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And tonight, with gin and song in my blood, I do not feel like resisting it.

Maybe I can’t.

The last song finishes. Sol is in my arms. I kiss his head like I always do on nights like this. He laughs and plants a smacker on my cheek. “Love you.”

“I love you too, my friend. You will sleep well tonight, I think.”

Sol takes a swig from his rum glass. “I hope not.”

Because he wants Jack to keep him awake all night for all the best reasons. And I want that for him too. Not because Sol’s sex life means that much to me, but because of what it means to them. Life has been hard on Sol and Jack.

It’s been hard on you too.

Recently, perhaps. But seasons change. We cannot stop them. And we carry parts of ourselves from one into the next, whether we want to or not.

What does that even mean?

I have drunk too much neat gin to know. Enough gin that I already know I will not drink anymore.

Sol is as drawn to the bar as I am. We push our way there, and as it happens, find Poet and Jack together.

Jack leans over the bar—to kiss Sol, I think, but he says something I don’t catch over the resurgent band noise. A local tugs on my arm and bellows something at me about tonight’s songs. By the time I’ve shaken him off, Sol has vanished, and…

So has Poet.

I spin around to be sure and find no trace of my old friend or my new one.

Nu blemba…

Well, damn. How did that happen?

Jack might know.

He sets a bag of nuts and bottle of fruit juice in front of me a split second before the new device on my wrist buzzes a rhythm into my pulse point.

Low.

I don’t feel it. Not yet. But I correct it with what Jack’s put in front of me, grateful for my friend, though I’m sad he doesn’t understand how good he is at taking care of other people.

The juice isn’t cold. He keeps some warm on the shelves for me so I can drink it quicker. I tip half the bottle down my throat and chase it with the nuts. Wait to see if it’s enough, and tonight, it is.

“That’s new.”

For a moment, I think the murmured words at my ear refer to the intense focus I need to give my diabetes these days. Then a warm palm skims my lower back and I stop thinking at all. My brain wiped clean of all cognition.

Poet.

He’s beside me again, closer this time, and it feels so good, for a long moment, I can only stare. His hair is wavier tonight, wind-dry from a recent shower, and even in the low light of the crowded pub, I see the darker tan on his cheeks. On his neck. On his corded forearm as he claims the second gin glass Sol passes across the bar with a dry look I ignore.

Sol, that is.

I focus on Poet. With startling ease. Realise he means the smart watch on my wrist that has replaced the analogue one I used to wear, and I pull a face that has Sol laughing before he’s called away by a clamouring drinker. “I complained so much about my phone, Rubi got me this…so I can wear it instead.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I don’t like anything that beeps and buzzes at me. There is no escape.”

Poet’s hand is still at my back. He ups the pressure, a deeper touch, and reaches for my arm, turning it this way and that, studying the weathered leather strap Rubi gifted me alongside a device that may as well be an atom bomb to me. “Needs more bracelets.”