When she’d turned back, it was to see the back of his head. He was facing the bar floor once more, continuing to gaze in the direction in which she’d been scowling. Silva could tell from the tense set of his shoulders that his sharp golden eyes had picked Wynn out of the crowd, as the latter had turned, at last, his lofty brow and fine bone structure visible in profile. For an interminable moment, Tate said nothing. He didn't turn, didn't glance back at her. He continued to stare, stare and stare so hard that across the long, crowded room, Wynn flinched, glancing up in the wrong direction to find the source of his discomfort. When Tate turned at last, his jaw was tight, the smile on his face not reaching his darkened, empty eyes.
"An old friend of yours, dove?" His voice grated, holding an edge that it didn't normally possess, at least, not for her. "By all means, don't let me keep you from going to say hello."
You’ll meet and marry some perfect, purple-skinned prat with a respectable, white-collar job and an excellent credit score. She wondered if Wynn was the exact type of elf he’d been picturing when he’d uttered those words to her.
"I don’t want to."
"Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel like you're being kept away. You don't need to stay here on my account, I’d hate to deprive you of a happy reunion. I don't want to keep you from where you belong, Silva."
She felt his sharply spat words like a fist, her mouth dropping open at the impact. She knew it was jealousy doing the talking for him, knew that all too well, jealousy and perhaps, she thought, a bit of insecurity. He was an elf, like her; like all of these pretty giggling elves around them. He had more in common with her than anyone else around, but at the end of the day, that wasn't what people saw. She already knew that, after all. She'd been lying to her family, lying to her friends, not revealing where it was she disappeared to several weekends a month. She didn't know how to tell her family she was dating an orc, for an orc would be all they saw; the differences between them and Tate, and none of the commonalities.You'll meet and marry some perfect purple-skinned prat.It was jealousy and insecurity and nothing more, and no one knew that better than her, one more thing they had in common. She shook her head.
"I don't want to say hello to him. Ihatehim." She moved very close, getting into his space as tightly as she appropriately could, given the surroundings. "I don't want to talk to him at all. Please don't make me." She was mollified when his hand dropped to her hip pulling her a little closer, a bit tighter, skin-to-skin. She wondered if she cut open his chest and climbed inside to be nearer to his heart, if it would ever feel close enough.
"Who is he?" His voice was a breath of against her, for her ears only, and she knew that he already knew. There was no way to play it off as a casual acquaintance, and to do so would destroy whatever trust he had in her, and besides, Silva decided, she had no desire or reason to lie. It was insecurity and jealousy, she reminded herself, and she knew all too well what happened to herself in that double grip.
"We dated for a while, earlier this year. I'm the one who broke it off. He . . . wasn’t very nice to me."If he was jealous,she told herself,then he must actually care.
"Why?" She swallowed at the question, wondering if he hadn’t been a part of the equation; if the bruise of his bite hadn’t still been a lingering, purple mark on her skin, if she would still be sleeping on the cold, lonely edge of the other man’s bed. She and Tate weren’t the only party-goers who had slowly edged away from the group, Silva noticed as she thought about how to answer his question, hesitating for a long moment. The tiefling couple was strategically moving towards the staircase leading down the platform, and the djinn was on her phone in the corner, her back to the group.
Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Because everything that you said would happen was coming true. Because my life is my own to shape.His huge hand cupped her jaw, tilting her face up before his thumb gently moved over the curve of her cheek. It was the same side of her face that Wynn had bashed with his shoulder, the same cheek she’d bitten that night, filling her mouth with blood. She couldn’t remember him touching her this gently in the entirety of the three months they’d been together, three months of her life wasted she would never get back. She’d not answered him, but as she gazed up, Silva thought perhaps she didn't need to. After all, he divined her thoughts so easily, pulled words from her mouth before they'd even had a chance to leap off her tongue. Light had returned to his eyes, she was relieved to see, but unlike the warmth that had burned there upon her arrival, as his gaze slid over her in her new dress, a leaping fire burned there now. She thought back to that night in the fall, the jumping flames of the fire that wasn't there, reflected in his eyes as clearly as if he had stood only inches before it. It wasthatfire that had returned, and the blood in her veins thrummed to see it.
"I’ll kill him for you, dove, if you want. I just might kill him regardless." His voice was soft and silky, his tone belying the severity of his words, and her eyes widened. She should have been horrified that he’d even make such a joke, should have been frightened that perhaps he meant it, but the excited thump of her heart held only exhilaration, for there was no question that he cared with that sort of threat.
A burst of laughter came from behind them, the ribald satyr demanding his presence in the conversation, an echoing space of heartbeats before he turned back to his friends, Wynndevar's presence momentarily forgotten, and when she looked back out over the sea of people across the club, her ex was gone.
All too soon, she felt a familiar, uncomfortable pressure, the result of the three mixed drinks she’d had from the private beverage cart. The bottle girl had been glancing surreptitiously down to the phone she had nestled between the lemons and the club soda on the chrome-plated cart, and Silva craned her neck over the side railing of the platform, trying to ascertain where the restrooms were. She was an adult, she reminded herself, had lived on her own for several years, had lived away from home for University and had traveled abroad, and the thought of going to the restroom in this unfamiliar club should have not set her nerves jangling. As she looked out over the writhing sea of people though, nothing seemed more overwhelming. She didn't want to push through the crowd on her own again, didn't want to be smirked and whispered at by the throngs of human men who sat in clusters around the bar and at the edge of the dance floor, didn't want to risk catching Wynn's eye . . .
"Tate," she whispered, tugging his sleeve, reluctantly pulling him from a conversation he was on the edge of, between the pretty djinn and the tiefling couple. "I-will you come with me to the ladies’ room? I don’t know the way."
She wasn't sure if it was her imagination or not, but it seemed as if the sea of people parted before him as he steered her through the crowd, a hand at her lower back, keeping her close. As she'd originally suspected, the restrooms were on the hallway past the long back bar, nowhere near their elevated platform.
The man behind the blue-lit bar was waiting for them as they approached the edge of it, his yellow cat eyes giving him away as some sort of feline were, his long dreadlocks pulled into a high ponytail at the back of his head. Tate chuckled warmly as they approached, and the man exclaimed in greeting. Silva watched them exchange the sort of handshake that she always thought was specific to secret clubs, beaming when Tate introduced her.
"You're doing fine business here, Robbie. It's a good thing someone taught you well."
The man laughed, a big open laugh that made her smile instinctively.
"That's because I haven't changed a fucking thing since you've been gone. Still have your same checklists up in the office. Can't believe it's already been 10 years. We're getting older every minute, and you're aging in reverse. How's Thessa?"
She shifted her weight from foot to foot as the men talked and laughed, Tate's hand landing on her lower back after, what seemed to her bladder, to be an endless amount of time.
"We're headed to the ladies, but I'll be sure to say goodbye before we leave."
There was a line to the bathroom, as there always was in every establishment she had ever been in, regardless of the business type or the species patronizing it, and she sighed as they entered it, shifting on her heels.
"This is where I used to work," he murmured, raising a hand in greeting to another employee who called out to him with a wave. "I was the bar manager here for years."
She tipped her head up to gawk at him, trying to imagine him in this noisy, licentious environment every night of the week. It was the complete opposite of his own establishment, and she squinted trying to imagine him overseeing the crowd here.
"Did – did you live in Bridgeton then?"
"Mhm. For years. An apartment building just up the block, walking distance. I don't miss it, if that's going to be your next question. Well," he smiled wryly, "Idomiss not being surrounded by orcs day and night, but here it was the humans. So a bit of a trade-off, but one's not much better than the other."
Despite the number of people in line, the queue was moving quickly, the door came into sight only a few minutes later. A group of elves turned out of the bathroom at that moment, not any of the girls from their party, but two Silva instantly recognized from the club. They were younger than her by several years, probably still in university or recently graduated, although the one had an older sister her age. Silva felt as if she were outside of her body, watching the next handful of seconds in slow motion, like a movie or something that was happening to someone else. The hand that had been clutching Tate's wrist released its grip on him of its own accord, her feet moving her a step away without her conscious thought. The group of elves moved on, passing by without hesitation as if she were invisible, but the damage, she realized, was done.
"Careful dove," his voice bit out, taking another small step away from her, "you don't want your pretty friends finding out about your dirty little secret. You're almost in now. I'll be at the bar."
She spun in alarm, her stomach twisting at his words, for she knew his observation of her action was accurate. Heat burned up her face, but he was already several yards away, long legs carrying him back down the hallway and away from her, around the corner to where the bar existed noisily. She berated herself for the next several minutes in line, squeezing out a few self-indulgent tears once the stall door had clicked shut behind her, patting cold water on her face once she stood before the mirror.You certainly didn't help yourself. Good job making things worse.Her phone buzzed then, his name on the display increasing her pulse dramatically, her imagination supplying the lines of text before she thumbed open the screen.Why don't you just leave. Go back to where you belong, dove.Reality, once she'd open the screen, had her breathing a sigh of relief.Far left corner on the back bar.She breathed long and low, trying to center herself and stop her fluttering pulse from lifting her right off her feet in a panic that she bungled the entire evening in one careless movement.
