Olive Juice

“Find something you wanted?” Phillip asked.

David looked up, sure his face was a little pale, covering up by coughing into his hand. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding a little creaky. “Probably just get the same as usual.”

“The cod.”

He nodded. “I like it, providing they haven’t changed the recipe since—”

And there it was. The second reference. Granted, Phillip had started it even before they’d gotten here by suggesting this place to begin with, but still. It was out there, and David didn’t know how to take it back. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take it back. Wasn’t it easier to just acknowledge it? They had come here before. They had come here for years. For their little staycations. He didn’t think Phillip was being cruel; no, he was sure the man across from him didn’t have a mean bone in his entire body. That could have changed. People changed over time. What’s to say Phillip hadn’t?

But David didn’t think that was it. Phillip wouldn’t do that to him, no matter what had happened between them.

“It’s been a while,” Phillip said lightly, and David almost sagged in relief. “They might have changed it, and you know how picky you are when it comes to cod.”

So they weren’t going to ignore it. They were going to acknowledge it. Maybe they were even going to revel in it.

David gave thought to standing up and leaving. Of not looking back. Of taking the coward’s way out and going home, locking the door behind him before he crawled up the stairs in an apartment he’d lived in alone for almost two years, haunted by the things he couldn’t undo, the people he couldn’t forget.

But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “I am not that picky.”

“Please,” Phillip said with a haughty sniff. “You’re a snob, and you know it. Why, don’t you remember that seafood place in the Keys? I thought the owner was going to club you over the head.”

“Seafood place,” he said derisively. “It was a shack.”

“Still, the cod.”

“It smelled off.”

“It smelled fine.”

“You just couldn’t smell it like I could.”

“Oh that’s right,” Phillip said, lowering the menu like he was laying down his shield. “I’d forgotten. You’re the connoisseur of cod.”

“And what happened when I told you the same thing about your shrimp?”

“I ate it anyway.”

“And?”

“Spent the rest of the night on the toilet,” Phillip admitted. “Wasn’t sure which end was worse off.”

“He wasn’t wearing a hairnet.”

“I think that was probably the least of our problems if I’m being honest. Ah, well. Some good came of it. I lost five pounds and the taste for shrimp.”

It wasn’t until David opened his mouth to say, you didn’t need to lose five pounds, you were as thin as a whisper, that it hit him then just how dangerous that was. How dangerou

s all of this was starting to be. They were reminiscing. They’d been in each other’s company for five, six, seven minutes, and they were already reminiscing. He was chilled at the thought. His skin felt too tight, like it was stretched to the point where it’d tear at any given moment. He didn’t expect this, how easy it would be to fall back into old habits, this bantering back and forth like the past six years hadn’t happened, like everything was fine and they were just on a staycation.

He hadn’t expected this.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed this.

He hadn’t understood how much this terrified him.

That he’d screw everything up more than he already had.

So, yes. This was dangerous.