Eli was going to let his deputies take care of the paperwork part.
He searched the shocked crowd—who knew open mic night at the Misty Cat was so exciting?—and saw Glory sitting on the stage, her head in her hands, surveying the wreckage with a sort of glum, philosophical resignation.
He took a seat next to her. She glanced up at him ruefully.
They didn’t speak for a moment.
“I just hope they all make bail before the next open mic, because there goes my audience if not,” she said dryly.
He smiled at that. “How’d it all start?”
She sighed. “Mick got drunk and apparently wrote a dirty song about me on kazoo.”
Dear God.
This was deeply horrible and about the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Mick wrote a dirty song about you? Onkazoo?”
“I managed to grab the mic from him before he got to the worst part of the song. Then someone yelled ‘you suck!’ at him, and Mick went in there swinging. And it all kind of escalated from there. That’s the capsule version of it anyway.”
She looked up at him. He’d had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, and she saw that his eyes were watering, and hers flashed wickedly for an instant.
“Guess he took the breakup kind of hard,” Glory said with great, great irony.
“Yeah, well, to be fair... you’re kind of hard to forget.”
She looked up at him sharply.
And then she smiled softly, and as he looked into that familiar blue of her eyes, just for a moment his whole being was a song.
They sat for a moment in silence.
“Hey,” she said suddenly. “Why is your hand half green?”
“Oh.” He held it up. “I caught Aidan Parker right after he’d spray paintedtitson the road sign out on the highway. Couldn’t get the paint all the way off.”
“Huh.Actualtits, or the wordtits?”
“The word.”
She tilted her head. “Wow. That’s even harder.”
He laughed. “Let me seeyourhand.”
She hesitated a moment. So funny that this was now fraught with meaning, this simple, casual touch. He held his breath.
And then she gave her hand to him.
He took it gently. Held it as though she’d handed him a baby squirrel that had fallen from a nest.
She had beautiful hands, long and slim fingered, from their tough tips and short, striped nails to their tender palms. She had a little scar on one wrist. She’d burned herself toasting marshmallows when she was about twelve, as he recalled.
“I count all five fingers.” His voice was kind of husky.
Her voice was a hush. “Doesn’t hurt. I know how to throw a punch.”
“Yeah. You sure do.”