“Don’t you have work to do?” Evan asked.
“Let’s just do this instead,” I said. “This can be my new job.”
“Squeezing me until I pop?”
“Keeping you warm, weirdo,” I said.
I gave him one last tight squeeze before pulling away. My erection had started to get a little more insistent and I figured letting go of him would help solve that issue, but now, he was looking up at me with those big, warm eyes.
I was toast. Apparently there was nothing I could do to stop myself from being aroused around him anymore.
“How intense do you think it’s going to be?” I asked him, crossing back over behind the bar on the off chance that he might catch the bulge that had formed in my pants.
“Um—what?”
I glanced back up at him. “The storm.”
“Oh, right, right,” he said, snapping back to some sort of reality. “It isn’t going to be as bad as everyone thinks.”
I quirked my head to the side. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
Evan had a way of making big problems sound small. I loved that about him. But this time I was pretty sure he was wrong as hell.
“How bad could it be?” he asked.
“They’re predicting nine inches.”
“Delicious,” Red said, appearing on the other side of the bar. He brought his fingertips to his lips and kissed them like an Italian chef.
Evan and I both laughed.
“You can’t say anything about inches around Red,” Evan said. “He’ll make a joke. Probably that exact joke, every time.”
I snorted, heading over to pour Evan his favorite beer and sliding it in front of him. I poured myself the same one. “Cheers to nine inches.”
“Cheers to that,” Evan said, taking a swig of beer.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Evan said as he opened the front door of the bar two hours later.
The snow was already coming down in thick sheets, covering everything in sight. According to news reports, the storm would continue like this for another six hours.
“Hate to say I told you so, Ev,” Red said.
“No you don’t,” Evan protested. “You love it.”
“Guilty as charged,” Red responded.
Most of the sane customers had left the tavern earlier, before the storm picked up, but Evan was putting back beer after beer, seemingly without a care in the world. He told me all about how well Zach had done at the shelter, how he seemed to have an innate ability to calm down a scared dog, and how he’d even bonded a little bit with a girl named Sophia.
Evan was in a talking mood—and a drinking mood—more than I’d ever seen him.
It was almost like he was talking and drinking so much to cover up how he really felt about something.
The only other people in the bar at this point were Grace and two other women who’d been playing pool nonstop all night. Red called over to them and they came to glance outside.
“Shit,” one said.
“It’s bad,” Red replied. “So… we may be having an impromptu Tavern sleepover tonight.”
“I live one block down,” one of the women said, glancing over at her date. “Do you… want to come spend the night?”
Both of their eyes lit up. Clearly, things were going well.
“See you guys later!”
The women put their jackets on and bounced out into the snow within another minute.
Evan was sitting at the bar again, finishing his beer. “I’m an idiot,” he told me as I came back.
“You’re not an idiot, you’re just terrible at predicting the future,” I said.
“I’m grabbing the air mattress,” Red said, heading down the back hallway.
“You keep an air mattress here?” Evan asked.
In another moment, Red appeared again, dragging the big plastic mattress under his arm.
“I made this Tavern with my own blood, sweat, and tears. If you don’t think I’ve had to sleep here many times, you’re wrong. I’m prepared for everything.”
“Wow,” Evan said, watching as Red hooked the bed up to the air pump.
“You two. Take this mattress and sleep out here. Grace and I will take the pullout couch in my office.”
“Oh. What? No—” Evan protested.
“Hush, Evan. There’s no way I’m sleeping next to you. I wake up from the tiniest noise.”
“Shit,” Evan said. “I never should have told you about…”
“About what?” I asked.
Evan glanced over at me. “Remember when I was a kid, I sometimes babbled a tiny bit in my sleep?”
As soon as he said it, I remembered it like it was yesterday. When I used to sleep over at Evan’s house, sometimes he would murmur random words in his sleep, like “cute rabbit” or… sometimes my name.
“You still do that?” I asked. My heart squeezed. Evan couldn’t be more fucking adorable if he tried.
“I still do it. But… worse now,” Evan said. “I don’t give entire speeches as I sleep, or anything, but… sometimes I might think through math problems. Out loud. And other times it’s more inappropriate things.”