Then I cackle. Alex’s belly laugh jumps out of him, seeming to surprise him as much as it surprises me.
We lick our way up our hands, still laughing, as I tell him, “We look like two sad tiny kittens, bathing ourselves.”
“Oh.” Alex’s expression crumples. “That image is so sad. It doesnotspark my joy.”
My chin wobbles dangerously. “Shit. Me neither.”
Our laughter, the momentary spark of happiness, evaporates into a bleak, empty silence.
Alex throws back half of what’s left of his drink, and I follow suit. We set down our glasses, whiskey and tart-sweet citrus burning down my throat. I shake myself and straighten my back. We were just getting somewhere good, and I brought us back down.
“Why is it,” I ask, trying to sound perky, “that it’s called sad-puppyface? Aren’t sad kitten faces just as pathetic? Maybe even more so? They’re so tiny and fluffy, and they have such tiny paws!”
Alex frowns in thought. “I think it might be because, between cats and dogs, dogs are definitely the dumber and thus more innocent creatures. A kitty is arguably as cute as a puppy, but the kitty’s going to grow up to be a vengeful, furniture-shredding, bread-stealing—”
“Bread stealing?”
“Figaro,” Alex mutters darkly, “stole more toast from me than my own sisters managed to.”
I tip my head. “Have I met Figaro?”
“Ted, I’m thirty-six. I haven’t lived at home since I was eighteen. He’d have to be immortal to still be around.”
“Rest in peace, Figaro,” I say solemnly.
“Try rest in perpetualanguish,” Alex says. “He was a demon in black-and-white furball form.”
“Wow.” My eyes widen.
Alex hangs his head and mumbles, “I really liked my toast.”
I set my hand on his arm, squeezing. “It was homemade-bread toast, wasn’t it?”
He nods sadly.
“Well, now I get it,” I tell him. “Because I would do violence to anything that tried to come between me and Bruscato homemade-bread toast. Fuck Figaro.”