Reeve felt his face fall in the short moment Kori threw him a glare. Of course she wasn’t expecting him, but she didn’t have to look so upset about his arrival over Ima’riel. “Uh, well, I was hoping I could ask for your advice?”
She returned to rooting around in the soil, reaching into the hole she’d made, and her arm disappeared all the way up to her elbow. “Why in all the planes are you coming to me for advice on anything?”
Reeve scratched his neck. “I think you have…experience that I do not. May we speak?”
Kori’s teeth were bared, something like, “No,” coming out with a frustrated grunt as she tugged.
He couldn’t be sure he’d understood her. “Do you want some help?”
This time, Kori’s “no” was significantly clearer.
Reeve lowered himself to the greenhouse’s dirt floor across from her. “Please?”
She heaved a sigh, the muscles in her arm untensing. “Please, you want to talk, or please, you want to help?”
“Both?”
Kori rolled her eyes and went back to tugging, face going red with the effort.
As that was not another, definitive “no,” Reeve took a deep breath and blurted out, “Celeste and I kissed.”
“Oh, ew.” Kori snorted, falling forward. “Why would you tell me that?”
“Well, because I’d like to do it again. And, uh…more?”
Her face scrunched up before she quickly turned it back down to the earth. “You don’t need my permission.”
“I know, I need hers, but once I’ve got it, I’m not sure how to…er, the thing is I haven’t,”—Reeve squinted skyward through the panes of green glass and wrapped his arms around his knees—“well, there was this one time, but I don’t know if it counts because it wasn’t exactly all of…it. You know?”
Kori had stopped pulling at whatever was underground, twisting her head back up to him and staring. “No, meathead, I don’t know what in the Abyss you’re talking about.”
Deflating, Reeve rubbed his palms over his face. “I’ve notbeenwith a woman, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Kori sat back onto her feet with a huff, her arm covered in dark, rich soil. She was giving him that look people so often did, the one where she was about to say something incredibly obvious. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t have a cock. Not only that, but I have zero experience with them, so…” She held out her dirt-covered hands.
“Ah, well, I know. I mean, I assumed as much.” Reeve sat a little straighter, eyeing her. “But you make Ima’riel very happy, so I thought you could teach me how to not disappoint Celeste.”
The woman blinked so slowly, he thought maybe she was attempting to mimic Earlylyte and fall asleep sitting up. “You, uh…you picked up on that, huh?”
“It’s fairly obvious, the way you look at one another. Of everyone I’ve met in Briarwyke, you two are the most deeply in love.”
Kori went red again—apparently capable, and not because she was struggling with whatever was buried in the earth. She shook her head and shoved her hand down the hole again, muttering, “Elves look at everybody that way. It’s not like she thinks I’m anything special.”
“But you had your hand on her thigh at the tavern. I didn’t mean to see, but all of her dresses have those slits up the leg—”
With a spray of dirt and a cry, a mass of earthy spheres came bursting from the ground as Kori went flying backward. Reeve steadied himself, ready to attack or defend, but Kori just sat right back up with a lap full of strange fruits all clustered together. “Well, holy man, if you’re that observant, you probably don’t need my help.”
“No, I do.” Reeve sat forward, nodding so that she would see he was sincere. “Please, Kori, Ima’riel looks at you like you make her the happiest elf in the world, and I want Celeste to look at me like that, but I’ve never made a woman, you know,happylike that.”
Her arm slowly lowered along with her lips, but it wasn’t a disgusted frown, just a resigned one. “My gods, you’ve really never slept with anyone?”
He grinned back. “We slept beside one another on the sofa last night.”
Kori ran a dirt-covered hand down her face with a sigh. “Okay, well, that’s not the only way to make someone happy. You have to, you know, woo her too.”
“Right, yes. Woo her. Got it.”
“Beforeyou do any fucking.”
