"I haven't, and it's already too much." She flashed the bartender a smile when he returned with a new glass of wine and a towel. She dabbed at her dress, but I didn't think it would do much. "Anyway, don't think I didn't notice you changing the subject."
"I'm not changing the subject. I'm just not feeling it tonight."
"Then why are you here?"
"I was meeting you."
She gave me a look that said she didn't believe me at all. It wasn't entirely unfair, I doubted I'd believe me either.
"We're going to be busy in about twenty minutes, I would have survived easily enough with a message. So spill. And not all over me." She tried to take a sip of her new glass of wine and managed to slosh some down her chin. "This is why I'm still single."
"You're still single because you haven't found anyone good enough for you yet," I pointed out.
"Stop changing the subject." She gave me a stern look that was very at odds with her personality.
I sighed. "I had a one night stand the other week."
"Not new."
"Do you want me to tell you, or not?" I asked.
"Sorry, go on." She took a successful sip of wine.
"It was with a woman I never thought I'd see again, and it was great. Honestly, one of the best I've had in recent years." My mind slipped back to what it had been like to be in bed with Clara without me meaning it to.
"And you want to do it again?" Longmu checked, bringing me back to the present, where Clara thankfully wasn't.
"Not exactly. It turns out that she's the cousin of Thor's girlfriend."
"Talk about keeping it in the family," she joked.
I rolled my eyes. "Really?"
"Sorry, it was right there. Go on."
"Daisy introduced us at her gallery opening, and we talked more. Clara wanted to know more about necromancy for a potion she's working on, and so I met her at work and she met Garmr. And then, as if that wasn't messy enough, I went for dinner with Thor and Daisy, and she was there."
"Is she doing it on purpose?"
"What? No. Definitely not. She didn't even realise I was a goddess until the second time we met. It's just a coincidence. But it's really not helping me get her out of my head. I'm thinking about her a lot more than I should be. She was good in bed and all, but surely I shouldn't be thinking about it this much?" That was the crux of it. I was thinking about her far more than I ever thought I would.
"Maybe you like her."
I snorted. "I don't do that."
"No, you avoid that. It's an entirely different thing," Longmu responded. "You've decided you don't want a relationship, so you put barriers up to stop you seeing anyone as having the potential for that. It's why you never actually fill out your card at the end of speed dating." She nodded towards where it was sitting on the bar beside me.
"No one meets my standards."
"Mmhmm. So I'm just going to take this, because I might actually want to use it, and mine is..." She waved her hand to where her wine-soaked sheet sat as a victim of Luilan's pranks. "That dragon is a menace."
"You're the one who trained him."
"It turns out that it's hard to train a dragon, especially when you have five. You're lucky to only have Garmr."
"Not when he's teething. He chews everything. He got into my shoe cupboard the other day, and there are casualties."
"Sounds like an excuse to go shoe shopping to me," Longmu said brightly.
