“Yeah, it was delicious on its own. You bake good stuff,” he complimented, and I also said thank you. “I want to learn to be a baker and I want to get a job I enjoy as much as you seem to like yours.”
“I do like my job,” I agreed. “What are you interested in?”
He messed with his tie. “I don’t want to wear one of these every day,” he said first, but then it became clear that he’d given this issue a lot of thought. “I always liked working with tools. In my youth, that meant stripping cars for parts, but I could find a better use for those skills. I could become a machinist.” He talked about several specific jobs and salary ranges for them.
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said, but then I groaned as I heard the instructions that my phone was issuing. “Oh, no. I hate making left turns like this. Why aren’t there traffic lights with arrows?”
“It’s a Michigan left,” he stated, as if that was a good reason for driving past where you wanted to go and then turning around. “I’d have to get my GED. I’d have to go to trade school or community college and then be an apprentice. That’s years of shit to look forward to and I have Lyra to worry about. The way I have things scheduled now, I can be with her after school a lot and I’m home on weekend days.”
“Yes, but you’re always exhausted.”
“Yeah,” he said, and sighed. “I don’t know.”
“If you quit working at the club, you’d have more time.” I hated when he went there anyway. He’d told me that there had been alot of fights recently and he was out so late. “I know you’d miss that money but I don’t pay you very much rent. I could—”
“You do enough around the house that you shouldn’t be paying me at all.”
“That’s silly…oh, no. How am I going to this?” I asked, leaning toward the wheel.
“Let that guy go and now it’s your turn,” he answered, and I made it through the weird intersection. We were almost at the church.
“Your voice goes high when you’re anxious, too,” Silas noted. “Why do you get so worked up about driving?”
“Maybe because I started later than other kids. I was scared so got my license I was eighteen instead of sixteen, and I didn’t get as much practice.”
“But now you’re…how old are you?”
“Twenty-seven,” I answered.
“What the hell, Camille? Why’d you say it like that?” He imitated me again and repeated the number, drawing out the words sadly and then sighing deeply.
“I’ve been feeling bad about that,” I said. “My birthday’s coming soon.”
“Oh, yeah?When?”
“June,” I said, and sighed again.
“It’s September. That’s not soon,” Silas told me. “Are you upset about getting old?”
“Let’s not talk about it now,” I requested. “It can wait until after the wedding. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get through the whole thing without falling asleep due to my decrepitude.” Dax had always said what a drag—no, I wasn’t going to think about him. I parked and we filed toward the church with the rest of the throng.
The building was huge, which was lucky because it seemed like Rashelle and her soon-to-be-husband might have invited the entire world. She had definitely invited everyone from our office, and only our boss Beckett had RSVP-d with regrets. I spotted Octavia waving at me from a pew as we walked in, but I pretended not to notice and we sat elsewhere.
But seeing my coworker made me think of a problem that I hadn’t yet considered. I’d been very glad that Silas had agreed to come with me so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the various members of the bride’s family. I appreciated it so much—but I hadn’t thought through what I would say about my relationship with him.
“What are we going to tell people about us? The two of us?” I whispered, but he had to deal with the woman in the pew behind us because she got very mad.
“I can’t see a thing besides your back! You’re too large,” she accused, and he said she was right about that. Since he wasn’t going to get any smaller, we stood and looked for a spot on the end of a row.
After we had reseated ourselves, he turned to me. “What did you ask? You want to know what to say to people about the two of us?”
I nodded.
“Nothing,” he told me. “We don’t have to say anything because it’s none of their business. If they ask, just do this.” He stared directly at me, and his blue eyes were coldly terrifying.
I would have run as fast as my slingbacks could carry me if he had turned that expression on me for real…but we would have to say something. I couldn’t just glare at my officemates like I wanted to gut them with a dull knife, which was what his face had told me. I thought more about the problem as I admired the different outfits I saw, until the ceremony started.
Then I spent my time trying not to cry because I really didn’t want to get red eyes and also ruin my makeup. It was a struggle.
