She tapped out a quick text to Ainsley, groaning at the state of her inbox. She'd been away from her desk for less than an hour, but the column of unread messages seemed as if she'd been gone for a month.
It's going to be an email chain between the same four people all arguing over whether or not they have the right to change the office floor plan without checking if it's accessible . . . and their manager, who bcc'ed me instead of doing his job and telling them no.
She was gratified when her phone buzzed within seconds, Ainsley's quick response a welcome distraction from the aggravating minutia of her day.
I cannot wait.
Who knows what invaluable nuggets of Orcish wisdom I will glean from this summit of culture and meeting of minds.
I’ve been tapped for an end-of-day meeting, so I’m going to need this to look forward to.
Ris grinned, rolling her eyes. Ainsley treated time in Khash's company like an anthropology lesson, attempting to catch up on all he had missed by not growing up in an Orcish clan, badgering the bigger orc with one question after the next. Fortunately, Khash was a good sport about it. She liked Lurielle’s boyfriend enormously, loved how well he treated her friend, how luminously happy Lurielle had been since they got together . . .but she would have been lying if she pretended double dating with the two of them was stress-free.
You will be allowed five (5) questions for the night
Start thinking about them now
And no two-parters!
I know you think you’re sneaky, but you’re really not
It was a very strange space she occupied, Ris considered as she brushed her teeth that evening, listening with half an ear as Ainsley narrated his day from the bedroom — caught in the center of their little spider web of relationships and friendships, at once separate, yet interconnected through each other.
The Plundered Pixie’s owner — like Khash, ironically — could be a smooth-talking charmer when he wanted to be. Some people were just naturally gifted at maintaining easy small talk, and Tate was one such individual . . . when it suited him. Otherwise, Ris found the half-orc to be as mercurial as the weather in June, his cheerful congeniality hardening to icy coldness in the blink of an eye. Tate vacillated between an unassuming easygoingness and being so easily offended that it was nigh impossible to pick around what topics to avoid. Ainsley’s comparison to a switchblade was apt, she’d decided. Harmless one moment and deadly the next, and the night of that curtailed bar fight, the night she and Ainsley met, would live rent-free in her memory forever . . . but Tate was, somehow, Ainsley’s closest friend.
Then there was Silva.
Ris was a full decade older than their younger, wide-eyed co-worker, although, over the past two years, she had begun feeling even older. Everything seemed slower to her, even if the world buzzed around her at its normal, breakneck speed. She understood the why and tried not to dwell on the implications too deeply, for with the slowness came clarity.
Silva had not yet reached that place in her Elvish existence when time felt like tiny grains of sand. She lived each moment as it arrived, and there had been more instances in the past six months when Ris had struggled to relate to Silva’s time-pressed relationship woes . . . but she was still enormously fond of the younger elf.
Watching Silva push back on the expectations of her family and their community was gratifying, even if Ris quietly held the position that Silva was spinning her wheels with Tate and would never find the sort of partnership she craved. Tate didn’t share much of himself and seemed entirely content with their in-limbo status, not that it was any of her business. Lurielle was right — Silva was testing her emancipation from the rigidity of Elvish culture a lot earlier in life than either she or Ris had. It didn’t matter if her independence was wasted on this dead-end relationship — she’d come out the other side stronger for it, and that alone made Ris want to cheer.
Whatwasher business was Ainsley’s bitter dislike of her younger co-worker.
“Whenyourfriend magically transforms into the sort of guy she can bring home, you get to voice your shitty opinions aboutmyfriend,” she’d snapped at him one night after meeting Tate and Silva in Starling Heights, a night Ainsley had spent pointedly not speaking to Silva at all. “I don’t really care about their relationship, Ains. I care about the way you’re acting.”
“How am I supposed to not care about the people I care about?” he countered, missing her point entirely. “Do you think she wouldn’t treat me the exact same way if she’d met me first on your little weekend fling? You don’t think she’ll ghostyouthe second you don’t fit into her perfect little world? The second something better comes around?”
It had been the first true fight they’d had. In the past, her blood would have sizzled and she would have met his hot tone,but at that moment, all Ris had felt was another grain of sand slipping away.
“That sounds like the sort of projection you should be exploring with your therapist,” she’d shot back. “Not taking it out on a twenty-five-year-old who doesn’t know you from fucking Aemmon. Particularly when you knownothingabout Elvish culture. All the documentaries in the world won’t give you even an ounce of the reality we grow up with. I don'tcareif you don’t like her, Ainsley. I don’t give a shit if you think she’s a spoiled brat. And guess what? I don’t think Tate gives a shit about what you think either.”
“I’ve known people like her my whole life, Ris,” he’d sneered. “They’re users. They only think of themselves, their happiness, their own lives. They use other people like dopamine dispensers, and the second they don’t get the validation they’re craving, they move on to someone new.”
She shrugged, feeling entirely calm. Where once she would have thundered, now Ris felt only chilled. She wondered if this was part of their metamorphosis as an exceptionally long-lived species. After all, if one was to attain a great age, one must not be prone to flying off the handle or placing oneself in precarious situations. Besides that, his characterization of Silva was wrong.He’s describing Dynah, not Silva.
“Ainsley, you’re not hearing me.I don’t care. I don’t care if you like her or not. All I care about is the fact thatyoudon’t seem to care that I’m telling you it hurts my feelings when you’re mean to my friend. And if you don’t think the wayyoutreat my friends is something I pay attention to, let me dispel that incorrect notion for you. You’re showing your ass, and there’s a big red flag sticking out of it. It’s not a good look. I understand he’syourfriend. But she’smyfriend. So, you can be a grownup and suck it the fuck up, or I don’t need to spend so much time on this side of town.”
He was perfect ninety-eight percent of the time, she’d reminded herself after his shoulders slumped, after he’d groveled sufficiently. The other two percent of the time, he had a tendency to fixate on something arbitrary, something completely outside his influence, until it became a bee in his bonnet he couldn’t shake loose.
“I didn’t think about how it made you feel,” he admitted in his lengthy apology. “I wasn’t thinking past my own dislike.”
She’d rolled her eyes as he buried his nose against her neck, dragging her nails down the stubbly side of his head. “Well, it’s still pretty shitty to be mean to her at all. You’re not considering her feelings. You’re not considering Tate’s feelings either, for that matter. But if you can only be nice to her for my sake, I’ll take it.”
After they were in bed, the weight of his arm draped over her like a sand-filled blanket, solid and grounding, she reminded herself that two percent in hisconscolumn was a wash, when she considered how warm and considerate the ninety-eight percent was. The grains of sand of his life and the time they spent together was barely a vial, and it wasn’t worth her fixating on non-existent issues either.
“You know,” she’d murmured against him, “when I’m wearing you as a watch and jetting off to Monaco with my seventh husband, you’re going to feel real stupid for wasting a single night sulking over Silva.”
