Chapter 14

Mel was not miserable because she wouldn't let herself be. In fact, she didn't feel anything. When she returned to her apartment in those early dawn hours, Daniel was in the kitchen eating cereal, still dance-club sweaty from his own late night.

"Hey," he said, "how's Bebe?"

"She and I are over," Mel said, and shut herself in her bedroom where she planned to sleep until her shift. She spent hours staring at the ceiling, but she'd once read an article that said the mere fact of lying in bed meant your body and brain were getting some kind of scientifically measurable rest even if you couldn't sleep. When her alarm blared, Mel crawled off the mattress and into her work uniform, ignoring all the notifications that crowded her phone screen.

She worked her shift on autopilot. It was busy—Terror Virtue was always busy, even on a freezing Tuesday night—so she didn't have to spend a second alone with her thoughts. She poured and shook and stirred and chatted and smiled and smiled and smiled some more. Brent deigned to swing by the bar to point at her and say, "Gold star tonight, MVP." If she showed any outward signs of distress, no one seemed to notice. Mel was absurdly proud of that.

"Want to grab some tacos?" Daniel asked after they'd closed up for the night. He wound his scarf around his neck, a long cherry-red line that made Mel think of Bebe's lipstick.

"No thanks," she said, shrugging on her coat. "I should really work on my competition drink tonight." Especially if TV was going to take the downturn she predicted it would. No sense in focusing solely on her job when the prize money beckoned. She'd barely spared a moment to think about the competition the last few days, her attention consumed by worrying about Bebe.

Daniel's fingers paused in zipping up his jacket. "You just spent nine hours mixing drinks and… you want to go home and mix more? You need to rest at some point."

"I will." She jammed her hat on. "When I'm dead."

They went home. Mel holed herself up in the kitchen, trying to come up with a new idea for her competition cocktail. The apple butter old-fashioned wasn't going to work. It was too sweet, too fruity, too—Bebe. Everything was too Bebe.

Mel reached for the tequila. Not her good, small-batch stuff, but the regular old Jose Cuervo. She sloshed some into a lowball glass, forgoing ice. Daniel poked his head into the kitchen.

"I'm here if you need me to taste anything," he said. His gaze fell pointedly to the glass. "What are you working on?"

"Oh, it's a real winner," Mel said, capping the bottle. "I call it ‘nothing but straight tequila because fuck everything.'?" She raised the glass in a mocking toast and tossed it back, grimacing at the taste. No lime, no salt, no ice; nothing but the burn.

Daniel drew in a long breath. "Okay," he said, and grabbed another glass from the open cupboard. He placed it next to Mel's, exhaling deeply. "One for me, please."

Mel shook her head at him. "You don't have to join the pity party."

"Come on, with your tolerance? You'll drink every drop of liquor in the house before you even get tipsy. No way am I letting you do that." A beat. "At least half of it's mine, and that's not fair."

A snort of bitter laughter left Mel's throat. It took a lot to get her drunk, true, but she wasn't superhuman. "You can't get hammered with me tonight. You've got that hookup tomorrow—what's-his-name. Who schedules a morning booty call, anyway?"

"Gays who both work nights," Daniel said with a shrug. "I can cancel on what's-his-name. But I can't let you drink alone." He nudged his empty glass toward the bottle. "Pretend we're twenty-two again, m'kay? Wreck my shit."

Mel rolled her eyes and poured him a scant measure. "All right. Catch up, Quince."

Daniel drank the shot, then made a series of wheezy gurgles, sticking his tongue out and curling it back in.

Despite the shitty day she'd had, Mel smiled. A tiny one, but still. "You okay?"

"I'm amazing," Daniel said, sounding like he'd gargled with barbed wire. He slammed his glass back onto the counter. "Hit me again."

They did another shot together, then another. It was enough to make Mel feel a tad floaty in her limbs, being on an empty stomach and at the end of a long shift. Daniel, on the other hand, looked ready to keel over on the linoleum floor.

"So wha—? Bebe. Your—girl. Friend? Fling-friend. What happened with her?" he slurred, waving his empty glass at Mel.

Mel frowned down at her own glass, turning it in her fingers. "I don't know if I'm drunk enough to talk about it."

Daniel bent at the waist, arms crossed on the counter to pillow his head. He watched Mel with a watery gaze. "I fuckin' am. Doesn't that count for anything?"

Mel felt the faint prickle of tears behind her eyes. She didn't deserve Daniel. She didn't deserve—most things.

"She, um." Mel worked her tongue over her teeth. "She's working on a case against Sunspot." The whole story spilled out: the weird radio silence, finding Bebe's paperwork, the fight they'd had that morning. How it was probably all over between them, now that they were at this impasse. "I don't know why I'm so upset about it," she said through her tears. "It's not like I expected to be—important to her." She sounded like a little kid, one who'd stayed up too late and was so exhausted there was nothing left to do but dissolve into a crying jag.

"Oh, sweetie." Daniel swayed upright and wrapped her in a hug.

"I fucked up," Mel said, muffled into Daniel's solid shoulder. "I let her become too important to me." She sniffed hard, trying her best not to get snot on Daniel's work shirt. "I was falling for her, and now—"

"I know." He put his chin on the top of her head. "It's okay. I know."

It wasn't okay, and he couldn't have known, but Mel let the ounce of comfort wash over her in their tiny kitchen, her fingers tequila-sticky where they clung to Daniel's shirt.