The fact that I’d spent twenty minutes on my hair meant nothing.
Tolrek stood on the sidewalk in jeans and a dark Henley that fit him so well I forgot how to form complete thoughts. He’d left his hair down. I’d only seen it pulled back before, at practice, meetings, or in the hallway. Now it fell to his shoulders, and I had to stop myself from wondering what it would feel like.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
We walked down the block with Thursday evening foot traffic flowing around us. A couple with a stroller. A teenager on a skateboard. Two women laughing about something one of themhad said. Normal city sounds that felt louder than they should because I was aware of every inch of space between us.
There wasn’t much space.
He walked on the street side of the sidewalk. I noticed this without looking directly at him, the way I saw plays developing on ice. An instinctive positioning that put him between me and traffic.
We passed the dry cleaner, the bookstore with the window display I’d been meaning to stop and look at for two weeks, and a bar that opened too late to be useful. Then we reached the corner where Georgio’s sat, wedged between a nail salon and a building holding apartments or offices or both.
The restaurant was small, and I hadn’t been in, though I’d noticed it when I took a walk in this direction. Like most places in this area where real estate was costly, it had a narrow front, with a faded awning and a door that looked like it had been painted red sometime in the previous century. Warm light spilled through the windows flanking the door. People sat inside at tables placed close together. I sensed this was the kind of restaurant where conversations overlapped and nobody minded.
Tolrek held open the door.
Heat and noise and the smell of garlic and tomatoes hit me all at once. The space was as small as it had appeared from outside. Maybe fifteen tables, most of them full. Red checkered tablecloths. Candles stuck in wine bottles, wax melted down the sides in layers that probably went back years. Dark wood paneling on the walls. Photographs I couldn’t make out from the entrance, hung without any apparent system.
This was not a place someone took a colleague. This was the kind of restaurant someone went to when they wanted to feel like a person instead of a player. Somewhere quiet and worn and safe.
He’d brought me here.
“Tolrek!”
The voice came from near the back. A woman wove between tables, moving across the room. Older, she had white hair and lovely features. She was small in the way my grandmother had been, but she occupied space the way people did when they’d run a room for forty years and knew every corner of it.
She reached us before we’d taken three steps inside and grabbed Tolrek’s hands, squeezing them, studying his face and frame.
“You’re too thin.” She frowned. “You don’t eat enough.”
“I’m trying, Savina.” He kissed her cheek, his head dipping down to her level. Some might find their size difference ridiculous, but I didn’t. “You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.” She swatted his arm, then held his face between her hands, studying him. She must’ve found something that satisfied her, because she nodded once.
Her attention fell on me, and she nodded again.
I had no idea what test I’d been given, but I’d apparently passed it.
“You always eat alone,” she said, turning back to Tolrek. Her voice dropped to a lower octave. “Or you take it home. I worry about you, being lonely.”
She looked at me again, and her expression softened. “I see that won’t be a problem anymore.”
I shook my head. “We’re not?—”
But Savina was already striding away, gesturing for us to follow with the kind of authority that didn’t require volume.
I glanced at Tolrek.
He was studying the ceiling.
Savina led us to a table in the back corner, tucked into a nook along the right wall. Tiny, it was probably meant for two humans who didn’t take up the space Tolrek did. When he sat, his kneesdidn’t fit cleanly beneath it. He shifted, adjusting his legs to one side, and didn’t comment.
I sat across from him and realized exactly how much of my field of vision he occupied.
At the rink he was large. All the players were. He was an athlete who’d spent his life building his body into a tool for a specific job. Here, in a restaurant with low lighting and tables meant for people half his size, I was aware of him in a way that made my pulse kick up.
