There was a tinge of sadness that clung to his tone, and Tawk tried to see it from his side. He’d come here for his brother, let go of a relationship, uprooted his whole life, and for a while, it had just been him and Garret, but now? “You feel like an outsider?”
Dylan nodded slowly. “I’m an outsider, like Tammy. Like you. The Cold Foot Crew is tight-knit. Don’t get me wrong, they include me. They include Tammy where they can too, but the Crew are like planets. They orbit each other and never separate. I’m just a fuckin’ shooting star man. I’ll always be on the outside. I have to build my life outside of my brother now and I don’t really know where to start. My focus has been on him for so long. I don’t even remember who the hell I am outside of that.”
“I don’t know who I am either,” Tawk said low. Why he’d said that, he didn’t know. He clamped his mouth shut and frowned, surprised at himself.
“I could tell,” Dylan said.
“What do you mean?”
“The day me and Tammy saw you at the bar, you were sitting there making the whole damn place feel like it weighed a million pounds, looking for a place to live temporarily. You didn’t speak easily. You seemed so shut down.” Dylan shrugged. “I heard a rumor.”
“What rumor?” he asked as the bartender set a pair of beers in front of him and Dylan.
“Tammy got to you.” Dylan dragged his blue gaze from his work de-shelling peanuts to Tawk. “The Cold Foot Crew was talking about it. Talking about whether to let you stay or not, and Tammy was brought up a few times. She’s awesome, huh?”
Tawk wasn’t ready to expose his feelings about Tammy. Maybe he never would be. It was just for him. It was his treasure.
“Girls are a lot of work,” he told Dylan. “Maybe it’s…what did you say earlier? Everything happens for a reason. Maybe she would’ve slowed you down on figuring out who you are outside of your brother.”
“The right one will speed up the process,” Dylan said.
“How do you mean?”
“I’ve watched Raynah love my brother’s imperfections and call him out in the exact way he can hear and understand. I could say the same shit to him, but he can hear her. I’ve watched him grow under her care, and now it’s me looking up to him. It happens to all the Cold Footers. They pair up and they improve. They grow. They’re like these dormant, dry plants, and they find a mate, and they’re the water. They’re the sunlight. I don’t know if it works for humans, but I want that.” Dylan looked up at him again. “Don’t you want that?”
Tawk held his gaze. Part of him understood. Part of him respected this human’s intelligence, but a bigger part of him was angry that he could see Tawk.
“I don’t want anything that would drag a woman to being a dormant, dry plant. I am no water. I am no sun.”
Dylan nodded as if he understood. “I saw you.”
Tawk waited, busying himself with the peanuts.
“I saw you yesterday, at Tammy’s graduation. You were standing off to the side with a hat pulled low and sunglasses covering your face, but I saw you.”
Tawk inhaled deeply and leaned back in his chair, checked his escape route over his shoulder. Ten big strides and he could be out in the open air and far away from this damn conversation.
“I was there at her graduation lunch afterward,” Dylan murmured. “Do you want to know how many times she checked the door.”
“Stop.”
“Twenty-eight. I counted.”
“I said stop.”
“If you aren’t sunlight, why was she looking so hard for you?” Dylan asked, his eyes cool on Tawk. “Why did she get quiet every time the Crew wasn’t paying attention. Why did she excuse herself to the bathroom four times just to get space to breathe? Why did two of those times, she end up out back sucking air in an alleyway like she was going to panic? Why were there tears in her eyes?”
“I said stop!” Tawk barked, slamming his fist on the bar top.
“Whatever you are trying to protect her from, you forgot one thing,” Dylan said low.
Tawk’s heartbeat was hammering against his chest. He wanted to throttle this guy.
“You forgot to ask her if you were the sunlight or not.”
“Keep your poetic garbage to yourself.”
“Chhh, if I had a woman like Tammy putting on a brave face while she was quietly breaking just because I wasn’t there, I’d marry her.”
