Page 50 of The Woman at the Funeral

But unlike Nico, Zeno’s hair was long. The skin peeking out of his neck, down his arms, and below his knees was all covered in tattoos. He had an eyebrow ring and painted nails. And, inexplicably, he was wearing shorts printed with rubber duckies riding pink flamingo pool floats and a gray shirt with a tie printed down the front. On said tie? Sharks.

He had a large backpack slung over one shoulder and a garment bag over his arm.

He handed the bag to his brother (who was likely glad for something to hide behind) and made a beeline for me.

“I hear you are the keeper of the banana bread coffee,” he said as a greeting.

My lips curved up, charmed despite his terrible timing.

Or was it great timing?

Because surely it was a terrible idea to let that go any further. Not only was he my dead husband’s oldest friend, but he was now myneighbor.There were so many ways it could go wrong.

“I make the syrup myself,” I told him, waving the glass jar at him.

“Give me a bump,” he demanded, offering me the top of his hand. To, presumably, drop the liquid onto. I got him a spoon. “Yes, much more civilized,” he said with a twinkle in his brown eyes as I poured the syrup onto it.

He put the spoon in his mouth and let out a moan. “You should sell this. You’d make a fortune.” He glanced around. “Aneven bigger fortune,” he said with a charmingly lopsided smile. He caught my gaze sliding over his outfit, and the smile went a little self-deprecating. “I’m clearly the brother who doesn’t have his shit together.” He gestured down at his outfit.

“I dunno. Gav might fight you for that place,” Nico said, coming back out of the hall bathroom fully dressed.

Internally, I wept.

Even if the man did wear a suit really well.

“Oh, but did Gav have to use toilet paper as a coffee filter this morning? I don’t think so.”

“Put them on auto ship,” Nico suggested.

“That is a good idea.”

“Now,” Nico added with a quirk of his lips that suggested he knew that if it wasn’t done right that moment, it wouldn’t get done at all.

“Right. Right,” Zen agreed, reaching for his phone.

“Do you want your coffee hot or iced?” I asked.

“Precious,” he said, shooting me another of those charming smiles of his, “I would drink two-day-old burnt coffee out of a dubiously clean cup. However you want to make it is fine by me.”

He walked over toward the dining table to set his backpack down on a chair as he typed away on his phone.

“If you saw his dirty mug collection, you’d know that was true,” Nico said.

“He has executive dysfunction,” I guessed.

“Good guess.”

“My college boyfriend had ADHD. He couldn’t think straight if someone was playing music or a dog was barking in the distance. And as soon as he put something away in a cabinet, he forgot it existed. He ended up with six of the exact same binders because he kept forgetting he already bought them.”

“Is that why you broke up?” he asked. What he wasn’t saying hung between the words. Because I was a little on the anal side, did his spacey tendencies drive me up a wall?

“Oh, no. That would be the chronic cheating.”

“Oof,” Nico said, wincing. “Sorry.”

“Turns out he couldn’t remember he had a girlfriend when I was out of sight,” I said, rolling my eyes. It had been long enough that I could laugh about it now. Besides, the grief over that relationship was overshadowed by the loss of my grandmother directly after. “You’re not a cheater, are you?” I asked Zeno when he came back to take his cup of coffee from me.

“Well, now, see, I manage to avoid that,” he said with another of those boyish smiles of his. Half flirtation, half mischief. “By never getting serious with anyone.”

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