A trill of humor escaped Toa Sian’s chest, followed by a dry, “Children.”
Peeking at Bryce through their fingers, Zef found the human pouting at his plate. He glanced their way. They made eye contact, and amusement bubbled up inside Zef’s chest. Bryce’s frown flipped into a hesitant grin. Zef fought a smile but lost. Bryce snickered quietly.
“Stop,” he hissed through his muffled chuckles.
“I am not doing anything,” they whispered back.
“You’re looking at me.”
“Youare looking atme,” Zef countered as they, too, released an inappropriate bout of laughter.
Hands covering their mouths, they leaned toward each other and surrendered to childish giggles. They smothered them as best they could, Bryce shushing them even as he wheezed, but neither of themcould stop. Clearing their throat, Zef got themself under control first, smoothing back their hair as they picked their fork back up.
Air snuffled through Bryce’s nose as he continued to snicker into his shoulder, and Zef smacked his leg with the back of their lower hand. Instead of helping, it simply made Bryce tumble back into a fit of giggles, which set Zef off again.
When they were both finally able to compose themselves, Zef shielded their mouth with their hand as they whispered, “I believe we are to be the pariah of the party for the rest of the evening.”
“Damn it,” Bryce lamented, wiping tears of humor from his eyes. “And Toa Sian really did like me in the beginning.”
They pressed three fingers to their smiling lips. “They still like you. I can tell.”
“Yeah?” Bryce asked, and Zef nodded. “I told you parents always love me.”
With a roll of their eyes, they straightened and returned their attention to their food.
“What was that, by the way? With Don?” Bryce whispered.
Another blush crawled down their neck as they copied his secretive volume. “We courted. A long time ago.”
His eyes widened, jaw dropping. “That was your ex?”
“Yes,” they admitted.
“I should have been meaner to them,” he said, and Zef clicked at him, smacking his leg again. This time, Bryce caught their wrist, the pad of every finger flat to their skin. “Didn’t Toa Sian teach you not to hit?”
“Did not Nan instruct you to be polite to my exes when you are a guest at my Mantodean festival?” they sassed back.
“Nope,” he said smugly. “I can honestly say that scenario never came up.”
“You, Bryce Edward Elliot, are incorrigible,” they whispered.
“And you, Zefryn many-other-names-I-can’t-pronounce Ootyk,” he said as his gray eyes flashed with lightning, “are a bad bitch.”
Wings humming in pleasure at the compliment, they smiled, showing all their teeth. “You are godsdamned right I am.”
And ancestors above, how Bryce laughed.
Later, after Zef coached Bryce through the steps of a traditional Mantodean waltz, he taught them a country line dance. He called it the Watermelon Crawl, which Zef found amazingly exotic. The band was taking a break, and the wine was flowing, and Zef… Zef was feeling good.
“No, you gotta do a right grapevine before you do the left grapevine,” Bryce was saying as Zef struggled to remember the steps. They were normally very good at dances like this, but they may have drunk one glass too many and it was hard to focus.
Toa Sian had joined in, intrigued with the foreign dance, and the longer Bryce gave instruction, the more Mantodeas took interest. By the time Bryce thought they were ready to try with music, the pavement in front of the A-frame where the tables had stood—cleared away several hours prior to allow space for dancing—was now full of eager, somewhat inebriated, bodies.
A Bluetooth speaker had magically appeared, and Bryce connected his phone to it, pulling up a song by the same name as the dance and hit play. The music was upbeat and strange. Country, Bryce called it.
“You ready?” the human called as the vocalist began to sing in a twanging accent similar to Bryce’s own. “Here we go. And one, two,three, four.”
People stumbled and mis-stepped, but there was much laughter as they attempted to catch up. Moving in synchronized rows, they danced as one while not touching, so very similar to Mantodean dances. Flushed with drink and enjoyment, Zef focused on the beat and gave themself over to the music.
