Page 145 of Beau and the Beast

“In my apartment a mile east,” Noah said, smiling as the man pushed a fresh beer into his hand.

The bar Lincoln had dragged Noah to had seemed like a nightmare at first: filled wall to wall with people and too loud to be heard, even if he’d been able to speak with perfect enunciation. But then they’d stepped out onto the back patio and were welcomed by Lincoln’s friends who cheered when he arrived and introduced themselves to Noah without prompting.

Noah had leaned on his cane and waited for the conversation to move on, for Lincoln’s three friends to move on and start talking to each other like he didn’t exist.

Against all odds, it didn’t happen.

“You ever play cornhole?” one of them asked him.Chad,Noah thought, trying to remember what their names were.

The man had pulled him aside, poured him a beer from their pitcher, and handed him a bean bag. The game that developed—with both of them tossing bean bags into different holes on a wooden game board—grew more and more animated until the rest of the group had pulled off to watch them.

“Loser does a Jaeger bomb,” Lincoln had cut in, appearing out of nowhere with the drink.

“Oh God—too much pressure,” Noah joked. Sure enough, though, he choked at the last minute and Chad eked by with the win.

The men had smiled and clapped him on the back, Lincoln handing him a glass full of some liquid as well as a shot. Noah brought the shot glass up to his lips when one of the other men reached out to stop him.

“Nah, bro, that’s not how it’s done!”

“Where did you find this kid? You’ve never done a Jaeger bomb before?” another one asked.

“I’ve never been surrounded by frat bros before,” Noah shot back. That earned him a round of laughter from the group.

“Then we have lost time to make up for,” Chad said. “You drop the shot in the glass and then you chug the whole thing.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Come on—you got this, Noah,” Lincoln said through a laugh.

Noah did as he was told, dropping the shot into the glass and then upending it, drinking the whole foul thing as fast as he could before slamming the two glasses back on the table and dragging a sleeve across his mouth.

“That was horrible,” he said, aware that he was slurring now from his scarsandthe alcohol. They all cheered again and clapped him on the back, laughing hard.

Being at the center of attention in the middle of a group of laughing men triggered a jolt of fear in Noah. He hated those moments when all eyes were on him because it meant that he’d done something wrong, made some misstep that was either earning him disgust or pity.

But it wasn’t like that, in that moment. Lincoln and his friends were genuinely laughing with him, delighted that he’d had his first disgusting Jaeger bomb, as if it was some sort of natural initiation into spending time with them.

And as the night continued, Noah was never made to feel like he was somehow theotheramong the group of men. Their conversations flowed naturally, including Noah even when he didn’t jump to be a part of the discussion.

Another one of them—Brad, Noah thought, though he might’ve just been confusing the man with Chad—challenged him to a second game of cornhole. They talked about Brad’s job—he worked IT—and it flowed easily into a discussion about security protocols and the latest IP masking that Brad had been briefed on at work.

When the conversation tapered off, Noah waited for awkward silence to set in. Instead Brad looked over at him seriously.

“Hey man, so like what happened to your face? Did you serve or something?”

Noah was taken aback—not because he was offended but because no one ever seemed to feel comfortable enough to ask him. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time someone other than a doctor had actually brought up the scarring on his face.

“No—got the scars in a house fire when I was a kid.”

“Oh man, that’s wicked,” Brad said. “Fuck I cannotbelieveI missed that shot!”

And just like that, he had moved on to a new topic.

* * *

“Itoldyou you’d have fun,” Lincoln said as they walked back to his apartment shortly after midnight.

“No you didn’t,” Noah shot back, smiling. “You said it would be good for me and then you just forced me to do what you wanted to do anyway.”

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