Wasted, p. Dave and I are very happy. She looked up at my approach, and I hit her with a small smile, which of course she returned. I was Finnegan Lane, after all. I breathed in. Nice—very nice. My friends call me Finn. I liked women, you see.
Well, where is he? Nobody else. I ran my hand through my own thick, walnut-colored hair in reassurance. Chic with chic. For instance, when I first met my roommate, Tyler, I instantly knew several things to be true.
I only used my powers for good, making matches between people I knew or strangers I encountered, planting little seeds, nudging them together. Although, at the end of the day, I really did it because I was in love with love.
It felt safer that way. My job at Wasted Words was equal parts manager, comic book dealer, bartender, and matchmaker — the last being my favorite part of the job. Mixing up the comic boys and romance girls who came in had become my favorite hobby. I ran singles night, which was the easiest place to make magic, and bartending was another avenue to making love connections. It was almost too easy.
Fish in a barrel, and all that. We had everything from corporate lawyers looking for hentai, more commonly known as tentacle porn, to teenage girls browsing our massive romance aisles.
There were the college kids, especially from Columbia, as we were pretty close to campus, and then of course the standard stereotypical romance reading cat ladies and the super nerdy comic guys. Those were the easiest to match up. As I wiped off the bar top in front of me, I noticed she flipped the pages with the speed of a lifer, probably reading since she was a little kid. Her fingers were smudged with ink or graphite, and every time she pushed up her glasses, she rubbed a little off on her nose.
Noting the black notebook under the one she was reading, it seemed a safe assumption that she was an artist of some sort. I thought he was adorable in his own right, with shaggy dark hair and a hoodie over a T-shirt of Batman eating ramen, framed like a comic cover and titled in Japanese characters that said Batman and Ramen.
I imagined her looking up at him and smiling, then him moving down to talk to her. And then marriage and babies and the whole lot.
I sighed dreamily. Batman could have had a solid shot at The Reader with nothing more than a breath of self-confidence, but that was always the trick. Which was where I came in. My roommate, Tyler, chuffed at me. Tyler sat in the seat he always took, near the back of the horseshoe bar where he kept me company at work. I mean, five minutes ago I was. But I know you. I thought about going back to apologize and filled with dread. I turned my head so I could finally meet his eyes, eyes that were sad and forgiving.
Tyler smiled and slipped his hand into my hair, cupping the back of my head as he leaned forward to kiss my forehead. So I picked myself up off the ground and tucked into his side, walking to the subway station in silence, counting my mistakes, one by one.
It took me a second to put on my shoes and chase her down, rolling through the tirade I planned to lay on her with every second that passed. She already knew. My arm was around her, and she leaned into my side, staring through our reflection in the window across from us. So we moved through the apartment silently, readying for sleep.
When our teeth were brushed, she took my hand, leading me into her bedroom where we climbed into bed. And when the light was off, she buried herself in my chest and breathed, a deep breath in, a long sigh out. And I held her, knowing it was all she needed from me.
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