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“Usually Tamyra doesn’t let me make my own appointments, but I’m feeling naughty. Eight o’clock, someplace called the Freight and Salvage, and I’ll add horizon expansion.”

Chapter 4
     
     
    G ABE CHECKED the time. It was nearly an hour to Berkeley in good traffic, which on the 880 was never a given. He’d been looking forward to the evening and did not want to be late. The idea of sitting in a theater with someone normal, listening to acoustic music, had settled into his mind as possibly the best idea ever. Certainly infinitely better than most of his meetings and far better than listening to a pretty airhead talk about reality TV. He even had plans to put his phone on silent.
    He was reaching for his jacket when Tamyra came in, dropping a bunch of files on his desk.
    “Have fun on your date.”
    “It’s not a date.” They’d been arguing about it since she’d seen the event in his calendar.
    “Then why are you wearing your first-date shirt?”
    Gabe looked at the comfortable dark blue shirt he was wearing. “I do not have a first-date shirt.”
    “You have two, that one and the dark red one, which you wear on first dates.”
    “It’s not a date. It’s an open-mic night. He wants to expand my musical horizons.”
    “Yeah, that’s the only thing he wants to expand.”
    Gabe’s jaw dropped. Tamyra was sarcastic, snarky, and generally ruled his life with an iron fist, but she was rarely flat-out crude. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
    “I saw the way he was looking you over in that lecture hall. If he invites you back to his place for a cup of coffee, don’t be surprised.”
    “It’s not a date, and even it was, it would be the first ‘coffee’ I’ve gotten in a while.”
    “I won’t wait up, then.”
    Gabe headed for the door with plans to make a grand exit before a thought pulled him up short. “Do I have a second date shirt?”
    “If you do, I’ve never seen it.”
     
     
    J AMES PULLED on his sweater since the fog was already rolling in thick over the bay.
    “You are not wearing that sweater on a date.” Dylan had been commenting on every aspect of his wardrobe as he got ready.
    “It’s cold outside, and it’s not a date.”
    “No, you’re just taking a guy you’ve had coffee with a few times to the place you have described as your one indulgence, and by extension, your sanity.”
    “It’s just open-mic night, and it’s not a date.” James didn’t ask people on dates. He had surprised himself to no end blurting out the offer. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he’d been thinking at the time. He just knew that a seemingly nice person, who happened to be attractive, was acting like they cared about James’s musical tastes, and had bent over backward trying to fix a piece of equipment they would never have to use again. People like that didn’t stumble into his life often and usually not for very long.
    “Is he hot?”
    He decided not to grace Dylan’s question with an answer. Yes, Gabe was hot, but it did not matter in the slightest, because it wasn’t a date and there would be no activities where the hotness of people had anything to do with it. And it wasn’t as if James could get someone that hot anyway, so it really didn’t matter.
    “I’m leaving now. Do your homework, don’t burn the place down, don’t have girls over, and it’s not a date.”
     
     
    G ABE STOOD in front of the theater waiting for James while watching an eclectic mix of people enter. There seemed to be a mix of quite young and late-middle-aged. Some had dreadlocks and hemp bracelets while others looked like part of the khaki-and-Prius set. It was ten to eight when he finally saw James hop off a bus.
    “Hey, wasn’t sure if you’d make it.”
    “I’d never miss this, but I do live at the whim of AC Transit.”
    Gabe couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a bus that wasn’t showing him around a factory. He followed James into the large, airy lobby that