Page 5 of Stray for You

Not that I make much use of it. When I’m not at the café I’m usually at practice or a show with my band. My opportunities for dating are limited to people who watched me on stage and inexplicably want to buy me a drink. I won’t say it never happens, but I also wouldn’t call it dating. It gets the job done. Let’s leave it at that.

Things are settling down now, however, so maybe it’s a good time to bring up the pet thing. A cat like Tux could live with mom and Aunt Mary, or with me. Of course, if we got a cat, it wouldn’t be Tux. He’s far too friendly and sweet. Someone is going to adopt him away from the café before I can scoop him up.

I’ll enjoy his company for now, while I’m bored as hell at the café during a lull. I pet him with one hand and tap at my phone with the other, pulling up the notes tab where I started jotting down song lyrics recently. I don’t write many of our band’s songs. Erin, the lead singer, mostly takes care of that, but it’s been a while since we’ve had any new material, and I got struck with sudden inspiration the other day.

I met you at the…

No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s not very romantic to meet someone at the deli and fall for them. It needs to be bigger, better.

I met you in my dreams.

Gag. That’s the lyric to half a dozen songs, and I can’t stand any of them. Sure, I’m dialing up the emotions for the sake of building a fantasy, but it doesn’t have to go so far it makes me want to vomit.

I sigh. I don’t know what possessed me to start writing a love song, but since my initial burst of inspiration, I’ve made almost zero progress on it. Maybe I was wrong to follow the muse thistime. This kind of stuff isn’t for me. I’ve never been a romantic guy. The couple times I’ve dated, it was nice and all, but I never believed I was going to be with the guy forever.

If fate is kind, she’ll bring us back together.

That sounds like the kind of line I’d hear in a movie, but I don’t hate it as much as I should. Maybe there’s something there.

I’m still fussing with it when the doors of the café open. (Two doors separate us from an entry hall. It means that if a cat slips out of one door, we can catch them when they reach the second, still closed, door. None of them have outsmarted the system yet.)

I look up, pasting on a smile on reflex…

And instantly harden it into a scowl.

“What areyoudoing here?” I say before I can stop myself.

“Is that any way to greet a paying customer?”

The man who strides into the café is tall and blond, with dazzling blue eyes and a smile nearly as bright. He’s trim and handsome in a perfectly tailored suit and shiny black shoes. His face is clean-shaven. He sweeps the café with a glance, and though his smile doesn’t so much as flicker, I canfeelhim judging it as beneath him.

This time, I have to speak between clenched teeth. “Julian, what thehellare you doing here?”

Julian God damn Brooks steps toward the coffee bar like a shade stepping out of my nightmares and into my life.

“Can a guy want a coffee?” he says.

“No. Not you. Not here.”

“I heard this place was great,” he says. “And the atmosphere can’t be beat.”

He strokes Tux, who, infuriatingly enough, soaks up the attention and purrs even louder.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” I say. “You live on the East Coast. I was never supposed to see you again.”

Julian puts a hand to his chest in mock affront. “Is that any way to greet your long lost brother?”

“You arenotmy—”

“Details,” Julian says, batting aside my usual refrain with a casual wave. “Our moms aren’t dating, but family is forever, Cam.”

Cam. No one but him calls me that. I never liked it, always insisted on people using my full name. Not that he has ever heeded a single complaint or request I’ve made in all of our long, unfortunate acquaintance.

“We were never family,” I say. “We never will be family. Even if our moms actually got married, I would never be your family.”

“So hostile. I’m trying to be friendly, you know.”

“What are you doing here? How did you know I’d be here?”

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