“How did you know I was out here?” My brow pulled into a frown as I glanced around. There wasn’t much out this way until you walked for a bit, smoke stacks a bit ahead in the distance leading the way back.
Holding up a strange shaped object and two ceramic cups she pulled from the pack on her back, she wiggled them at me. “It’s not cocoa but it’s pretty good. I have cookies and sandwiches too.”
When I just stood there, dumbfounded, she murmured quietly, “I mean, if the offer still stands.” Tittering nervously, she mumbled, “I mean, it’s more like dinner now with the hour but it took me a minute to figure out where you were and-”
“How did you figure out where I was?” I cut in curiously, not even realizing I was doing so.
“Oh, uhm, Vurhg,” she chirped.
Vurhg? “How did Suzy know where I was?” I questioned.
Dace frowned. “He said you smashed his nose right and then took all of your things.” Dace’s lips twitched, like she was trying not to outright cackle. “I asked him where you were and he said if you weren’t at your hut or telling on him to Kehlor, you might be here because you missed your mates and it was all his fault.”
“At least he admits it,” I muttered, then flopped down right there in the middle of the grassy, snow mush slushed ground and motioned for her to join me.
With a shrug, Dace walked over and plopped down beside me.
Her Not-Cocoa was more like a mildly nutty, white chocolate mocha. More of a soda gal myself, I couldn’t say I would drink it all the time but it was good.
“Here.” Pulling out two strips of long material, she handed one over to me. Taking the brown one she’d shoved into my hands, I watched as she placed it around her shoulders like a blanket shawl.
Wrapping the shawl she’d given me over my shoulders, I dipped my head in thanks.
Sandwiches were passed around next. “I usually don’t do this anymore.” Her hand lifted and she motioned with her sandwich. “It’s nice. A little picnic.”
I nodded as I chewed. My gaze drifted, wondering where the portal was, how close, how far. Had Cy and Elm tried to find me? Did they know of and use this portal ever? Was this a portal my dad had ever used? How had Mom and Dad really met? Was it the meet-cute story they’d fed me? Was it some variation of events changed to humanize them? I had so many freaking questions that would never be answered.
“You miss them,” Dace murmured.
“I do,” I admitted. So bad my chest ached to think about them, I silently tacked on.
“I’m so sorry,” Dace said simply.
“Me, too,” I muttered under my breath.
Staring off ahead, I finished my sandwich before I spoke again.
“Do you miss anything from our world?” I asked.
Dace’s face screwed up, scrunched, and she finally mumbled, “I’m sure I could think of something if I tried but I know I’m better off here.”
When I glanced her way questioningly, she bit her lip and her gaze dropped. “I was stuck in that place, that hospital I mentioned, for years. Then, when I got out, I ended up at a jobwith a skeezy boss in a job not unlike the one I’d had before. I could have ended up right back where I’d been, right back there in an affair with a man too in love with himself to think beyond his own roll of quarters. This time… This time, though, when similar patterns started to present themselves, I said no. I backed away. I did not engage. I wasn’t that person anymore and I meant it.” Swallowing thickly, she grimaced. “I don’t know what happened. One moment Mr. McCord is asking me for a file for a client, then he’s trying to make a move on me, I stand up for myself, he gets me in a choke hold and tells me he can do whatever he wants to me and no one will believe the crazy bitch from the looney bin, and he- He tries to touch me and I just- I just-”
My stomach dropped as I waited. I could guess where this was going.
“I just snapped,” she blurted, a dazed look in her eyes. Throat working, she croaked out, “I grabbed the pen near his desk and I just meant to jab him with it. I didn’t mean to-” Panting like she was trying not to hyperventilate as she relived it, she mumbled, “I didn’t mean to stab him. I just wanted him, it, to stop.”
“Where’d you stab him?” I asked around a sip of white-mocha-not-cocoa.
“His shoulder,” she admitted. Her gaze darted my way and she said as if to assure me, “He was mad, real mad, but he was okay.”
“Should’ve stabbed him in the dick,” I said simply.
Dace’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. A sputtering noise left her.
Maybe I’m more aggressive than I thought if the looks she kept giving me were anything to go by?
That sputtering noise she was making turned into a laugh. Her hands clapped to her mouth as she struggled not to laugh like a lunatic.
