I almost hadn’t answered the phone call at the bar. It had been from my mom, who normally only called to update me about the latest coupons she had found, talk about how my dad was doing in his retirement, and to divulge the latest Rose Falls gossip.

But my mom typically only called in the afternoon when she knew business was slow at Brew for You. She knew that I was working most of the rest of the day, and she respected that I couldn’t talk.

So getting a phone call from her at seven o’clock had been strange. And my instincts had been right: the call itself had been a slap to the face. It was about my brother, who apparently was on a bus right now, on his way back to Rose Falls from New York City.

I frantically called Emmett as I hopped in my car and drove to my parents’ house. I thought I would have to beg him to watch Brew for You for a few more hours, but luckily he seemed perfectly fine keeping tabs on it. I knew I would have to thank him effusively later.

When I got to my parents’ house, I found the two of them sitting at the dining room table, a cloud of gloom surrounding them.

“I need details,” I said, not even bothering with greetings. “What did Owen do this time?”

“Your brother ended up at a hospital after drinking too much,” my dad said, his lips a tight line.

“Again?”

He nodded.

Owen was twenty-six and had been living in New York City ever since he dropped out of college. No matter what we did to help him, it seemed that he couldn’t stop the intense partying lifestyle he’d picked up in school. It fit him like a glove, drinking to excess and going wherever the wind took him in the city. He always had a new friend, a new social group, a new excuse to celebrate.

It had always been worrisome, but he was getting older now. It certainly couldn’t be attributed to some teenage phase. And apparently, last night had been one of the worst.

“It’s terrible,” my mom said. I noticed that her eyes were slightly red as she leaned back in the dining room chair. “He was so drunk that he passed out on the sidewalk outside his apartment. A friend had found him there and took him to the hospital. He wasn’t even awake to call us until an hour ago.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, sitting down across from them. “But he’s okay? And he’s coming back here?”

My mom nodded. “He’s okay. That’s the important part.”

“He should be back within the next hour,” my dad said. “And he will be staying with us… indefinitely.”

Dad was wearing the same tired expression on his face that I remembered from when he’d still been working. The pure exhaustion seemed to have mostly left him after he retired a few years back, but tonight was the worst I’d seen it in a while.

“What are we going to do with him, Patty?” my mom asked. She shook her head, turning toward me.

“I can help out, Mom,” I said. “I’ll talk to him. I can… try to be around more than I was last time.”

Owen had a similar situation occur just over two years ago—right when I was ramping up to open Brew for You. He came back to Rose Falls for a couple months, and though I’d always wished I could have talked with him more during that time, work seemed to dominate my life. I’d thought Owen would be fine without me. But as time had passed, I’d realized that the whole family had wished I’d been around more. They half-joked that when I was opening Brew for You that the bar had been my “real family,” but I think the jokes were mostly veiled truth. I hadn’t been around enough. I’d only seen Owen a few times during his entire stay in Rose Falls. And I’d felt guilty that I wasn’t there for him ever since.

That was more than two years ago now, and yet I still felt like I was engrossed in work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But I was determined to make this time different.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” my mom said. “Owen isn’t your responsibility. For God’s sake, he’s an adult.”

“It doesn’t matter how old he is. He’s my brother, and I love him. Sure, he isn’t my responsibility, but I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he’s okay.”

She nodded slowly. “I know exactly how you feel.”

“He just needs to learn to stand on his own two feet,” my dad said, giving me a hard gaze. “And he doesn’t seem to want to listen to us anymore, at all. We talk to him twice a week, more if you count texting.”

“He’s sick of us,” my mom said with a sad smile.

“But in all seriousness,” my dad continued, “Can you help us out, Patrick? We’re at the end of our ropes here.”

“If you have time,” my mom said.

“You can always make time,” my dad countered.

“Of course,” I said, nodding. “There’s no question. If Owen needs me—if you guys need me, I can make myself available. I’ll… I’ll need to double down on my efforts to hire another person or two for the café, but I needed to do that anyway.”

“Good,” my dad said, a sense of finality in his voice. There were a few moments of silence before he finally spoke again. “I think I’m gonna put the kettle on for some tea and bring out some cheese and crackers. I got the creamy kind with the Merlot in it from Costco. How does that sound?”

“That sounds perfect,” I said. I realized that I hadn’t eaten in many hours, and the guilt that was building inside me was starting to be too much to bear.

When my dad was gone in the kitchen, my mom continued, speaking low into my ear. “I’m serious about not stressing yourself out, Patty. I know how important your work is for you. It’s amazing that you could even come by tonight. And… I know you’re not going to be able to be here as much as your father would like. He’s just… worried.”

“I’m worried too,” I said. “And no. I need to stop working so much, regardless of Owen. This is a very important reminder of something that I already knew I needed to do.”

“But it isn’t easy. I know that.”

I shook my head. “Not a lot of things are,” I said.

My thoughts drifted to Cobalt, and what seemed like the most terrible timing for a new, polished bar to open on my street. I wondered if someone like Taran had ever had to choose between work and family. The idea almost made me laugh. He was a classic bachelor, and he’d probably never had to make a compromise in his life.

All of my life I’d felt like I had something to prove—that I was the “good” son, that I would do everything right and be successful because Owen didn’t. Owen had been getting into trouble since he was in early high school, and ever since then, my parents had turned to me for solace and relief.

Owen would take home a report card with multiple failing grades, but mine would be nearly all A’s. Owen would come home smelling like smoke and alcohol after a party, and I’d already be in bed. Even back in elementary school, he’d be disciplined and given detentions left and right, whereas I’d be winning spelling bees and making it onto the baseball team. I was four years older than him, which gave me an advantage in maturity to begin with, but even beyond that our dynamic had always been this way.

But now it felt like any rivalry had fallen away. I didn’t care about being the “better” son; I just wanted Owen to be happy. I still felt like I needed to be a pillar of stability, someone that my parents could count on, but more importantly, I wanted to be a support for him, too.

And that’s why I was determined to be around more now that Owen was coming back to Rose Falls again. Even if it meant compromising, even if it meant that my own life wouldn’t be as exciting.

Not everyone could live life like Taran Vallas—working hard and playing even harder. Maybe in another world, I could have stayed in Cobalt tonight, flirted with him as hard as he was with me, and ended up in his bed.

But that was his world, not mine.

* * *

When Owen got home a little over an hour later, he seemed… the same.

I didn’t know what I had been expecting. This had happened a couple times before, and no matter how bad things got, Owen always seemed like himself.

When he walked in, his long curls looked a little disheveled, but no more than usual. He gave my parents big hugs, talked with us for a while at the dining room table, and then he and I went out to the back porch together alone. We watched the trees sway lightly in the evening breeze, in no rush to have some overwrought conversation.

Owen broke the comfortable silence after a minute. “So, want to go grab a beer?” he said.

I furrowed my brow, cutting my eyes over at him.

He promptly broke into a wide smile. “I’m joking, God,” he said, reaching over to swat me lightly on the shoulder. “I have… much less desire to drink right now than I normally do.”

“I guess that’s a good thing,” I said.

“Could really go for a cigarette, though,” he said.

“As much as I hate to hear that, I’d rather it be that than an entire handle of vodka,” I said.

He grunted in response. “Nah. I’m quitting. I’m going to… see if I can go without either one for a while. My new vice is going to be… I don’t know, kale, or exercise, or whatever good thing it should be.”

I laughed. “Yeah? Are you gonna be all about the cold-pressed green juice now?”

“Sure am,” he said. “I mean, that stuff is actually kind of good. If it wasn’t ten bucks a bottle, I’d probably have it every day.”

“Well,” I said, “You aren’t in NYC anymore. If there’s anywhere to get green juice here, I sure don’t know about it.”

He laughed. “That’s so cute, how you call it ‘NYC,’” he said.

“I mean, that’s what people call it, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, like grandpas and stuff,” he said. “You might as well be calling it the Big Apple.”

“Well, maybe one day I’ll be as cool as you and figure out what to call it,” I said, throwing my hands up in mock exasperation. “Now, Owen, could you fetch me my spectacles and a bottle of Ensure?”

He smiled lightly, fidgeting with a stray thread on his dark jeans. “I missed you so much,” he said finally, his voice a little quiet.

“I missed you, too,” I said.

“Thank you for being here. I’m pretty sure Dad wants to kill me right now, and every time I look at Mom, she starts crying.”

“She’s just worried. Both of them are.”

He shook his head. “They’re making a much bigger deal out of this than they need to,” he said. “I’m okay. I just need to be… away from my friends in the city for a while, I guess.”

“Well, Rose Falls is a good place to be if you’re looking to have less fun.”

Owen laughed. “How are you doing? How’s Brew for You? I can’t believe you aren’t there right now.”

I hesitated for a moment, wanting to give him the same stock answer that I gave everyone: it’s going well, I love it, it’s my pride and joy. All of those things were true, but they weren’t the whole truth.

And so I decided to give him the whole truth.

“I’m so fucking worried about it, Owen,” I said. “Sure, we get our fair share of customers, but I’m still in debt to Mom and Dad. They still have the same look in their eyes every time they bring up the bar.”

Adrenaline coursed through me even admitting this to Owen. It was something I rarely even thought about myself. I always tried to keep a happy face on, to act as if I was excelling at this like I had been excelling at everything my whole life. I glanced over at Owen nervously before he responded.

“I know exactly the look,” he said. “It’s the ‘we’re worried about you, but also worried about how you reflect on our own reputation’ look.”

“That’s the one. I know I can turn things around in the next year or two and pay them back, but… I need my business to grow. Right now it’s just sort of been… coasting. With no signs of improvement ahead.”

He hummed softly. “You can’t really predict that kind of thing, though. You’ve just got to do the best you can, right?”

“Well, I certainly am trying,” I said.

“So, what about the rest of your life? Any romances on the horizon?”

I shook my head. “The ‘rest of my life?’ What does that even mean? You mean there is… life outside of work?”

He laughed. “Even someone like you has to blow off steam sometimes, right? I’ve never had a gay hookup before, but they’ve always seemed kind of fun—”

“Owen, Jesus!” I said, punching him.

“What? Come on! I’m just saying. You’ve gotta keep yourself happy somehow.”

“God, no,” I said, laughing a little. “I don’t have time for that.”

“You know what Dad says, though.”

“Of course. ‘I can make time.’”

He snorted. “Yup.”

We paused for a while, sitting in companionable silence. It was the most I’d spoken with Owen in months.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do here,” he said after a while, squinting as he looked out into the backyard. “I mean, not that I knew what I was doing in the city either, but at least I had friends there.”

“You have friends here, too,” I said. “What about Mason and Travis?”

Owen let out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, Mason and Travis don’t talk to me anymore. And I don’t blame them, honestly.”

“Why’s that? Maybe you could try seeing them again. People do forgive others, sometimes.”

“Not when you sleep with one of their ex-girlfriends and then never show up to the other’s birthday party because you were too drunk and forgot.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. I pulled in a deep breath. “Well, there are always new friends to make.” I was trying to keep the conversation relatively light, but at the same time, I was realizing that it had been a long time since I’d even tried to have any involved conversation with Owen. I really didn’t know what was going on in his life. I wanted to make sure Owen was comfortable around me, but that same desire was causing me not to be able to fully relax around him.

He was exactly the same Owen he’d always been, but it was as if I’d blinked and he’d become an adult. He didn’t even look like a kid to me anymore. And he wasn’t, of course—he was twenty-six, and when I’d been his age, I’d already started thinking about opening my own bar. His life was different, but the fact remained: I felt like there was a whole side to him that I needed to get to know again.

But how could I spend more time with him if I was at the café all day, every day?

“Hey,” I said, turning toward him slightly. “How do you feel about coffee?”

An idea had kicked loose inside me that at first seemed ridiculous, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I couldn’t ignore it.

“How do I feel about it?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

“Sure.”

“I feel like it helps me wake up in the morning. I feel like six shots of espresso over ice are a good way to make sure I don’t fall asleep before an appointment. Other than that, no real feelings.”

“Well, I might want to hire a part-time person for Brew for You soon. For the mornings.”

Owen arched an eyebrow at me. “Wait. Are you saying what I think you are?”

I gave him one nod. “If you want a job, it’s yours.”

His eyes widened, and he sat forward on his seat slightly. “Patty, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “I can… figure something out here. I know you’re crazy about making sure Brew for You has the best employees, and… well, you know I’m not exactly the best employee of all time.”

“Maybe you haven’t always been, but you deserve as many chances as you need to get it right,” I said.

“Shit, that would… that would be amazing,” he said. “Certainly would save me a whole lot of grief trying to find and apply to other jobs.”

“Now, you do know that the morning shift starts very early, right?” I said.

He nodded. “I know. I can do it, though. I’m used to being awake at strange hours.”

I smiled. “Speaking of which, Emmett is probably wondering where the hell I am. This is the first time I’ve left him in charge of the night shift in… God, maybe it’s the first time ever.”

“So go close up the bar. I’m not going anywhere. We can talk this week, okay?”

“Are you sure?” I said, meeting his eyes. “Because this time is gonna be different, Owen. I’m not going to be prioritizing work over family. I’ve done enough of that in my life.”

“It’s fine,” he said, stressing the final word. “All I want to do right now is fall into bed and sleep for twelve hours straight, anyway. Don’t worry about me.”

I gripped his shoulder. “Okay. I’m so glad you’re back. And I’m only slightly disappointed to see that you still haven’t cut that mop of a hairstyle.”

“Shut up!” Owen said, running his hand along his wavy mane. “People love my hair. Don’t be jealous of my impeccable style.”

I laughed. “I love you, Owen.”

“I love you, too.”

* * *

It was a little after midnight when I walked back into Brew for You. I found the place empty except for Emmett and an immaculately clean bar.

“Holy shit,” I said, looking around. “This is the best I’ve ever seen this place looking.”

“See? Everything doesn’t go to hell as soon as you’re gone,” Emmett said. “I only had to put out three small fires and call the police for robberies twice while you were away.”

“What?”

“Kidding, Patrick, kidding,” he said.

I told him about the insanity of my night, about Owen and Taran and Cobalt. By the time we were done talking, it was one o’clock in the morning and time to close down for the night. I sent Emmett home with his choice of a bottle of expensive liquor; a thank you for changing his schedule on such late notice.

After closing up, I stood in the front area of the bar for a while. I poured myself a glass of one of our on-tap brews and took stock of the bar, now inevitably comparing it to Cobalt. The barstools here couldn’t be more different from the ones there—I’d gotten most of them secondhand, and there were two that didn’t match all the others, the hardwood a slightly deeper shade. The old maps and photographs framed on the walls were also thrifted, and the soft light from the pendant lamps filled the whole space with a warm glow.

It was cozy. It felt familiar. But it didn’t have half of the impact that Cobalt did.

I couldn’t even imagine a guy like Taran existing in this space. I was seeing everything through his eyes now, wondering what he would think of it. For God’s sake, he’d already gotten in my head, and Cobalt had only been open for a night.

When Taran had put his hand on my shoulder earlier in the night, even that smallest touch had been enough to make me feel like I was about to dissolve. It had been a long time since I’d had anyone touch me, let alone someone like him. And when was the last time someone had so overtly flirted with me?

I had been in one of the longest dry spells of my life.

When I next checked the time, it was nearly two o’clock. I knew exactly what would happen if I went back home. The same thing that happened every time: I’d pretend to have the energy to read a book, and approximately two minutes later, I’d fall into a deep sleep, only to wake up early the next morning to help out at Brew for You’s morning shift.

Every night had been like that for as long as I could remember. What would Taran do tonight if I didn’t show up at his bar at two o’clock? A guy like him didn’t seem like the type to spend the night alone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d already had found a new person to lust after approximately ten seconds after I’d left Cobalt.

But… what if he hadn’t?

Taran had stirred something in me that I had all but forgotten. It felt like oxygen suddenly rushing back into a room, like I was now seeing things in color again when it had been black and white for so long. I didn’t know Taran at all, but there had been a spark to him that was undeniable.

The next few months were bound to be drowned in work. Hiring new people for the bar, training Owen, making sure I was around for Owen.

And I realized that tonight might be the last chance I had for a long time to finally break my dry spell.

As soon as the thought started to grow in my mind, I knew I couldn’t stop it.

I was going to do this. I was going to go have a hookup: casual sex, completely no-strings-attached. And I wasn’t going to let myself overthink it too much and end up chickening out.

I turned quickly and reached to the back of the bar, pouring and drinking two shots of whiskey in quick succession. The alcohol burned in my throat, slowly warming me from the inside. As I was about to leave, I hesitated and then poured myself another, just for the liquid courage.

I pulled out my key and closed up the door out front. My hand shook slightly as I turned the key in the lock. Clearly I was more nervous than I’d realized about what might be my first hookup in ages.

But as I stepped back from the door and turned to head down the street, I almost jumped out of my skin.

“Holy shit!” I shouted, my heart rate skyrocketing. Taran was leaning calmly against the brick wall outside. He held up his hands slowly, treating me like a scared animal.

“Jesus, Patrick, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Did not mean to scare you.” His eyes smoldered, and even in my shock of adrenaline, I couldn’t ignore how they made me feel. Seen. Undressed, almost.

I took a deep breath, regaining composure. “Christ. You couldn’t have said something when you saw me come outside?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“This is the second time tonight you’ve scared the shit out of me.”

His lips quirked into a small smile. “Well, technically it’s the first time today. It’s after midnight, so… yesterday was really the last time I scared the shit out of you.”

Finally, my adrenaline started to wear off, and I let out a laugh. “Well, technically, I’d say you’re a smartass.”

He shrugged lightly. “Can’t argue with that.”

There was a small pause in the conversation where the only sound was a single car driving by, the strained noise of its muffler eventually receding into the night air. I regarded Taran warily—he looked so different out here. No longer the king of his castle in the bar. iinstead just a normal human.

A normal, really well-dressed, stupidly handsome, slick person, but… a person nonetheless. A person I now realized I really, really wanted to have sex with.

I took a step closer toward him.

“I… I actually came here to apologize,” Taran said, leaning forward off the wall and closing the gap between us.

“What?”

He nodded. “I… know I come off very strong at first. And normally, that’s just fine. I certainly have fun flirting.”

I was silent. This attitude was completely different from the one that he’d had in the bar. He dug a hand into his hair, brushing it back from his forehead before continuing.

“But I can’t help but feel like I might have made you uncomfortable, and that is really not something I like to do. So I apologize.” He shrugged as if to say that’s all I’ve got. I imagined that this kind of apology wasn’t the kind of thing Taran usually said to anyone, let alone people he’d flirted with.

“Isn’t that… sort of your whole thing, though?” I asked, dumbfounded. “You’re the Casanova, the heartbreaker, the… flirt of the century?”

He nodded. “Well, yes,” he said, “but not everyone’s like you, Patrick.”

Until then, I had been doing my best at maintaining composure, at trying not to look too shocked that he’d showed up and told me the one thing I never expected to hear from him. But now I couldn’t even pretend to hide my surprise.

“What?” I said, my voice rising. I turned around instinctively, making sure no one else was on the street, but it was deserted at two in the morning. “What is that supposed to mean? Not everyone’s like me?”

“You seem different,” Taran said nonchalantly, like it was the easiest thing in the world to understand.

“But you don’t even know me,” I protested.

“I like to think I have a good intuition.”

I leaned against the wall, breaking my eyes from his gaze. The brick was cool against my back, and I took a deep breath, realizing that the beer and whiskey shots were now all conspiring to hit my brain at once. Was my head swimming because of Taran’s presence or because of the alcohol?

“Taran, if you don’t want to hook up with me, you can just say it. I don’t need you to… somehow pretend I’m special or something when you just met me.”

To my surprise, he laughed, turning to face me again. For a second I wondered how this would go if the night was different, if he’d come to hook up with me instead of to let me down. I was already pressed up against the brick wall—it would be so easy for him to pin his body against mine, to slide his hand up my thigh and under my shirt, to press his lips to mine right here outside.

I pictured him lifting me up, making me open the door to Brew for You, and then tossing me across my desk in the back office of the bar before he had his way with me.

But instead, he just smiled at me sweetly, keeping his distance.

“I respect you, Patrick,” he said simply. “That’s all there is to it. I respect you as a person, as a fellow business owner, as someone who was witty and fun enough to catch my attention for the entire opening night of my new bar.”

I met his eyes, feeling all at once deflated and relentlessly flattered.

“So… you don’t want to hook up with me because… you respect me?”

He laughed again. “I’d like to think it’s a little more nuanced than that,” he said. “I do respect everyone I hook up with. Or… I treat them with respect, at least. But all it boils down to is that I want you to be comfortable around me.”

I sighed slowly, wondering how I could possibly tell him the truth: that I both felt uncomfortable and comfortable around him, that I weirdly already felt like I’d known him for years but that he also felt new and electric, like no one I’d ever known.

None of it made sense. And part of me really thought that I’d gone crazy having someone flirt with me so aggressively after months and months of being lonely.

“I’ll probably only be in Rose Falls for another... month or two,” Taran continued, “but I could use someone to show me around town, introduce me to people, yadda yadda. All that good stuff. So… let’s be friends?”

I paused, feeling like for the millionth time that night, I had no idea how to respond. I was tipsier than I should have been from just a few shots of whiskey, maybe drunk on the utter ridiculous hilarity that my night had become.

I threw up my arms. “Okay,” I said. “Friends.” I held out my hand to shake his, and he pulled me into a tight hug instead, filling the air around me with his scent. It smelled the same as it had earlier when I’d first bumped into him, but now it felt different. Again, familiar and yet so new.

I had lost my chance. For that moment, wrapped in his arms, I could pretend that my life was different.

But as the alcohol hit my bloodstream even harder, I realized I had no idea how I was going to get home.