Well. Most people, but Dean had a soft spot for me. I wrote the magic and he knew it. I knew it.

He was quiet.

Now was my chance, and I shoved all the distracting background thoughts and noise to the far reaches of my mind and I pounced. “Boomer can bring Gail.” He was quiet again, pensive. I recognized that look on his face and added, “You know that everyone loves Gail, and everyone adores Boomer and his wife being the duo they are in the kitchen.”

He mashed his mouth together. “We don’t know if Gail can do it—” Score! Because that meant he was open to that idea. “—and I still think you should be here tomorrow.”

I was so not needed, and I was gone again.

I was doing cartwheels. I mean, I was sitting, but the inside of my body was fully doing somersaults, and I was a gymnast and flying in the air, and none of this would make sense to a normal person.

Sigh.

Because I wasn’t normal.

I tuned back in for the rest of what Dean needed to talk about, and we only agreed on one out of the eight items, but all the while I started replying to emails. Dean was used to this. It was how I worked. He knew I needed to do two things, sometimes three if I was really distracted, in order to actually pay attention. A while back he asked me what was wrong, why I always had to be busy, and I just answered, “I have a really hungry brain.”

I knew it wouldn’t make any sense to him, but I’d long given up hope that some people would understand.

Some did. Most didn’t.11CheyenneSasha called when I was getting off work, said she was heading to Melanie’s for a pit stop, so I went to meet her. Dino’s Beans was a cute hipster coffee bar downtown that Melanie worked at not far from where Come Our Way was. Because of this, it wasn’t uncommon for me to see a few of the same guys there who came for meals at Come Our Way. Some of them had enough coinage to grab a coffee. Some didn’t and knew Melanie had a soft heart, and she gave it out for free, but only if they came in with a good attitude and had recently showered. The ones who hadn’t, she still didn’t refuse them and had them sit outside with their coffee.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw a couple of our regulars.

Petey. Moira. Dwayne. All saw me. All raised their hands. All sent me mumbled greetings, but they knew this was my friend’s place, so they didn’t come over to talk any more than that.

Sasha was already sitting down when I got to the counter. Melanie was watching her, standing behind the counter with her hands on her hips and her head tilted to the side. Her hair was pulled high and wound in a tight bun on top of her head, like right on top of her head. Red lipstick. Dangling earrings. Her shirt was pressed and the collar was folded over, cinched in with a pearl button.

My girl was dressed to work.

Without looking in my direction, she knew it was me and lifted her chin up toward Sasha. “She’s down.”

I looked over.

Sasha was sitting in a booth, thumbing through a magazine and her own lips were pressed together. She seemed almost bored, but then I caught how she closed her eyes for longer than a blink. It was brief, but she closed them, and her chest bent down in a sigh at the same time.

Mels was right. Sasha was down, but she was here, and she’d called me, so that was giving us the clues that she needed us to pick her up. I looked back, met Melanie’s gaze, and both of us raised up an eyebrow at the same time.

“Hmmm-mmm,” she hmmmed right back at me, though I hadn’t said a word. She was on the mental wave train right with me.

I asked, “Bar?”

She shook her head. “I’m thinking club judging by the way she’s dressed.”

I looked back and gave it some thought.

Sasha was wearing a black tank top that was tied around her neck, and when she shifted in her seat, I saw it was backless. It only covered her front, from high on her neck to her stomach, but the back was held together by two more strings, both looking as if they were tied together. One time a drunk guy thought he could slip the knot and that the top would fall free enough for him to see some boobs. Little did he know, the knots in the back were merely for decorations. They were sturdy motherfuckers, and the guy instead caused Sasha to swing at him with a firm right-hand hook. When the cops showed up, they weren’t sure who to haul off because the guy’s entire face was busted up. Sasha hadn’t stopped with that one punch. There’d been a left, another right, and maybe a knee.