“Apple cider margaritas,” the bartender says cheerfully. They spin around and produce four shots like some kind of liquor magician. “And a round of our world famous Oh Shit shot, on the house, for my favorite babes.”
“Thanks, Luz,” Myla coos. “This is our new kid. August. We adopted her in January.”
“Welcome to the family,” Luz tells her, and a drink and a shot are in her hands, and she’s whisked away toward a booth just vacated by a herd of surly goths in perfunctory Halloween headwear.
“To Niko,” Myla says, raising her shot. “Born on the Fourth of July with both fingers in the air, pissing middle America off by living their dream: looks great in jeans and has a hot girlfriend.”
“To family,” Niko says. “And viva Puerto Rico libre.”
“To alcohol,” Wes adds.
“To Hanukkah sweaters,” August finishes, and they all throw it back.
The shot is awful, but the drink, it turns out, isn’t half bad, and the company is great. Niko is in rare form, long limbs stretched out and head cocked, exuding honey-smooth blue-collar boyishness. Molten moonshine. He looks like he could jumpstart a jet engine with his heart.
Beside him, Myla is glowing, the piercing in her nose sparkling. Niko’s usually clean-shaven, but tonight there’s stubble on his chin, and Myla scrapes her nails across it, looking wicked. August makes a mental note to find her headphones before bed.
“They’re like,” Wes says to her in a low voice, “gonna get married, probably.”
“They basically already are.”
“Yeah, except they live with us,” he says.
August glances over. Wes is sitting cross-legged in his usual skinny jeans and baggy T-shirt, topped off with an angel halo Myla shoved onto his head on the way out the door. He looks like a pissed-off cherub.
“They’re not gonna leave us if they get married, Wes,” August tells him.
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not.”
“What are you making that face about?” Myla half-shouts across the table.
“Wes thinks we’re gonna get married and move out, and he’ll never see us again,” Niko says. Wes glowers. August can’t help laughing.
“Wes. Wes, oh my God,” Myla says, laughing too. “I mean, yes, we’ll probably get married one day. But we would never leave you. Like we could even afford to. Like we’d even want to. Maybe one day we’ll all move out and get our own places with our own people but, like, even then. We’ll be weirdly codependent neighbors. We’ll all move into a compound. Niko was born to be a cult leader.”
“You say that now,” Wes says.
“Yeah, and I’ll say it then, you punk-ass bitch,” Myla says.
“I’m just saying,” Wes says. “I’ve seen, like, ten different engagement announcements on Instagram this month, okay? I know how it goes! We all age out of our parents’ insurance, and all of a sudden your friends stop having time to hang out because they have a person and that’s their best friend now, and they have a kid, and they move to the suburbs and you never see them again because you’re a lonely old spinster—”
“Wes! First of all, we already have two kids.” She gestures significantly across the table at him and August.
“Rude, but fair,” August says.
“Second of all, we would never move to the suburbs. Maybe, like … Queens. But never the suburbs.”
“I don’t think I’m allowed back on Long Island after I dropped that jar of spiders on the LIRR,” Niko says.
“Why did you—” August starts.
“Third of all,” Myla plows on, “there’s nothing wrong with being alone. A lot of people are happier that way. A lot of people are supposed to be that way. But I don’t think you will be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Actually, despite your best efforts at this whole one-man production of Cask of Amontillado in which you’re both Montresor and Fortunato, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna find love. Like, good love.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Two main reasons. One, because you’re a fucking prize.”
He rolls his eyes. “And the second?”
“He’s walking up behind you.”
Wes whips around, and there is Isaiah, makeup done, wearing a vibrant fuschia scarf around his head and laughing with a couple in matching Pilgrim costumes. He glances over, and August knows the second his eyes lock on Wes’s, because it’s the second Wes starts trying to climb under the table.
“Absolutely not, bruh,” Myla says, throwing a kick. “Stand and face love.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this when he literally lives across the hall from us,” August says. “You see him all the time.”