2. No-Fucks-to-Giving

TWO

NO-FUCKS-TO-GIVING

I was on my gray sectional with my laptop, looking up how to roast a turkey breast (and mash potatoes and make green bean casserole (what could I say? I didn’t cook, so I’d forgotten how to do all this since last year). At least the stuffing box had instructions on it.

I was doing this so I wouldn’t do what I’d been doing most of the morning: understanding that Eric, and therefore all the Hottie Squad as well as the Hot Bunch, knew about my brother.

Consequently, I was struggling with the many emotions that wrought. From shame that my family was such we didn’t look after him. To fear, because the days were ticking by, and no Jeff. To sadness, because it was Thanksgiving, and the only good ones I’d ever had was when Jeff was looking after himself and we shared them together.

I was also enumerating (not for the first time) all the reasons why Eric Turner did it for me.

Of course, there was his extreme good looks. Also, the way he exuded confidence and the manner in which he did, made it clear he knew who he was, and he was down with being that man (seriously, that was all kinds of hot ). Further, his aforementioned ability to take care of himself and any situation that might befall him, and what that might mean to the people he cared about in his life.

The way he dressed.

The way he walked.

The way he smiled.

The respect the HB and HS showed him, those being men who didn’t give that kind of respect unless it was earned.

As usual, I’d forgotten all about roasting turkey and mashing potatoes and was thinking of Eric when there was a knock at the door.

I figured it was one of my neighbors.

Oasis Square was a primo apartment complex just north of downtown Phoenix (primo in the sense it was cool AF, not because it was luxury or anything—no way I could afford luxury, not now, nor, I expected, ever). I’d only recently moved in, but since Raye had been living there for years, I’d hung out with her a lot, and the tenants had rabidly formed a close-knit community, I wasn’t exactly a newbie.

So I figured this was some neighbor who’d sniffed out I was alone on a holiday and came to rescue me.

Thus, it was highly likely I was about to be abducted and forced to sit at a table with another person’s happy family and gaggle of friends, pretending I was enjoying myself, when all shit like that did was remind me how unhappy my own family was.

Hence, if Jeff wasn’t in the picture, me hibernating every Thanksgiving (and Christmas) after weeks of dancing an intricate but practiced dance to avoid getting invited to anyone else’s house during a holiday.

I thought about ignoring them, but on the next knock, I was reminded how rabid the Oasis community was, and I didn’t want to dis anybody this early in my tenure.

Normally, this friendliness was kickass. It meant parties in the courtyard, and there was always someone who could lend a hand when you ran out of tequila.

Now, I wasn’t feeling it.

Even so, I got up, went to the door, and then went solid as I stared out my peephole at Eric Turner.

“What the fuck?” I breathed.

Did I manifest the guy?

Second question, how did he bypass the security gate?

“I can hear you,” he called.

Really?

He must have super good hearing or the doors weren’t up to snuff.

“Open up, Jessie,” he ordered.

Ugh.

I couldn’t dis a member of the Hot Bunch either.

I opened the door, stating, “I think I had just about enough of you last night.”

Yeah.

I couldn’t dis, but I was me, so I could always throw attitude.

I stated that, but I did it shambling back because he was shouldering in, laden with grocery bags from AJ’s.

Okay…

What?

I stood, hand still on the door handle, watching him go direct to my kitchen.

He was on this trajectory as he replied, “Tough.”

He dumped the bags on my counter.

I closed the door and walked in.

“Turner—”

I stopped speaking when he started sniffing.

He then asked me, “You don’t have the bird in the oven yet?”

“The YouTube video said it only takes an hour,” I informed him.

“An hour to cook a turkey?” he asked, like I said it took an hour for Beyoncé to prepare to hit the stage.

“Yes,” I answered.

“It takes longer than that to roast a chicken.”

“Sorry, my man, you missed the turnoff to the Barefoot Contessa’s house on your way here. Just go east for about thirty-five hours and veer north somewhere along the line. Eventually, you should hit Long Island. Be sure to tell Ina and Jeffrey I said, ‘hey.’”

He smirked.

It was as hot as everything he did, so I felt that smirk in very private parts of me.

What did I do to deserve this?

Really, tell me.

“The Barefoot Contessa?” he asked.

What could I say?

I was into cooking shows, and hers was the best (according to me).

I just didn’t cook.

“Turner, what are you doing here?” I demanded to know.

“You’re alone on Thanksgiving, I’m alone on Thanksgiving. So we’re having Thanksgiving together.”

We were?

Hold on.

Rewind.

“How did you know I was alone on Thanksgiving?”

He stopped pulling stuff out of the bags to lock eyes with me. “You’re not at Scott and Louise’s with Luna and Raye and that crowd. You’re not with Harlow and her family. And your family is a disaster.”

Hold on part two.

I barely knew him.

Yes, my family was a disaster. One might even say we were a disaster of epic proportions.

But he didn’t get to call them that.

“You don’t know anything about my family,” I said sharply.

He went back to pulling stuff out of the bags, saying, “Clue in, Wylde.”

I moved to the counter opposite him (my pad was one bedroom, it started with a living room that fed into an open kitchen, the two spaces delineated by a bar, then there was a short hall with a laundry closet to one side, a bathroom to the other, and it ended in the bedroom).

I put my hands on the counter and asked, “Clue in to what?”

“What do I do for a living?” he asked in return.

As I suspected…

But worse.

“You investigated me?”

He started folding the paper bags he’d emptied, and there were vegetables and other food-style detritus all over my kitchen bar.

It was a new look for my kitchen, and I would have liked the time to peruse it, but I only had eyes for Eric, and not the usual only-having-eyes-for-him kind.

“We investigated all of you.”

Although this confirmed my suspicions about why he was there last night, such was the drama of being confronted by this confirmation, I took a step back and put my hand to my forehead, crying, “Oh my God! I don’t know what to do with this. It’s so invasive, I can’t even process it.”

“Get over it,” he murmured while moving to my fridge.

Hold on part three.

“How did you know where I was last night?” I demanded. “ Precisely where I was.”

No hesitation, he answered, “Like I said, we’ve been through this before. We aren’t fucking around since it’s happening again. So we got trackers on all your cars.”

At this information, I waited for my head to explode.

When it didn’t…

“Turner—” I began to tell him to get the hell out of my apartment.

“Right. I get it. You got a breast,” he muttered into the fridge. “Still gonna take longer than an hour.”

“Turner!” I snapped.

He straightened out of my refrigerator and turned to me.

With bad timing, his hot-guyness in my kitchen made its reality known, and since his hot-guyness was off the scales hot, I got flummoxed.

Me.

Jessica Rose Wylde… flummoxed .

That said, he had great hair. So black (my favorite non-color), it seemed unreal. It was also thick and had a lot of wave. He wore it longish and it curled around his ears in a way I could write an entire sub-chapter for the unrequited crush section of the Official Crushing on A Guy Handbook about how to cope with curbing your desire to touch something on a man you were crazy about, who was not crazy about you.

I never understood the concept of bedroom eyes, but the fathomless laziness of his inky black gaze sure as hell defined it for me.

Not to mention, his shoulders were very broad, so everything he wore hung on him just right . And today, that was a pitch-black thermal that hugged his shoulders and biceps and pecs so lovingly, I was jealous…of a shirt.

To put a fine point on it, there was a lot to be flummoxed about.

Before I could recover, something I didn’t know how to do because I’d never in my life been in that state, there was a knock on the door.

I was still attempting recovery, so Eric sauntered out from around the kitchen bar and went to the door.

His sauntering was detrimental to my recovery, as was the way his jeans highlighted his fantastic ass and thick thighs, so I was still standing there speechless when he opened it.

“Whoa!” I heard cried. Then, shyly, “Uh…hi.”

“Hey,” Eric replied.

Alexis, one of the Oasis tenants, and a particular friend to my crew, looked around Eric, saw me and exclaimed, “Oh my God , Jessie! I’m so glad you’re home. No one’s home!”

She rushed in.

I was still unable to move.

“Please tell me you have flour. I ran out of flour,” she babbled. “And Jacob’s family and my family are all here… together …our first holiday… together …and it’s super important it goes without a hitch …and I ran out of flour .”

I did not have flour.

In fact, since flour was not required in the mixing of any alcoholic beverage known to man, I’d never actually used flour.

“How much do you need?” Eric asked.

“At least a cup, two if you can spare it,” Alexis told him.

He went to the kitchen, commandeered a paper-covered brick and started folding open the top.

“We’re having apple crumble for dessert, so yeah, I can give you two cups,” he told Alexis.

“You’re a star,” Alexis gushed.

But hang on.

Apple crumble?

Like that stuff with cinnamony apples covered in gooey, sugary, buttery topping?

We were having that?

“Soooooooooo…” Alexis drew that out, her eyes pinging between me and Eric after she gave him a Stasher for the flour and while he was opening and closing drawers in my kitchen looking for something.

I pulled my shit tight and said, “Right on. First holiday with the joined fams.”

Alexis and Jacob were a newish couple.

However new, they were way into each other. Practically joined at the hip when in public. And if Oasis gossip was true, literally joined in other ways when they weren’t.

Alexis’s eyes settled on me. “Jacob’s mom is really sweet. His dad is just like him, so obviously, he’s awesome. My mom is being a pill, but she’s always a pill, so I warned Jacob about that beforehand. And my dad is acting like he always acts with my boyfriends. Like Jacob isn’t royalty, prince of someplace or other, so he’s not good enough for me. I warned Jacob about that too, but it’s still making the day not so fun.”

Yikes.

“Will your dad come around?” I asked.

“I don’t care,” she said in a surly tone that was very un-Alexis. “Jacob is everything . I’m the one who’s sleeping with him. I’m the one who wakes up beside him. It’s my choice who I do that with, Dad doesn’t get a vote.”

“Speak your truth, sister,” I encouraged.

She shot me a nervous smile, which told me she’d spoken her truth, but she was still freaked out about what was happening with her family.

Poor Alexis.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I assured her, hoping it was.

“Thanks, Jessie,” she replied.

“You and Jacob are solid. In the end, that’s all that matters, right?” I asked.

Her smile grew sunny, and she did a little hop when she said, “Right.”

Eric was there, handing her the Stasher. “That should be about two cups.”

She held it to her chest and cooed, “You’re a lifesaver.”

She then did the eye pinging thing again so Eric held out a hand and said, “I’m Eric. A friend of Jess’s.”

Hmm.

Was it rude not to introduce a guest you didn’t actually ask to be your guest?

“A friend,” she mumbled, taking his hand. “Nice to meet you, I’m Alexis.” Then she exclaimed, “Right! Have to dash! Have a great Thanksgiving you two!”

After that, she pranced out as only Alexis could prance, considering she was a member of the ballet.

“Hup,” I heard.

I turned at this odd sound Eric made and caught the apple he sent flying my way just in time.

“You’re on peeling and slicing the apples. We’ll get the crumble out of the way. You didn’t brine the bird, so that means I gotta get creative.”

I stood, holding the apple and glaring at him.

“I’m not making Thanksgiving dinner with you.”

“You don’t help, you don’t eat. So it’s gonna be uncomfortable I eat in front of you while we watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles .”

Damn.

Awesome choice.

I loved that movie. Steve Martin was a comic genius, and John Candy left us far too soon.

It was also the perfect Thanksgiving movie, even if this day was the most painful day (says me) of anyone who had a disaster of a family.

I returned to the counter, put the apple on it and announced, “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

His black eyes came up from something he was doing with some kind of leafy substance on the counter and caught mine.

“I’m used to this,” I informed him. “No one ever drove a car through the front door on a holiday,” I referenced The Bear . “But we’ll just say, being at home by myself, burning a turkey breast and making the boxed stuffing soggy, regardless that I followed the instructions to the letter, is something I’m used to, and it’s vastly preferable.”

“My mom was killed in a car wreck when I was thirteen. It was Christmas Eve. She was bringing home a puppy for my brother and me for Christmas. The puppy died too. Dad was supposed to get the puppy, but he got caught at work. He did that a lot, with Mom covering for him, even though it annoyed her. Especially around the holidays, putting it all on her to do everything, which was probably why she was speeding, because she had so much shit to do. This meant he blamed himself. That lead to him hitting the bottle hard, and since then, he hasn’t found his way out of it.”

My brows shot up at his relating this brutal honesty even as my heart started hurting at hearing his distressing history.

Eric kept sharing.

“My brother turned into a piece of shit who blames the world for him losing his mom when he was eleven and his dad being a functioning alcoholic by day, a fall-down drunk at night. That’s manifested as my brother having three kids by two different women, and he’s deadbeat on all of them. He claims disability, even though that doesn’t stop him from going hunting or driving one of his buds’ jet skis on the lake every weekend, both while wasted. My father doesn’t touch base often, but every time he does, I brace for him to tell me Tim shot himself or someone else while hunting deer, or he drowned in the lake.”

He paused.

I said nothing mostly because I couldn’t find the right words to say.

Eric kept going.

“I haven’t been home in ten years, and before that, it was five, but the second time reminded me why I hadn’t been home in five, so that’s why it’s now ten…and counting.”

I found a word, it just wasn’t the right one, but I couldn’t stop it from escaping my lips.

“Whoa,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he stated.

“Why aren’t you with Mace and Stella or something?” I asked after a his-generation part of the crew who also lived in Phoenix.

“Because I’m here with you.”

“Did they ask?”

“Yes. But I’m here with you.”

Oh man.

Something weird was happening inside me. I didn’t know what it was. I’d never felt it.

But it felt warm.

And…

Gooey .

Gross!

And…

Shit!

“And I’m not here because I feel sorry for you,” he went on. “I’m here because we both have fucked-up families, and we get it. Today doesn’t have to be about counting our blessings and being grateful our lives are full of love. It can be about food, a funny as fuck movie, then more food and nothing else.” He tipped his gorgeous head to the side. “Now, Jessie, are you down? Or do I have to lug all this shit back to my place?”

My mouth made the decision before my mind did.

It said, “I’m a mixologist, so I can slice fruit like nobody’s business. But other than that, you’re on your own, big guy.”

He seemed to relax even though nothing about him physically gave the indication of relaxation.

Then he ordered, “Get your ass over here.”

I’d dreamed many a dream of him saying something like that to me, just not in this context.

But the life I lived I’d learned.

You took what you could get.

So I got my ass over there.

* * *

We were sitting on stools at my bar, eating the Thanksgiving feast that mostly Eric prepared.

For my part, I was also freaking out.

The thing I was freaking out about was…

Except for when he threw the unopened box of stuffing in my trash, whereupon I snapped, “Dude!” and he shared, “That stuffing is banned in a number of different countries due to the additives in it.”

It was?

“Seriously?” I’d asked.

He nabbed a bag of dried bread cubes, held them up and said, “We’re doing the real thing.”

All right then.

I wasn’t going to argue that, so I didn’t.

Outside of that exchange, we barely spoke. Most of what was said was Eric telling me what to slice, dice and chop. Therefore, I sliced, diced and chopped while Eric did the rest.

I also concocted an on-the-spot Thanksgiving cocktail of gin, lemon juice, ginger beer and apple slices, which we both sipped as we cooked (I might not have much food in my house, but I had everything on hand to whip up a cocktail).

Oh, and I cleaned up after him when it was clear he was done with a station, leaving only a few bowls and a single pan beside the sink needing to be washed. The rest of the space was neat as a pin. All we needed to do when we were finished eating was rinse our plates and cutlery, put them in the dishwasher, and boom , done with the shit of Thanksgiving.

This wasn’t what was freaking me out, though.

What was freaking me out was that the silence that had settled between us wasn’t weird. It wasn’t awkward.

It just…was.

He did his thing. I did my thing. Separate and together. And we just lapsed into it like climbing on a bicycle we hadn’t ridden in years and taking off.

I’d never ridden Eric.

Ahem.

But I wasn’t that much of a talker, and I could get exhausted around people who needed to fill silence and blabbed all the time.

Sometimes silence was good, and it didn’t need to be filled.

It would seem Eric subscribed to that same philosophy.

But right then, I was eating and feeling strange, because making Thanksgiving dinner with Eric felt like we fit. It was natural.

Right.

And…

Safe .

It was only at that moment occurring to me, this wasn’t great. I didn’t need more things about Eric to feel safe and right. I had enough of those, thanks so very much.

He broke the silence, and it’d gone on so long, I jumped when he did.

“Two questions.”

I stopped shoveling his ridiculously delicious mushroom, sausage, and fresh sage stuffing in my mouth and looked to him.

I raised my brows for him to go on.

“You don’t cook,” he noted.

“That doesn’t sound like a question,” I replied.

He smiled, and I wished he didn’t (yes, his smile was that attractive).

“It wasn’t,” he agreed. “This is the question. If you don’t cook, why are you totally set up in the kitchen?”

Slowly, my head turned toward my kitchen, but I didn’t have to look at my shiny counter appliances or the All-Clad pot by the sink. Nor did I have to bring to mind the expensive food processor and juicer I had tucked in a cabinet. I also didn’t have to recall how I’d socked away tips and sacrificed on other stuff in order to afford all of it.

Last, I didn’t have to cipher why, not only my kitchen, but my whole apartment, every inch, was perfectly perfect, precisely me, my nest, my safe space.

My home.

No, this was last: I wasn’t going to share why.

That being, I’d had none of this stuff growing up, so from the moment I moved out at eighteen, and for the last fifteen years, I’d busted my ass to make this just so because I’d never had it.

Instead, I told Eric a little fib, which was only a fib because it wasn’t the whole truth, just a small part of it.

“I get wild hairs to take up cooking, or baking, or breadmaking. I buy the shit, but then I get busy and never do it.”

“Right,” he murmured, and I felt his eyes on me so I looked back at him.

When I did, I saw the depth of his gaze wasn’t his resting sexy laziness I could swim in for eternity.

It was searching, acute…uncomfortable.

“What’s question two?” I prompted.

“Why no color?”

That one threw me. “What?”

He didn’t answer verbally.

He looked over his shoulder at my living room, then to my kitchen, and back to me.

“Oh, you mean the black and white thing?” I queried.

He again didn’t answer with words.

He looked down at my black jeans with the ripped knee to my white tee with the black transfer of Debbie Harry’s face on it.

“It makes things easy to match,” I told him.

Another little fib, because it did, but that wasn’t the only reason.

“I can see that with clothes. But Jess, it’s everywhere.”

I turned to look at my living room, with its crisp gray sectional in the corner. The black toss pillows mixed with the black and white striped ones. The round black coffee table in the middle. The black lamps. The black and white photos that I’d taken and framed with white mattes and black frames, arranging them on a gallery wall above one angle of the couch.

I thought it was the shit.

And it felt like something twisted in me when I looked back at him.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s fantastic,” he declared. “But I sense there’s a story behind it.”

I felt such extreme relief he liked it that it tweaked me.

I opened my mouth to say something, but then jumped again, because there was a sharp rap on the picture window behind us.

We both swiveled to see Martha standing there, her hands cupped beside her eyes, looking in.

When she had our attention, she marched toward my door and, without knocking, walked in.

“Thank God you’re here!” she exclaimed, still marching, this time to my kitchen.

Of note: Martha was another tenant at the Oasis. She was somewhere in her late fifties, early sixties. She could live elsewhere, she had the means, but she lived here, because she’d lived here in her younger years. Thus, it reminded her of the days before she fell in love then had to spend years helping her husband fight cancer at the same time she raised three boys, and she did this until the boys left the nest, whereupon her beloved husband died from said cancer.

I adored Martha. She had no filter, said what she wanted, did what she wanted, didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of her, and by some miracle still managed to be loving no matter how irascible she was. And she was pretty damned irascible.

For me, Martha was goals.

And now was no exception, as both Eric and I watched her opening one of my cupboards, commandeering a glass, slamming the cupboard, going to the cocktail shaker that sat on the bar by Eric and me, then upending it over the glass.

Only a few drops of my Thanksgiving cocktail leaked into the glass, since Eric and I were drinking what had been in it, so she turned the shaker right side up and shook it demandingly at me.

I could take a hint, therefore I slid off my stool and rounded the bar.

I took the shaker from her, snatched up the jigger cups and started doing my thing before I asked, “Everything all right?”

“I love my sons. I love their wives…sort of,” she started.

My gaze flew to Eric, who was staring at Martha with an expression I couldn’t read, until he felt my attention and looked to me.

I was smiling.

He smiled back.

His packed its usual wallop, so I had to battle to keep mine in place.

Through this, Martha spoke.

Or complained.

“I love my grandchildren. But all of them together? For hours? Those women arranging platters and bowls like a surgeon navigates a chest cavity, and taking pictures of them so they can post it on social media and prove to all their friends they make the best homemade cranberry sauce? No .”

I was getting ice when I asked, “Are you all in your apartment?”

She had a one bedroom, like me.

In other words, not a lot of room and no dining room.

“That’s the other thing,” she stated. “We were going to eat in the courtyard. But by the time everything was ready, Alexis and Jacob were out there with their families, so one of my daughters-in-law said we should just join them. Regrettably, we did. And thus, I learned very quickly Alexis’s father is a horse’s ass.”

Oh shit.

I saw where this was going.

“Martha—” I started.

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I tried! Honest to Christ, I did. But he’s just that much of a horse’s ass.”

“You said something,” I surmised while measuring gin.

“Trust me, Jessica, you would too.”

I called them as I saw them as well, so she probably wasn’t wrong.

I put the lid on and began shaking the cocktail as I asked, “Why are you up here?”

“For your liquor,” she answered.

Huh.

“Spill,” I pushed.

She blew out a breath and spilled.

“Well, me laying it out to that horse’s ass set Alexis’s mother in a tizzy, and do not ask me how , it seems the nature of things, but one woman’s tizzy set off a chain reaction to other women’s tizzies, so we had a table full of women in a tizzy. All except Alexis, who backed me up, and Jacob’s mom, who laughed through the whole thing.” She nodded her head smartly. “I like that one. She’s got her head on straight.”

I kept shaking so the chill level would be just right before I slipped off the cap and poured. I topped up with ginger beer and was going for the apple slices for garnish when Martha batted my hand away, snatched up the glass, and I, along with Eric, watched her put it to her lips, tip her head back and down it in one.

She slammed the glass to the counter when she was done, smacked her lips and gusted, “ Ah .”

She then looked at Eric and blinked.

Oh boy.

I opened my mouth again, but Martha was quick on the draw. “Who’re you?”

“Martha, this is Eric. He works with Cap,” I introduced.

“Of course you do,” she stated, not taking her attention from Eric. “I’ve seen those other boys. Jesus. Are you all recruited from modeling agencies, or what?”

I busted out laughing.

Eric’s lips were twitching as he replied, “Not exactly.”

“So?” Martha pushed for more info.

“I was in the FBI,” Eric shared.

I stopped laughing and stared.

Martha’s eyes bugged out. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“Yup. That FBI,” Eric confirmed.

“I’m in no mood to be impressed,” Martha declared. “So congratulations, because I’m impressed.”

Eric shrugged.

Martha looked at me and squinted. “Are you two a thing?”

I studiously kept my gaze on Martha when I replied, “Just friends.”

Martha was still squinting. “Just friends sharing a Thanksgiving à deux ?”

“Just friends sharing Thanksgiving,” I asserted.

She continued squinting.

I fought squirming.

Her squint swung to Eric.

I braced and looked at Eric.

He was taking a sip of his cocktail.

I stopped looking at his face and started obsessing on how his strong throat convulsed during a swallow.

Yum .

“Welp!” Martha cried. “I’ve gotta head back. Face the music. Explain to my daughters-in-law, once again, that they will one day enter the joyful period of their lives where they’ll no longer need the likes on their Instagram posts to validate their existence, and they’ll learn life’s way too damned short to put up with a horse’s ass. They’ll disagree with me. Then they’ll go home. Still in tizzies. Which means they’ll forget to take leftovers. Which works for me. Have fun.”

And with that, not waiting for either of us to say anything, she marched right back out.

I held the shaker to Eric. “Ready for another one?”

“Yup,” he answered.

I refreshed our cocktails then rounded the bar to resume my seat beside him.

“Is she going to be the last one?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” I replied with honesty.

I mean, this was the Oasis.

“This seems weirdly familiar,” he muttered.

“At least it’s entertaining,” I remarked.

He shot me a half-smile. “It is that.”

“I’ve neglected to tell you, this is really good.” I pointed at my plate.

“I aim to please,” he joked.

Even joking, I bet he did.

I shivered.

To fight off that train of thought, I nabbed my highball glass and lifted it his way.

“I also neglected the toast,” I declared.

He put his fork down and grabbed his glass.

“Happy No-Fucks-to-Giving,” I toasted.

This time, it was Eric who busted out laughing.

I stilled.

I’d never heard him laugh, or saw it, and it…was… magnificent .

He was still doing it when he clinked glasses with me and replied, “Happy No-Fucks-to-Giving.”

I forced a smile.

We drank.

Then we went back to our plates.

And fortunately…

Silence.