I’d made good time on public transportation and got here a little early, but I can’t stomach the thought of getting here first, so I walk around the block twice in order to walk in fifteen minutes late. I’m not sure why, but it makes me feel more in control to keep him waiting. It’s a dark bar with black leather booths and exposed brick walls. On each scarred wood table is a single red rose in a plastic bud vase. Blaze is sitting in a booth in the back corner, wearing a white cotton dress shirt that’s rolled up at the elbows, revealing muscular forearms. Even in the dim light, there’s no missing how perfectly his shirt stretches over the muscled contours of his powerful shoulders and chest. And even though it shouldn’t surprise me, it does: he still gives me butterflies even after all these years. At the table, he carelessly holds a tumbler of whisky on the rocks in his hand, and in front of my chair is a glass of red wine.
