“Fucking someone who plays a sport is good enough,” Miki grumbled. “Why the hell are you buying Sionn a watch? And why here? Dude, I’m scared to ask how much the plastic cups cost if I want water.”
“Sinjun, in a place like this, if you ask for water, they’re going to give it to you in an actual glass, not some fucking red Solo cup you use for beer pong.” His friend grinned back at him, a stupid smirk curling up his wide mouth. “And it’s for Valentine’s Day. I wanted to get him something nice. It’s the first one for us.”
“Jesus,” Miki spat back. “Isn’t that the point of fucking a guy? That we don’t have to do that kind of shit?” Damien stood very still, and Miki groaned at the oh-so-familiar assessing look in his brother-friend’s eyes. “Don’t you fucking start. I’m not broken. Well, fucking not on this. We’re guys. We don’t have to do this romantic shit. God fucking damn it. That’s a damned het holiday thing.”
“Dude, it’s a holiday for anyone in love….”
“Don’t give me a history lesson. I don’t want to know.” Miki threw up his hands to stop Damien’s information vomit.
Miki didn’t know what he was so pissed off about. Well, he did. If he looked hard enough—really not that hard, actually—he felt stupid. Worthless. Things—everything—came so easily to everyone else around him. They talked with one another, laughed at jokes, and even knew what to fucking say to get people to like them. He didn’t have any of that. The only time words and thoughts worked for him was when he put them on paper, and Damie wove a song around them.
Other than that, Miki felt more like a piece of old gum stuck to the underside of a table than someone actually living out there with the rest of the world.
Now he couldn’t even get a simple fucking holiday right. He must have been Kane’s biggest fucking charity case, because the cop could have done a hell of a lot better than Miki St. John.
“Goddamnit fucking hell.” It felt good to get it out.
He’d thought he had it down. Wasn’t he trying not to back away when Brigid came at him, her arms wide open and her mouth puckered up for a kiss? Didn’t he sit at their family table on fucking Sundays and eat in the middle of the storm they called dinner? Thank God Donal ran interference for him, or Miki would go insane trying to fight off the Morgans’ attentions. Kane’s dad seemed to always know when Miki was at his breaking point, because Donal would not-so-subtly steer Miki toward the study and close the door behind them, leaving the rest of the Irish mob outside.
There was something sacrosanct about that closed door, because no one knocked at it to get in. It was a win all around. Miki got some quiet, and Donal got to tell stories about his children and wife to someone who’d not been there when the stupid happened.
He really liked the older man. Especially when Donal accidently called him son. It took Miki’s speech, and he could barely breathe from the amount of like pounding through him.
And now he was going to fuck that all up by forgetting a simple damned holiday he thought he didn’t have to do.
“What am I supposed to do? Get him something else? Shit, I already got him something. A stupid something,” Miki found himself saying before Damien could come up with some bullshit about how it was okay Miki’d forgotten another one of life’s rules. “Like what something else?”
The assessing look was gone, wiped away by Damien’s full-throttle enthusiasm. “Dude, you are so going to rock this.”
FELIX’S FISH and Chip shop was still there. It’d been one of those places Miki wholly avoided during the bleak times when he’d believed Damie was dead. He couldn’t begin to count how many times they’d sat on the shop’s narrow patio, straddling its long cushioned benches and staring out onto the bay. Stuck in between an old clothes factory and a midcentury office building, Felix’s was a bustling, well-kept local secret—nearly hidden between the two taller structures and manned by a handsome silver-haired Hispanic man with an eye for pretty boys.
Its oddly triangular building and patio overlooking the water was a frequent stopping place for Sinner’s Gin. Cheap beer and even cheaper excellent food were a great attraction to a struggling band. It’d also been one of the few places Johnny hadn’t been fired from for letting his New York mouth run off on its own.
“Shit, I can’t believe this place is still here.” Damien beamed at Miki as he handed over two full orders of fish and chips wrapped up in brown paper.
Miki grabbed the food carefully, having already learned a long time ago it was open on one end, and its contents seemed to easily elude their paper prison if tilted the wrong way. Damie set two brown glass bottles on the bench before slinging his leg over to face Miki.
“Beer?” Miki grabbed one of the bottles to examine its label. “Kind of early, no? It’s like one or something.”