“Wonderful!” she beamed. “I’ll leave you to it.”
She left.
The swordfish steak didn’t smell off. The broccoli looked a surreal green. The red potatoes were drizzled with oil. David sipped his bourbon.
Phillip opened his cloth napkin, spreading it down on his lap. He’d eat the potatoes first, David knew. Then he’d pick at the broccoli for a bit before he’d move on to the swordfish. It was how these things went.
He watched as Phillip speared the broccoli first, bringing it toward his mouth.
“How’s Keith?” David asked.
Phillip stopped, the broccoli in front of his face. His fingers tightened on the fork. He set it back down on the plate and took another sip of his wine. David could see the skin under his left eye twitching.
“Why?” he asked as he set down the wineglass.
“Why what?”
“Why do you ask?”
David spread his own napkin on his lap. He wasn’t very hungry. Everything was fresh, but he couldn’t have wanted it any less than he did right at that moment. But he had bourbon in his stomach, and he needed something on top of it. He picked up his fork and just held it next to the plate. “Just a question,” he said with a shrug.
Phillip narrowed his eyes. “Just a question.”
“You asked about my job. I asked about yours. You told me about the garden. I wanted to know more about what else was going on with you. Just a question.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Like what?” David asked, not sure if he wanted to play this game.
“Like—like it was anything.”
That’s what he’d told himself last summer when they’d been at that charity dinner, the benefit for the CUE Center for Missing Persons. David had shown up in an ill-fitting tux, and Phillip had been there looking as dapper as ever, and they’d tried acting like everything was okay, but Keith had been there with Phillip. Keith, he of the firm handshake, the broad shoulders, the wide smile and the tux that looked tailored specifically for him. His eyes had been this weird ice-cold blue, and David had disliked him immediately.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Keith had said, which by the way Phillip had elbowed him, he should have known was the wrong thing to say.
“It’s not a loss,” David had gritted out. “She just hasn’t been found.”
Later, after David had spoken to the enraptured audience, telling them about Alice, Alice, Alice, and after the man had shown him the picture of the older woman and had cried on his shoulder, Phillip had gripped David by the arm, dragging him to a quiet alcove, eyes bright, lips thinned.
“It’s not what you think,” he’d said. “It’s not.”
“I’m not thinking anything,” David had replied, even though that certainly wasn’t the truth.
“He’s a friend. I didn’t want to come alone tonight, and he volunteered.”
“What a nice friend,” David said. “How nice.”
“I didn’t even know if you were coming.”
And—yeah, okay, that’d been fair, because David hadn’t responded to any one of Phillip’s three phone calls or five text messages, but still. It wasn’t as if David had brought a friend.
“I’m here,” David had said.
“Are you?” Phillip had asked him. “Because I don’t think you’ve been here for a long time.”
He’d left shortly after, not looking to where Phillip and Keith were standing side by side, talking with a group of people he hadn’t recognized.
There’d been hints, sometimes, from friends, the ones David hadn’t quite managed to drive away yet with his bullshit, though that was coming soon. Hints as subtle as a sledgehammer, things like oh, I just had lunch the other day with Phillip and—with Phillip and Phillip seems to be happier lately, David, maybe it’s okay for you to be too?