There’s a band playing on a small makeshift stage near the center of the fairground. Flyn stops to listen, bobbing his head slightly to the beat. He glances at me. “You ever dance?”
“Not in public,” I say flatly.
“Tragic,” he says, grinning. “Guess I’ll have to dance enough for both of us.”
He does, for a few seconds, ridiculous and floppy and entirely unselfconscious, and I want to be annoyed, but mostly I want to grab his hand and not let go.
With one last heartfelt, belly deep laugh, he abandons his exuberant dancing and leads us to a quieter section of the fair. I snatch in a sneaky, calming breath and try to let my ever-present tension go.
Flyn either doesn’t notice, or he is far too kind to mention it. Instead, he launches into a verbal adventure.
Flyn tells stories. About work. About his sister Cara’s work as a wedding planner and the bridezillas she has had to deal with. He talks about his niece Sorcha demanding a unicorn cake with ‘real magic’. I laugh at most of them. He notices when I don’t and lets the silence settle without trying to fill it.
Then he buys me a drink at some makeshift lemonade stand. Mine’s blueberry basil, weird and refreshing. And we sit on the edge of a fountain, the fair a glowing backdrop behind us.
“This doesn’t feel like real life,” I say before I can stop myself.
Flyn glances sideways. “No?”
“It feels like… a memory someone else had. All the color and music and lights. It’s too much. Too perfect.”
He leans back on his hands, legs stretched out. “Real life can be pretty perfect, if you let it.”
I look at him. At the way the light spills across his face. At the softness that sneaks into his expression when he’s not performing.There’s something about the way he watches me, quietly, carefully, like he’s waiting for me to open up.
“I almost didn’t come,” I admit, my voice low.
It’s a terrible confession. Especially since meeting up again was all my idea.
“Why?” There is no condemnation in his voice. No hurt, outrage or judgment. Just a plain, simple and honest curiosity.
I shrug. “Because I’m not good at this. At… fun. At relaxing. At trusting that someone isn’t just being nice because they feel sorry for me.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he says, finally. “Not even a little bit.”
Something tightens in my chest. “You don’t even know me.”
“I’m trying to.”
I want to believe him. I want to believe that this isn’t some brief flicker of interest, that he won’t disappear again when things get hard or complicated or ugly. That he won’t look at the truth of me and flinch.
But he’s looking at me now and he’s not flinching.
“Do you ever wish you could have a redo?” I ask suddenly. “Restart your life and not make the same mistakes?”
Not that being born a freakish twisted science experiment was something I chose. Being born into slavery and then sold into a harem were not mistakes of my making. I know this, yet somehow I always feel like the blame is mine. As if I’m the one who fucked up my life.
The fey called, and I listened. I think the guilt I carry over that calamity is rational and valid. But it only seems like the icing on the cake that is the disaster of my life.
I take a deep breath. Framing it all as a mistake is the only way I can talk to Flyn about it. It’s the only way I can keep my secrets. The only thing he mightunderstand.
Flyn tilts his head, considering. “Sometimes. But mistakes are part of life. I think about who I amnowmore. He’s an awful lot smarter, believe it or not. I like him better.”
“I don’t like myself,” I say, too quietly.
He shifts closer, knees brushing mine. “Then maybe it’s time to meet the version of you that existsnow. I bet he’s not as awful as you think.”
