She genuinely believes that.
The Scottish-Chinese heirloom lore and the fate-finds-it theory and all of it. She means every word, no performance involved.
I left a coin that belonged to her grandmother on a castle staircase and she's telling me it's fine, and somehow I believe her, which says something specific about Elowen and probably something specific about the state I'm in.
"Also," Elowen adds, with a careful shift in her voice that means she's changing subjects before I can spiral further, "are we not going to address the part where you've been mopping because of a man?"
"I'm mopping because the floor needed mopping."
"The floor has needed mopping since February."
"This is true."
"So it's the masked Alpha."
I stare at the wall opposite me, which is the slightly-off-white of an apartment that came painted and hasn't been touched since. "I just can't get him out of my head. Which is—" I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose. "I know how that sounds. One evening. A few hours. I don't even know his name."
Elowen makes a sound. Warm, with barely contained delight held on a very short leash.
"Is my girl falling in love?"
"Absolutely not."
"This is going to be the most classic Cinderella story?—"
"I didn't drop a glass slipper down any stairs, Elowen. I dropped your grandmother's heirloom coin while sprinting in a four-hundred-dollar gown to catch a train like a woman who absolutely cannot afford to miss her shift, and then I sat in a private cabin and looked back at a platform where he was standing and the train left anyway." I pause. "That's not Cinderella. That's a poor life choice with good lighting."
She laughs—the full version, uncontained. "If you'd had a carriage like a sensible fairytale heroine, you could have taken your time and gotten his name."
"I told you I'd have sent the driver." Her voice sharpens with the specific frequency of someone who was right and has been waiting patiently to mention it. "I offered, Mila. Multiple times. With genuine persistence."
"I know."
"And you said?—"
"I know what I said."
"The train station is only five to ten minutes from the venue, Elowen, I'll be fine, Elowen, one hour tops and I'll be heading out?—"
"I genuinely regret everything."
She dissolves into laughter again and I let her have it because she's earned it and also because hearing it does the thing it always does, which is make the kitchen feel less hollow by approximately fifteen percent.
I let it settle before I say: "Also. We're going to circle back to something."
"Are we."
"We are absolutely going to circle back to something. The thing being the actual, enormous, castle-shaped elephant in the room that you apparently decided wasn't worth mentioning when you were arranging my transportation, my gown, my hair, my mask, my perfume, and my entire evening."
A beat of silence.
"The family name of the venue," I say. "Ring any bells?"
"Hmm."
"Elowen."
"That is a very common surname?—"
