She jumped when she realized she was being addressed and pulled her eyes away from the flatware to look up at her friends. The spoon handles were fashioned into delicate silver branches, while the forks had a pretty flower and vine design. Mismatched but perfectly coordinated, particularly when they were paired with the pretty blue water goblets and embroidered table linens, placed there with her own two hands. She’d glanced up to the soaring ceilings in the bistro while she sat eating her breakfast at the bar, only to find familiar pressed tin tiles, answering her question about who was responsible for the interiors.
“Is there anywhere else you wanted to stop before we hit the road?” Ris repeated, gesturing to the line of small shops up the street.
“Oh! Um...no, I guess not...not unless there’s somewhere else you wanted to go?”
Lurielle had been distracted since she’d arrived, picking at her food and staring blankly out the big window. She shook her head listlessly when Ris repeated the query and Silva felt her stomach flip, realizing it was time to leave. Excusing herself from the table, she wove her way through the busy restaurant on shaky legs.
It had been nice, seeing a different side of him that morning. They’d walked hand-in-hand up the block to the bistro, and she’d had fun helping set up the dining room, pushing a cart of the glassware from table to table, laying out the place settings as carefully as she did with Nana’s fine china on Elvish feast days, while Tate scrutinized the cleanliness of the floors and restocked the bar. She’d examined the opening and closing checklists on the wall in the service hallway and smiled at the tidiness of his small office—the tidiness of everything, she realized. She’d noticed how sparklingly clean the bathroom was that morning as they left the steaming shower, and every surface in the small restaurant was similarly spotless.
Silva snorted at the thought of Tate finding fault with the cleanliness of her imperious grandmother’s stately home, wiping a long finger down the fireplace mantle or the legs of the dining room table with a disapproving scowl on his handsome face.
She’d stood beside him in the big kitchen as he made her french toast with vanilla crème fraîche and grilled peaches drizzled in honey, which she’d eaten perched at the end of the polished bar, sharing her plate with him as his employees slowly arrived. The staff—a motley group of pierced and tattooed tieflings and nymphs; a beautiful, willowy moth with pale pink skin and striking markings on her graceful, green wings, and several orcs—had regarded her curiously, but everyone had been friendly. When Elshona shouldered her way in, grumbling about her coffee already going cold, her dark eyebrows shot up at the sight of Silva, whose fork had frozen midway to her lips.
“Sleep well, lamby?”
The orc woman’s smile had been sharp and knowing, and Silva felt her ears heat before straightening on her stool. “Very well, thank you. Not nearly long enough, though.”
Now she stood in the pretty, clinically clean ladies’ room, splashing cold water on her face in an effort to tamp back the tears that were threatening to form. The narrow hallway leading to the back-of-house was a bustle of activity, but Elshona smiled at the sight of her hovering outside the kitchen doorway.
"Heading out, lamby?" Silva stepped aside as Elshona barked orders in Orcish to the other two cooks in the kitchen before moving to the hallway. "We had a fun time, love, didn't we?” Her agreement ended on a gasp when the taller woman bent to lick at her ear, as she’d done the night before. “You’re the most delicious little lamb chop I’ve ever had...don't let any of them langers back home give you a runaround, you hear? You're a star."
Her tattoos were covered by the long sleeves of her black chef's coat, but her eyes sparkled as she took the small elf in, still in her dress from the previous night. Silva was engulfed in the big woman's arms a moment later, squeezed tightly and given a kiss on each cheek, a whisper delivered to her temple.
"You watch yourself with him, lamb. His sort plays for keeps."
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that she thought Tate and Elshona were the same sort, but Silva resisted, knowing her words weren't just about orcs and elves.The right sort.
The tiefling girl who'd been their server the previous morning had cornered her, along with the beautiful moth, questioning curiously if she was Tate’s girlfriend, giving their opinion that they hoped so, because heneededa girlfriend, opining that maybe he wouldn't be so tightly wound if Silva was there to stay. Now the horned girl gave her a cheery smile and a wave as she moved through the dining room to deliver her last goodbye.
He was at the bar, filling champagne flutes that were whisked away by another server as she approached. Her throat was already thick when he looked up, giving her the same softer smile she'd been graced with the previous night when she'd hovered in his bedroom doorway. His teeth seemed shorter, less plentiful and sharp in the light of day, and Silva wondered if it was a trick of the light or a glamour he was able to control.
"No tears, dove."
She hadn't realized that the burn at her eyes had spilled over, not until he'd snaked an arm around her, pulling her to his hip before wiping away the moisture that tracked down her cheek.
"None of that. This isn't goodbye...not unless you want it to be."
She wondered if she’d be feeling the same way if she hadn’t woken up at his side that morning, if she hadn’t gotten a chance to see this different Tate: fussy and exacting, pinching the bridge of his nose as the moth and tiefling had cornered him over schedule changes they needed to make, the brisk control he seemed to have over the room. She knew that if she pressed her fingers into his loose bun, his thick hair would still be damp from the shower they'd shared; knew that the small crescent of her teeth was there on his shoulder, beneath his shirt, and that if she pressed her nose to the side of his neck he would smell like sandalwood and the wide-open sky.
She shook her head stubbornly.
"Well then...until the next time we meet, Silva of the nighttime."
His lips were soft against hers, an echo of the gentle kiss he’d pressed to her head the previous night in his bed, containing none of the animal heat and mischief of their other embraces. Silva wanted to lock her arms around his neck and refuse to let go, wanted to make more fae promises she knew she’d be forced to keep, but all that happened was him releasing her with a wink, the same with which he’d lured her in, before stepping away as his attention was pulled by a patron at the bar.
♥♥♥
I’m glad you decided to come this weekend, Bluebell
Drive safely
Let me know when you get home
She exhaled sharply, staring out the window as rolling green hills and farmland passed by.
A heaviness sat in the car as they traveled home, and Lurielle wondered if they were all tinged with regrets over the way the weekend had played out. Ris kept her eyes fixed on the road, unusually quiet, not at all brimming with stories of her bonfire conquests or things she’d done. It was unlike her to not want to dish, and Lurielle wondered if her friend was feeling the ill effects of being treated like a piece of meat after all.
In the backseat, Silva was silent. Lurielle had been crossing through the dining room from the restroom when she’d happened upon the unexpected tableau of Silva and the handsome server drawing apart at the edge of the bar. He’d kept their bodies turned away from the open room, but in the reflection of the mercury glass at the bar’s back, Lurielle had been able to see his hand leaving Silva’s hip, as she stepped back with a stricken look. From the rearview mirror she could see that Silva’s expression was blank, staring out her window.
