“Rocking the tassels, Q. No hating the fringe.”
“Makes her look like a lamp. A cheap lamp. In a hotel where merrow come up out of the toilets.” Quinn wrinkled his nose as Rafe’s laughter carried across the courtyard in front of Finnegan’s. “It does.”
“Maybe her shirt’s reincarnated. Its past life was a whorehouse pillow.” His cheeks were beginning to hurt, especially when a bit of coffee went down wrong, and Quinn began pounding on his back to help him stop coughing. Waving Quinn off, Rafe caught his breath. “Sorry, bad image of you handing out red cards for fashion violations.”
“I don’t know shite about fashion,” he shot back. “It’s the colors. Look at the colors she’s wearing. It’s like they can’t see the difference between khaki and olive green. Why would you go out wearing an indigo shirt and olive-green pants? What kind of monster does that to the world?”
They talked more after that. Stupid things they’d done and probably would do again. Quinn mourned the loss of his Audi, wishing he’d had the chance to take Rafe out in it at least once before he’d nearly rolled it. After extracting a promise of a ride after the car was repaired, Rafe leaned back and sighed contentedly.
“This is really nice, Q. No worries. No fuss.”
“What is nice? What fuss?”
“This. You and me. Why didn’t we do you and me more often? I really could have used this. Still can use more of this in my life.”
“Because you were off being a rock god, and I was still some clueless nerd with my face pressed to a computer screen?”
“Stupid of me. You know that, right?” Rafe glanced over at Quinn, who studiously avoided making eye contact. “I’m serious, Q. You’re one of the best fucking things—people—I’ve got in my life, and I didn’t make time for you. Time I should have. You’re like a touchstone for me. And I feel like I buried you in my pocket when I should have held you in my hand.”
Quinn frowned, his eyebrows knitted over his strong nose. “I’m a flat piece of slate you use to test metals on?”
“Wait. What?” He sat up a little bit, leaning an elbow on the table. Quinn was off again, veering into the stratosphere while the rest of the world looked up, earthbound and confused. Or at least Rafe was confused. Patient and waiting but still a bit confused. “Explain it to me.”
“A touchstone. People used to smear golds—types of golds—on a certain type of stone, like slate, then compare it to known samples. It’s how they tested for purity.” Quinn sipped at his cup. “Or do you mean metaphorically? Like a point of reference.”
“Um, no. Not the rock one. The other one. The metaphorical one. The one where you bring balance. And sanity. God knows I need some fucking sanity.” Rafe slouched back down in his chair, chuckling to himself. “Nicely done, by the way. Good ducking a compliment there, magpie.”
They watched a flock of like-shirted Asian tourists waddle after a woman holding a red flag above her head, a stream of quicksilver Japanese and Cantonese. Rafe coughed again, mostly to clear his throat, but Quinn glanced over, worry on his face.
“Are you okay?” He leaned over, nudging Rafe’s sneaker with his foot.
“Better now you’re here.” It wasn’t hard to admit that to Quinn. Something inside of him lightened when Quinn was near. He’d never noticed it before. Not until his life’d hung too heavy on him, and Rafe felt like he was one step away from flinging himself of the Bay Bridge with a necklace of albatrosses slung around his throat. “Missed you, Q. Never knew how fucking much until right now. But I did. I do.”
“Missed you too, Rafe.”
Quinn’s fingers brushed over his, and Rafe grabbed them, holding them tightly.
“I’d be stupid to let you go again.” He squeezed lightly, caught in Quinn’s deep emerald gaze.
“You won’t.” Quinn smiled. “Let go, I mean.’Cause I love you and everything, but sometimes, Andrade, you do stupid really well.”
QUINN COULD have done without the flat tire.
After sitting through a two-hour play about cubist painters falling in love during their exploration of the color red, a flat tire wasn’t how he wanted to finish up the afternoon. But the universe had other plans, and they apparently included Quinn digging out the spare from the loaner’s trunk and swapping out a tire nearly as terminally depressing as the avant-garde performance he’d just endured.