"Yes."
"And then the fingers." He turned to Jenna. "He's in love with him."
"I know," Jenna said.
"I'm not…" Adriel started.
"He's absolutely in love with him," Chris said, with the satisfied air of a man confirming a long-held theory. He raised his glass. "Congratulations, mate. That's awesome."
"It is terrifying," Adriel said, and the honesty of it surprised him a little, coming out that easily. "I keep waiting for it to go wrong. I keep thinking… my mom said people can sense when someone doesn't believe in themselves. And maybe she's right about that part. Maybe he'll eventually…"
"Stop," Jenna said.
He stopped.
"He tracked you down even after you ignored him," she said. "And he stayed. And he made coffee." She held his gaze. "Zach never stayed."
The table was quiet for a moment.
Then Chris topped up all three glasses from the pitcher he'd apparently ordered at some point without Adriel noticing, and raised his.
"To bosses who stay," he said.
"That's a terrible toast," Jenna said.
"I'm aware." He clinked Adriel's glass anyway. "Drink."
Adriel drank.
The evening stretched on. They ordered food; Chris's fries disappeared faster than seemed physically possible, Jenna stole half of Adriel's and denied it, someone played a song on the jukebox that made Chris stand up and insist they all sing. They didn't, except Jenna, who knew every word of everything and sang them without embarrassment while Chris gazed at her withan expression Adriel recognized, though he would have been hard pressed to say from where.
It was late when they finally spilled out onto the sidewalk.
Cold air. The city at night, impersonal and bright. Chris pulled Jenna into his side and she went without looking, the ease of two people who had learned each other's gravity.
Adriel stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and looked up at the orange wash of the city sky, and thought about his childhood bedroom. About the lavender. About his mother's careful voice.
Then he thought about the jukebox. About Chris's fries. Aboutto bosses who stay, which was a genuinely terrible toast, and about the way it had made him laugh, really laugh, helplessly, until his eyes watered.
He thought about the glass whale, wrapped carefully in an old sweater at the bottom of the keep box now sitting in his room.
"You alright?" Jenna asked.
He looked at her.
"Yeah," he said. And meant it, mostly.
She searched his face for a moment. Then nodded. "Text me when you're home."
"I will."
He walked to the subway.
The city moved around him, indifferent and alive. The cold bit at his ears. His chest felt different from how it had felt standing on his mother's sidewalk. Like something that had been held very tight for a very long time had been given, for one evening, permission to breathe.
Chapter 17
Adriel