LITMIR.BIZ

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hadn’t offered anything resembling sympathy for Dennis’s coughing since.

      Like Kimmie’s suicide, they both found it easier not to acknowledge its existence. Kimmie died and Dennis had a chronic cough. Every Friday night, Dennis came out to the bar to drink and forget, climbing out of bed every Saturday afternoon back in the guise of a devoted husband and father. Levi had learned long ago how to hold on to your drink despite shit things happening in the world around you, rather than letting your drink hold on to you.

      He tipped his bottle, watching the liquid slosh around while Dennis recovered himself. Levi was half-done with his beer. It would be his one and only tonight. His heavy drinking days were over, and the days he was willing to watch Dennis pickle himself were numbered. Time to go home.

      “Brook doesn’t want to be with me when I’m coughing like this. And you think another woman would?” Dennis asked after he’d recovered from coughing and had been able to take another drink of his beer. He shrugged, and his smile was bitter. “Maybe you’re right—Brook might not mind after all.”

      Levi shouldn’t have brought the subject up. Coal dust from the mine accident lingered in every decision they made, obscuring any view at happiness. That was what this conversation was really about. Between Levi’s dead wife and Dennis’s dead lungs, could either of them be happy again? As much as Brook and Dennis suggested Levi ask women out and encouraged him to go on dates, he wondered what they would do if he found himself happily settled.

      And, hell, what would he do if he wasn’t spending his Friday nights with Dennis? They were in this wreck together.

      “I’m going home,” Levi said. No reason to finish his beer. He wasn’t enjoying it any more than he was enjoying the conversation. “Finish your drink and I’ll give you a ride.”

      Dennis shook his head. “It’s Friday. There’s more drinking to be had.”

      “Not for me.” Could his friend hear his weariness?

      “Hot date with the neighbor?”

      Levi ignored the slice of resentment cutting through Dennis’s question. “Finish and let’s get going.”

      Dennis’s face hardened into belligerence. “I’m staying.” The alcohol had started to hit, and his voice sounded like an angry three-year-old’s.

      Levi slid out of the booth. “Fine. If you need a ride back here in the morning to pick up your car, let me know.”

      “Maybe I’ll get lucky and take a girl home. Test your theory about Brook minding.” Bitterness leaked from Dennis’s mouth, lingering even after he wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

      “Great.” Levi tossed enough cash on the table to cover his beer and at least one of Dennis’s.

      On his way out, he stopped by the bar and told Brian and Mary that Dennis was staying. He also told them that Dennis’s car wouldn’t be running, and they should be prepared to call a cab or find someone to give him a ride. Dennis would be pissed, but there was no way Levi was leaving him able to drive home in a drunken, angry fit.

      Maybe his friend would get lucky, and Brook wouldn’t be too angry that they had to get his car from the bar parking lot on Saturday. Maybe she would even remember that when he wasn’t busy playing an angry drunk, Dennis was a good guy.

      Maybe Levi would get lucky, and his neighbor would still be up and sitting on her porch, reading.

       CHAPTER TWO

      MINA HAD MET all of her neighbors except one. Given how rarely she saw him outside, it seemed like he was determined she not meet him or even lay eyes on him.

      Still, she wasn’t used to not knowing her neighbors. Even in graduate school she’d made a point to meet all the people in her apartment building at least once. That way, she figured, even if they avoided her for the rest of their shared time in Chicago, they would be able to tell the paramedics her name if she were found gravely injured on the sidewalk outside the building.

      Though how she would have managed being gravely injured on the sidewalk outside her apartment after being hit by a train was still a mystery.

      Mina smiled as she crossed the property boundary. A death worthy of Anna Karenina was ridiculous, which was part of the pleasure of thinking about it. She was going to die from something prosaic and boring. A cold that turned into pneumonia. An allergic reaction. Basically, her own body turning against her. Nothing as spectacular as throwing oneself in front of a train after the betrayal of a lover.

      She knocked on the door and almost laughed when her neighbor opened it, a death glare on his face that he didn’t even try to hide as he said, “Yes.”

      Fortunately, death held little fear for her. It never had. Not even when in the form of a man who stood a head, a neck and a chest taller than her. Every other time she’d seen her neighbor, his black hair had been slicked back against his head, but this morning it was loose about his face, with locks hanging over his eyes. He obviously hadn’t shaved since yesterday at least, and maybe since the day before. One day, once her garden was put in and her bathroom redone, she’d make a study of his facial hair.

      Today, she stuck her hand into the void between them, a desperate cover for wanting to push his hair out of his eyes. “I’m Mina. I moved in next door a couple weeks ago and wanted to introduce myself.”

      His eyes were a surprisingly light brown, given how dark his hair was. She noticed this as she realized her hand...still hung in the air. She had offered him a strong handshake, like her dad had taught her. No weak wrists. People judged you on your handshake.

      Or most people did. Her neighbor might never shake her hand, and he wouldn’t know that she’d practiced her handshake with strangers since she was five.

      She was about to give up when his calloused hand slid into hers and gripped tightly enough that her knees went weak in the best possible way.

      “Levi,” he said, his voice deep with sleep.

      It seemed his dad had taught him to have a good handshake, too. His grip revealed shapely forearms with just a hint of vein under the skin. Enough that Mina wanted to see more. More forearms. More biceps.

      More everything of her neighbor.

      Though there was plenty to see—or, at least, to imagine. His white T-shirt had a couple of holes scattered about the cotton and worn hems. His cotton pajama pants weren’t much better. She sneaked a long enough peek to notice that the tie at the waist had been washed into a tight knot and he had to keep them loose enough to pull over his hips and butt without undoing the knot. What she could see of the hem of his pants was as worn as the hems of his T-shirt, maybe more so.

      Had she woken him up? It was ten in the morning on a Saturday, so it was possible. But she’d seen him up earlier on Saturdays. And Sundays. And, from what she could tell when she closed her blinds before going to bed, he was also early to bed.

      Oh, well. Too late now. If she’d woken him, the damage was already done. Best just to go on. Deciding to meet her neighbor on Saturday morning was yet another decision she couldn’t redo.

      “Nice to meet you, Levi,” she said, returning her hand to her hip and her gaze to the scruff on his face.

      When he rested his hand on his door, the movement raised his shirt a little, revealing both a little skin and some of the elastic sticking out from his worn pajama pants. Her gaze snapped back to his face. One eyebrow was up and, from the way he looked down at her, she couldn’t tell if he was amused, irritated or both.

      She looked down at his bare toes before she could feel self-conscious about knocking on his door and waking him up. He had nice toes. Long, with a dusting of dark hair on each of his big toes. Not enough to veer into Hobbit-hood, but enough to make his feet interesting.

      “I moved here from Chicago,” she said. The silence between them was starting to get on her nerves. Someone had to

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