Page 26 of Artifacts

Darrell almost jumped. “You okay? I can get you something. What do you need? How do you feel?”

The hand Aldric reached out to him landed heavily on his arm. “Good morning. I feel fine. I slept well.”

Darrell had too. “Okay. That’s good.”

“And in case you got me confused with one of the artifacts in the store, I’m not made of glass. I didn’t and I won’t shatter.”

The feeble joke made Darrell smile. A little.

“I’m starving, though. Need some breakfast.” Aldric took his glasses from the nightstand then swung his legs to the floor and stood a little carefully. He walked around the bed slowly, as if testing himself. “Your shift starts later, you said?”

The subtext hit Darrell over the head. “You’re a pushy bottom.”

“Oh.” Aldric considered. He looked away for only a second before his brown-eyed gaze was drilling into Darrell. “What about if I let you choose the place? Or didn’t you say this apartment complex has restaurants or whatever, but food, on the bottom level?”

One hell of a pushy bottom, Darrell thought later, still not quite understanding how it had happened, but finding himself walking with Aldric down the stairs to the food court. “Here’s fine.” At least Darrell supposed the kiosk, with its drinks and snacks that the customers ate standing around the high tables, was good. He usually grabbed what he wanted from the cart on his side of the complex, nearer his exit.

“No donuts?” Aldric asked, when Darrell put a protein bar down with their drinks and Aldric’s pastry.

“I don’t always eat crap.” Darrell went on the defensive before Aldric’s face clued him in. “Oh. Cop equals donuts. Got it. Woah, you are hungry.”

He waited for Aldric to blush, but if he did, it was hidden by the Danish he was stuffing into his mouth.

“I didn’t eat dinner,” Aldric reminded him, a little indistinctly.

“Shouldn’t be so tempting then,” Darrell told him, his grin making it hard to drink whatever the fruit and yogurt blend of the day in his to-go cup was.

“But I liked the date.” The twinkle in Aldric’s eyes encouraged Darrell to loosen up a bit more.

“The movie?” Darrell could play too. He kept his expression one of mild confusion.

Aldric snorted softly, and his smile dimmed. “We can’t leave it there, you know.”

He should have expected the squeeze to his chest those words gave. He breathed in, hoping his sly glances all around for listening ears were unobtrusive. Jesus, he owed Aldric after last night, owed him more than loaning him the olive-green Henley and sweatpants he was wearing after showering in Darrell’s bathroom. Alone. Darrell had wanted to go check on Aldric, see how his head wound was looking, for instance, but hadn’t trusted himself to go in.

Another element was that Darrell didn’t exactly want to leave it there either, and Aldric had made it clear he wasn’t just someone Darrell could call up for a fuck. But what came next? Lunch? Dinner? Taking Aldric to watch the football game? He settled on a grunt that could have conveyedI know.

“Yes. There are three more decades of buddy-cop movies to go, if I remember the program correctly.”

“You little…” Darrell nearly spluttered out his green juice. “Got any plans for the morning?”

“Oh. I’ve been thinking.” Aldric wiped his hands on a napkin, having finished his Danish.

Darrell looked at his protein bar. It wasn’t nearly as appetizing as what Aldric had eaten. “I get the feeling you do that a lot. Go on?”

“About what sort of person this Buck Buckman guy was.”

This was so far removed from anything Darrell had expected Aldric to say that he blinked in surprise. “Buck? He was one of the richest guys in SA. His retail estate consortium had a hand in developing this Broadway Corridor and the Riverwalk, among other projects. That I do know.” He swirled the thick, globby dregs of his juice in the clear cup.

“Yes. I looked at some articles. And he was a benefactor to the city’s cultural heritage. He donated to the San Antonio River Foundation.” Aldric gestured to where the river ran. “If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have the River of Lights in December.”

“All those lights in the trees and on the bridges?” It was pretty. Darrell had done a little reading up of his own after meeting Randa Buckman, but mainly about the family and Buck’s company, Amgine.

“And in the water. He wanted those.” Aldric screwed his napkin into a ball. “So with the reflections, the water looks twice as bright as the banks. Like a trick.”

“Or a joke.”

Aldric nodded and helped himself to the last corner of Darrell’s protein bar. “And he made a lot of donations to the art museum. I thought I’d go look at what he gave them, see if I can understand what kind of man he was. Maybe it’ll help with the case. The vandalism and all that.”

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