“Go the fuck away,” I mumbled at the beam of sunlight boring into my eye socket, and buried my face deeper in my pillow. The minute I let out a sigh of comfort, though, my alarm clock went off. I reached over the side of the bed to smother it but I was too slow. The damn thing barked its robot-dog-creature bark and rolled under the bed. Convinced I could still snag it, I slithered to the side of the bed and reached as far as I could.

My fingertips had just brushed its evil head when it robot-barked again and rolled out the other side toward the kitchen.

And I fell off the bed and landed on the floor in a tumble of blankets, hair, elbows, and swearing. I stared up at my ceiling, which I’d painted to look like a skeleton hand had broken through and was plunging into the apartment, unable to muster the energy to move.

Fuck the morning for having sunlight. Fuck the floor for being hard. Fuck Daniel for finding that damn alarm clock at a street sale last summer and knowing I’d think it was funny.

I rummaged around the blankets and found that my phone had fallen with me, so I dashed off a quick text to Daniel: Fuck you forever for this TERRIBLE alarm clock. May your every night be plagued with dreams of tart cherry jam and your descendants for twenty generations never find a moment of peace again. Love you. Jewish curses 4ever. Xoxo.

More immediately, fuck my own clumsiness. Last night I’d shattered my coffeepot on the floor, which meant that the closest thing I had to caffeine within fifty feet was my coffee ice cream. Which. Hmm, what were the caffeine levels in coffee ice cream…?

As promised, over the last week, I’d spent every morning before I opened the shop looking through the portfolios that tattooers had sent me, looking for someone who might be a good fit at Small Change. But no one was right. And for me to let some stranger into the sanctuary I’d created, they had to be right.

There were some good artists, but two of them were mostly interested in styles that Marcus and I already did, and the three who were artistically complementary weren’t a good fit, personality-wise.

The first, Carl, had been oblivious and inconsiderate. He’d interrupted often, told me he could help me with business strategies, and essentially acted like we’d be lucky to have him. When I told him it wasn’t going to work out, he’d demanded to know why, and when I said it just wasn’t a good vibe with the rest of the shop, he’d laughed and said he didn’t really want to work at the chick shop anyway. Clearly a gem.

The second artist we’d interviewed, Lawrence, had been a nightmare, which was doubly disappointing because he’d sounded great when I talked to him on the phone. He’d been excited about the work, had smart things to say about art, and seemed jazzed to meet everyone. But in person, he’d been pure typical tattoo bravado from the moment he’d walked in. Marcus had met him at the door, and Lawrence had narrowed his eyes and given him the kind of knuckle-cracking handshake that certain men subjected Marcus to when they were uncomfortable. He’d hit on Morgan within five seconds of sitting down to talk to us and when she’d shaken her head and said, “Stop,” he’d raised his hands in a who-me gesture and said, “What’d I do?” He’d been polite to me, but when I’d asked him why he was interested in working at Small Change, he didn’t have an answer and didn’t try to come up with one. He’d made the entire vibe feel gross, and we’d all agreed he was a no the second the door had shut behind him.

The third artist had spent the whole interview alternately staring into space and checking her phone fifteen times (Morgan counted). She’d seemed bored, rude, and entitled, and when I’d asked her how she got along with clients, she’d said, in a voice that suggested pride, “They usually don’t like me, but they like their tattoos.” Marcus and I had barely managed to contain our eye rolls at this. I understood better than most that in this macho business, sometimes it was beneficial to seem intimidating and hard-assed so people didn’t dismiss you as weak or take advantage of you. But with clients, you had to be the opposite. Often they were nervous, or their tattoo was meaningful, or they were in a lot of pain. Making a client dislike you was a surefire way to ensure they never came back to a shop, even if the work was good.

There were still two more artists I needed to call, but I had to spend this morning painting; I was way behind where I wanted to be, and the show at Malik’s gallery in January was getting too close for comfort. Hence why I had set my damn alarm for eight a.m. on a Saturday when I hadn’t finished in the shop until one. Hence why I had dropped my coffeepot while blundering around last night. Hence why I currently had no caffeine and was actually going to have to leave the house.

“God, get it together, Holtzman,” I muttered.

I dragged myself up off the floor and pulled on the black jeans and bleach-spattered hoodie I’d dropped there last night. I didn’t have time for the catching up that would be involved in running into people I knew (a real danger when you’d lived and worked in the same place for years), so rather than go to Chapterhouse, my favorite coffee shop, I walked down 4th to Bainbridge where a new coffee and sandwich shop had opened over the summer. It was close to the shop and I made it my job to know the other local business owners. You never knew when you could help each other out.

But though I’d noted when it first opened, it had been so brand-new and chaotic that I hadn’t gone in. Then Daniel had left and I’d thrown myself into things at the shop and gotten so busy I’d forgotten about it.

Now, though, the promise of coffee and a bagel in a place where I didn’t know every barista and customer sounded like heaven.

I was already on to thinking about my painting when I walked into Melt. The sign outside was ugly. Bad font and too modern for the vibe of the place, which looked like a twist on a classic deli inside: black and white checkerboard tile, black vinyl chairs and white café tables, and stools lining a chest-high counter that ran to the left of the cash register. The hulking espresso machine was shiny and high-tech, and the display case housed bagels and other pastries. There was a blackboard that listed the different sandwiches, but the writing was crabbed, and since it was too early for sandwiches anyway, I didn’t bother trying to read it.

I ordered a bagel and a large coffee with a quad shot from the geeky, bespectacled kid behind the counter who seemed shockingly awake for this time of morning. He raised an eyebrow at my order then grinned at me. He had a contagious smile—lazy and borderline silly.

“I don’t need a bag.” I accepted my bagel and folded a dollar into his tip jar. I turned away to doctor my coffee, taking a big, excited bite of the everything bagel, the world’s greatest combination of flavors—garlic, then onion, then salt, then cream cheese—exploding on my tongue.

As the white cream unfurled into the dark coffee, my mind was back on the painting I was about to work on. I saw the way I’d razor the edge of my medium dry brush so I could stipple white into the black paint I’d lain down for the hair. As I took another bite of bagel and stirred my coffee at the same time, I almost knocked the cup over, and I made a grab for it with both hands.

In a cosmic joke repetition of this morning’s alarm clock mishap, as I reached out to save my coffee I dropped my bagel on the café floor.

“No!” I cursed a blue streak at myself, at my coffee, and gravity, and crouched down trying to decide if the patient could be saved. But no, its seeds were scattering the floor like the saddest glitter, and blobs of cream cheese had splatted around it.

Mid-swears, bells tinkled and I found myself squinting up at an indistinct figure in the doorway, carrying a cardboard box on his shoulder and backlit by the sun.

“Uh, everything okay here?” the guy said.

I said nothing, too busy mentally calculating whether I was willing to drop more cash on another bagel and immediately deciding it was necessary not only to my sanity but to my ability to even get up off the floor.

“What’d you do?” The guy asked, this time looking toward the kid.

“Nothing!” he said. “She—er…”

“Ugh, it’s not his fault.” I dragged myself up. “I dropped my damn…” I gestured unnecessarily at the dead bagel, grabbed a bunch of napkins, and started wiping at the cream cheese on the floor, giving the bagel a regretful pat before I dropped it in the trash. Then I carefully put a to-go lid on my coffee so it couldn’t suffer the same fate.

By this time, the guy had put down the box and gone behind the counter. Without the sun blinding me I recognized him. I’d seen him around the neighborhood a few times and noticed him setting things up when Melt had first opened.

He was tall, with the thick build of someone naturally powerful, rather than the kind of sculpted muscles of someone who worked out in a gym. About my age, I thought: early- to mid-thirties. His thick red hair was cut close on the sides and long on top, combed back from a square hairline. He had a strong jaw and a smirky mouth, and his stubble was nearly blond. It was his eyes that I couldn’t look away from though. They were almost the same color as his hair—a warm goldish-orange—and shot through with flecks of blue.

My first impression was that his face was arresting, interesting the way sometimes in a gallery there’s one painting that pulls you in and won’t let you walk past. Each line eases into the next, each color shades into the one beside it in just the way your eye desires. Once you start to see the details you can’t look away.

But the more I looked, the more interesting converted to handsome as hell.

He sliced a bagel in one clean stroke and spread it with cream cheese, looking at me with mild amusement. “Dramatic start to the day,” he commented, eyes sliding to the spot where I’d been crouched when he came in.

“Not even my first encounter with a floor this morning, unfortunately.” I leaned an elbow on the counter, drawn toward him.

“One of those, huh?” He spoke with the ease of a food service professional accustomed to such exchanges, and the utter empathy of someone who actually meant it.

He wrapped the bagel in white paper with a few quick folds and twists, and put it in a bag. Then he added three more bagels and a plastic tub of cream cheese. When he held the bag out to me over the counter it was accompanied by an easy smile that crinkled laugh lines at the corners of those extraordinary eyes and displayed charmingly sharp incisors that overhung his bottom lip a little, like a kid wearing dress-up fangs. He had dimples underneath his stubble and I couldn’t believe that I’d ever walked past this shop when it first opened with little more than an, “Oh, he’s kinda cute,” to spare for him. No, this guy was smoking hot.

“Just in case the vagaries of your day find you needing another one,” he said.

And then he winked at me. Not the friendly wink of a barista. A filthy, promise-laden wink that shifted his grin from charming to sexy as hell. I was kind of impressed he’d managed to pull it off and I just looked at him for a minute, a smile threatening.

I fumbled in my pocket for my wallet, cradling the warm bag to me like a football, but he waved me off. Instead, he held out a hand across the counter and I shook it. His was warm and a little rough, and the contact made me want to squeeze and not let go. We stared at each other for a moment before I mentally shook myself. But he still held on to my hand.

“I’m Ginger,” I said, gesturing toward myself with the bag I was clutching.

“That’s usually my line.” He pointed sheepishly to his red hair with the hand that wasn’t holding mine. “I’m Christopher Lucen.”

The door tinkled and a group of loud-talking South Philly ladies spilled in.

Finally, he let go of my hand. Reluctantly, as if he might have held it indefinitely without an interruption.

“Hey, thanks,” I said, holding up the bag in a salute and picking up my coffee. The ordinariness of the cup was disappointing after the feel of his hand against mine. His smile was far more engaging than it should be and I was suddenly a little regretful that I had to get out of there.

He nodded, his eyes crinkling warmly as he said, “Good luck staying on your feet.”

“His line work’s not clean enough,” I insisted, pushing the iPad screen toward Marcus. “Come on, look at that.”

Marcus sighed, hope gone. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. That’s the last one, huh.”

We’d just spoken to the final artist who had sent me a portfolio, and to our surprise and relief, he was a nice guy who seemed like he might actually fit in here. But there was just no way I would book in clients when there was a chance they’d walk out with shoddy line work. It was a basic skill and this guy shouldn’t have been able to make it at his previous shop for two years without it.

“We could always post an ad, I guess.” But it was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d be deluged with emails and it was inevitable that the overly aggressive ones would stop by the shop. Looking at someone’s crap portfolio while they were hovering at your shoulder was never fun. And the ones desperate enough to come around when I explicitly asked for an online portfolio were always crap.

I considered Morgan and Marcus’s suggestion of calling Paul, and as if Marcus could read my mind, he said, “We’ll find someone. I’ll keep thinking, okay?”

Lindsey waved as her daughter Tara walked in. A single mom and ex-bartender, Lindsey was an ideal shop manager: terrifyingly organized, bossy when necessary, cool under stress, and happy to leave the job behind when she left the shop. She got along great with Morgan, Marcus, and me, and we all considered Tara a bonus. We’d stopped referring to her as the shop cat when she’d said if she was the cat then she was going to hiss at customers who displeased her, but I still thought of her that way.

Tara was thirteen, and her school was about six blocks from the shop, so she came here for the last two hours of Lindsey’s shift most days, because Lindsey didn’t want her to be home alone. It had begun a few years ago when I’d hired Lindsey, and Tara was too young to go do anything by herself after school. But though Tara sometimes complained, it was clear she liked coming here because when her friends started doing things like going to the movies, or…whatever teenagers did these days, Tara nearly always came here.

“Hey, love,” Lindsey said as Tara dumped her stuff behind the counter. “How was school?”

“Blah,” said Tara, and though she was a small girl, she managed to collapse into an empty chair with all the drama of a tranqued rhino collapsing on the savanna.

“Oh, sure,” said Lindsey, nodding and handing her a banana. “Care to specify?”

Tara sighed and peeled the banana absently. “So, what’s the deal with people who, like, get off on drinking each other’s blood during sex?” she asked.

Marcus choked on his coffee and started coughing.

“Honey. Inappropriate topic of conversation for a place of business.”

“There’s no one here.”

“Fine.” Lindsey specified, “Inappropriate topic of conversation for a thirteen-year-old, in public, in general.”

“Whatever, I’ll just google it,” Tara said. I could see the smile in her eye because she knew that Lindsey couldn’t stand the idea of her daughter getting bad information.

Morgan winked at me. It was no secret that Tara delighted us both, though for Lindsey’s sake we tried not to encourage her too much. Well, not in front of Lindsey anyway.

My last appointment of the night was a no-show, so I left earlier than I had in days. I was too exhausted to paint but a little too wired to go to bed. I’d made headway on the painting yesterday morning, even if it had seemed like I’d spent half my time finishing off the bagels and cream cheese before the shop opened and I’d feel obligated to share with M&M. Hey, everyone knew bagels were best fresh! It definitely had nothing to do with the fact that when I was eating them my mind naturally wandered to Christopher, lingering on his broad shoulders, rough hands, and incredible eyes that crinkled at the corners.

Instead of going upstairs, I wandered up South Street to Tattooed Mom, my favorite bar (the name was a coincidence). My friend Turner would be working and I hadn’t seen her in a while. In the before times (before Daniel left, or BDL as Marcus lamented), Morgan, Marcus, Daniel, and I would go in for drinks after closing the shop on Saturday nights. But with me working on my paintings for the show, and Marcus trying to get home earlier lately, it had been some time since we’d done it. I made a mental note to try and get the gang together soon, for something non-shop-related.

“Ginger!” Turner yelled when I walked through the door, and she came around the bar to hug me. Turner’s hugs were like body slams and I grinned every time I found myself on the receiving end of one. Now that she was almost six months pregnant it was more like squeezing a zeppelin.

“How’s all this going?” I asked, indicating her belly.

Turner rolled her eyes dramatically and made me a drink. “I can say with zero percent exaggeration that it’s the effing pits. I’ll spare you the rundown of which parts of my body are no longer under my control, which parts hurt, which parts are twice their normal size, and which parts I haven’t seen in a while. I’ll also spare you a disquisition on my moods, which at the moment are tending toward a sense of horror and dread. And lastly, I’ll spare you the description of what I do when I wake up in the middle of the night—because apparently it’s not enough that I grow life, I must also do it without sleep—which is contemplate the horrors of this already overpopulated world and wonder for the thousandth time what hallucinogenic plant matter or self-help pabulum I could have consumed to made me decide it was a good idea to bring another human into it. Other than that, I’m excited. I’m gonna be a mom. Yay.”

I squeezed her hand where it lay on the bar. “You’re gonna be a fucking epic mom,” I told her. “I know this.”

Turner’s smile lit her whole face. “Thanks, G.”

For all that Turner had a brutally honest approach to pregnancy, it was something she’d considered for years. And now, at thirty-nine, she’d gone for it, and had been over the moon when it took.

“Hey, how’s my favorite tattooed mom?” Liam brought another flat of Yuengling from the back and nudged Turner with his elbow.

“That joke was bad the first six thousand times you made it, Liam,” Turner said, but she smiled at him. It was impossible to be mad at Liam. He was incredibly nice and incredibly stupid, and the combination really worked for him.

“You guys, I totally just got the hottest guy’s number,” Liam said.

“God, do people seriously get numbers? Like, that’s a real thing?” I asked.

Turner and Liam nodded. They worked in hookup central, so I guessed I’d take their word for it.

“Huh. I’ve never asked someone for their number in my life.”

“Good thing too, since you don’t even call your actual friends,” Turner said.

I flipped her off with a smile while signaling that she should get me another drink.

“Oh, it’s easy,” Liam said. “You just ask.”

“Yeah, I get the general principle, babe. It’s just never occurred to me to use it. I mean, I barely want to talk to most people in person, so I can’t imagine wanting to talk to them on the phone.”

“You don’t call them,” Liam said, like I’d suggested he eat paint. “You text.”

Turner and I exchanged fond, mildly exasperated looks as Liam started unloading the beer.

“Hey, how’s your other half?” Turner asked.

“He’s in fucking Michigan, T. Michigan! I mean, I ask you! Like, what’s in Michigan?”

“Well, there’s the automobile industry, Motown, the Great Lakes.” Turner ticked them off on her fingers.

“Ugh, whatever, that stuff.” I leaned forward across the bar and stabbed a finger toward her. “Do you know the main claim to fame of northern Michigan?”

“The Michigan tart cherry, I believe,” Turner said mildly.

“Number one, how the fuck do you know these things, and number two, why would anyone want a tart cherry!”

Turner smiled as she slid beers across the bar to some guys who’d come in while I was tipsily yelling at her. “Number one, as a child I enjoyed knowing facts about the states, and number two, dried tart cherries are absolutely delicious. They have a uniquely complex flavor not unlike a fruity red wine.”

I gaped at her. “I’m…a little in love with you right now and I a little bit want to hit you.”

Turner nodded like this was a common sentiment.

“State bird of Missouri!” one of the guys called out to Turner from down the bar.

“Eastern bluebird.”

The guy checked his phone.

“Whoa! Okay, okay, state flower of Indiana?”

“Peony.”

“Daaaang! State motto of Montana!”

“Oro y Plata.”

“Omigod, okay—”

“Oy, dude, this isn’t a freaking sideshow. Find a trivia night,” I called down the bar.

The guy scowled like I’d stomped on his sand castle and went back to his phone.

Liam arched an eyebrow at me. “Making friends, I see.”

“She misses Daniel,” Turner said, like it was an explanation for everything.

“Sigh, Daniel.” Liam’s voice was dreamy. “Did you guys ever…”

“No. No way. He’s like my brother.”

“Girl, if my brother looked like that? Just saying.”

I snorted and shook my head at him. “Well, you can do whatever you want with your brother. Sorry to kill the dream, but Daniel totally met somebody.”

I’d never seen Daniel anything like this over a guy before; he was really gone on Rex. They’d met in February, when Daniel had gone to Michigan for his job interview, and accidentally crashed his rental car into a tree when he swerved to miss a dog (which was, incidentally, so totally vintage Daniel that I couldn’t even). Rex lived nearby and had found Daniel wandering around in the dark, carrying the dog. It was a ridiculous meet-cute, and I’d teased him about it for months, with him shrugging it off every time. But when he’d moved to Michigan for the job and they met again, Daniel finally admitted how much he’d thought about Rex since then. Now they were dating, and from everything Daniel had said—which was, admittedly, less than I wanted to know—Rex sounded hot, kind, and way more into Daniel than he believed.

Liam seemed shocked to hear this, but Turner just nodded her enigmatic nod.

“What?”

“Well, I could always tell how much he needed you,” she said. “How much it meant to him to have someone he could look over at and know they got the joke. Exchange a look when you both had the same thought about someone. All that stuff. And it makes sense that when he was truly on his own, away from you and everyone who thought they knew him as one thing, he would find someone he could have that with romantically.”

My stomach felt hollow. Everything Turner was saying was probably true. And god knew I was happy for Daniel and hoped that this thing with Rex worked out. But hearing myself described that way—like a stand-in until Daniel could find a romantic partner—made me feel pathetic.

I knew Daniel would never think of it that way. I’d just been especially raw since he’d left, and I’d realized how lonely I was without him.

Raw, and maybe feeling just a little bit sorry for myself.

“Oh sweetie, shit, I didn’t mean it like that,” Turner said as her words settled.

“No, it’s okay. I know.”

Turner put another drink in front of me. “How about you? Any love in the air?”

I was surprised when my mind went immediately to Christopher. After all, our entire encounter had only lasted five minutes, and he’d been handling cream cheese for two of those. But I couldn’t get the picture of him winking at me out of my head. Or the way his hand had felt in mine. Warm, and lightly calloused, and a bit electric.

“Um, well, I went out on a date a couple weeks ago. Lindsey made me,” I mumbled.

“Do tell,” Liam said, and he and Turner leaned on the bar.

“Oh man, Lindsey sold him to me so hard. ‘Ginger, he’s a teacher, he has a cute dog, he’s smart and nice and handsome, and blah blah blah.’ Well, to be fair, he was handsome.”

“What’d he look like?” Liam asked

“Uh, he looked like—what’s that store that always smells so strongly of disgusting cologne when you walk past it that you wanna puke?”

“Abercrombie & Fitch,” said Liam.

“Yeah. He looked like a more boring version of one of those models, I guess? Like, toothpaste commercial teeth and the kind of dude who’d own a windbreaker. So wholesome he looked like a manifestation of the American flag. Not my type, obvs.”

Liam was shaking his head at me like I was causing him physical pain.

“So, how was it?” Turner prompted.

“Oh, it was fine,” I sighed. “Like, the dictionary definition of fine, though, meaning wholly without delight or horror. Which, just saying, I kinda like the horrible ones better—at least there’s a good story to tell. This was just…he was…pleasant?”

Turner snorted. “Ah,” she said in a prim English accent, “pleasant.” She mimed sipping a cup of tea, pinky in the air.

“Yeah, exactly. He was nice, I was delightful as always, duh, and we talked, and it was fine, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is a mildly pleasant conversation that I could have with almost any human on the planet.’”

Turner nodded along with me in sympathy.

Liam just shook his head. “Yeah, if a guy is hot but boring, that is really not the strategy I’d recommend.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. And he probably was. I shrugged, and was surprised to find myself thinking about Christopher again. About how he was definitely hot, and seemed like he was probably not boring in the least.