Page 64 of Cosmo

Abs laughed and told him, “You’ve never seen us in action. You will. You’re gonna be surprised and delighted, dear Cosmo.”

“I’ll trust you.”

With a side-eye to Liam, Abs whispered, “Well, that’s a start.”

It was a start, and he felt like…like he may trust them more than he’d ever wanted to.

The second night, he felt like an old hat at the tricks. Getting better at throwing the bottle over his head, having Goldie catchit. They did it numerous times, and he didn’t get even one concussion.

The shirt he wore that night was cropped in the middle and showed his stomach perfectly. There were men hanging over the bar just to stare at his middle, and it made him a little nervous, but they soon left him a fifty-dollar tip, and their leering wasn’t so annoying.

After he did two hundred-dollar shots, he and all five of the others did their dancing on top of the bar, and the tips and orders poured in after. The first night that his nerves weren’t jangled, and he actually started having fun.

Taran came in again, ordering a Cosmo with a wink. “My new favorite drink,” he confessed.

“As it should be!”

“When do I get to meet this cat you’ve talked so much about?”

“How about this week?”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Haze was near him and said in his ear, “You’re falling hard for that guy. You know that, right?”

Brushing it off, Liam said, “No, I’m not!”

“Sure. You look just like Mims does with his love-of-a-lifetime boyfriends. You know the new ones every week? But for you…it’s not a week-long thing.”

“I’ve never had a long-term thing, like ever. I wouldn’t know what one looked like.”

Haze pulled him over and pointed to the gigantic mirror behind the bar. “That’s what it looks like.”

Liam stared into that mirror, shocked at the smile on his face that he sincerely didn’t know was there. It was bright and wide, and it scared the shit out of him.

Goldie saw him and squeezed a shoulder. “Pretty man, pretty man. It’s good to see you happy. I hope we’re a little part of that, or is it just the other pretty man at the end of the bar?”

Liam’s knee-jerk reaction was to deny the entire thing, but that wasn’t true in the least. It was…all of them. “Never mind,” he said, laughing, and got back to work.

As fun as it was, it was exhausting. He’d done a lot of jobs that were labor intensive, but nothing was like a night in that pub. Constant movement, constant noise, shouting, music, laughter—it was a lot. He sat with the others that night, counting his tips and ready to crash for a week.

“This just might get me those good natural brushes I need,” Haze said before yawning.

Liam saw the pile of cash in front of him. “What paint brushes cost that much?”

“Oh, dear, here we go,” Mims said, laughing.

“Artists, Cosmo, are the fountains! We are the base, the mechanics, the stony continence.”

While the others rolled their eyes, Haze got up, seemingly recharged, and walked around the table, grabbing shoulders, patting cheeks as he explained what Liam guessed was the tenth time at least he’d said it.

“But what is a fountain without the water? It’s a stony piece, a statue, and there are a million statues that people pass by daily, and barely glance at. The fountain, however, is different. People make wishes at fountains; they listen to the delicate pouring of the water over stone and it sooths a chaotic world!

“So, Cosmo, dear, the water, that is as important as the fountain. The water, my friend, is as important if not more so! Our tools are that water, whether it be a violin, a paintbrush, a computer where a writer taps out words to intrigue the imagination. We are simply the stone, but the water is where our beauty lies!”

Liam laughed a little and asked, “So…your paintbrushes make better…water?”

Goldie snickered, but Abs groaned. “Have you not learned to not ask the man questions like that?”

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