Most days, I walked from my shop to Corine's house weighed down with weariness from the long grind of another day's work. Today hadn't been any shorter or any easier, but the way it had ended had left me with a glowing sense of satisfaction and well-being. I should have found someone to fuck like that years earlier. After so long a time, it was easy to forget just what it was like, just how good it could be. I'd forgotten the way my skin hummed after being thoroughly fucked, the way everything good seemed better and everything bad seemed less consequential. The walk to Corine's was full of hills, and normally I dragged myself up them each in succession, wishing she were closer or my shop were elsewhere or my legs were stronger. But today, they seemed half as steep as they ever had before, and I climbed them easily.
Half of my satisfaction with the encounter came from the fact that it had been with Bansi. After weeks of enduring his presence, of trying to chase him off only to fail over and over again, of ranting and raging and doing everything I could think of to get him to leave me alone, only to have him turn back up the next day, and the next, it was glorious to turn the tables and finally be the one controlling the tone of the encounter. No more pleas, no more bribes, no more entreating eyes and sad, sad faces, just Bansi and me and the pleasure that I could take from him. All his little gifts and indulgences, and this was all I truly wanted from him.
I stopped and tipped my head at her in return. She had her hands tucked into the folds of her skirt at her back, rocking back on her heels and grinning at me.
"What is it, El?" I looked at her hands, tucked behind her back like she was hiding something. "Have you got something for me?"
"No, Papa!" She said it was obvious, like I was the silliest papa ever for not knowing. "You're happy."
I sat down on the walk, feet in the gutter, and only watched her from the edges of my vision. She scooted two steps close to me, then hung back, just beyond reach. "I'm always happy to come home to you, sweetheart."
She preened and twisted back and forth like she was pleased, but still hung back. "Why are you so happy, Papa?"
"Well," I said slowly, and made a show of looking thoughtful. "I'm going to spend the night with a very delightful young lady." The smile vanished from Elodie's face for a moment, until she realized that I was talking about her, and then it came back twice as strong. "Also, I've got a surprise."
"For me?" Suddenly she was in my lap, clambering all over me, arms going around my neck and pressing kisses to my cheek. "What is it, Papa? Can I see it? Don't make me wait!"
I pulled my fist out of my pocket, held it turned up and slowly opened it, one finger at a time, so that by the time I revealed the chocolate candy lying on my palm, just a little melted around the edges from the warmth of my body, Elodie was practically dancing in my lap from anticipation.
"What is it, Papa? Is it for me?"
"It's chocolate," I told her. "Open up."
I had nearly thrown it out with the others, scattered across my shop floor. But this was the one that had caught in Bansi's collar, the one he had carefully placed on my counter, and it hadn't touched my floors. I'd gathered the others up and threw them out with the fruit and other gifts that were starting to rot in the back alley. But I'd forgotten that one, and when I came back in, it was sitting there on the counter's corner like a reminder.
I'd stared at it for a long moment, torn. I had my pride, and my principles, and I nearly threw it straight out with the others. But a low, sinister voice in the back of my mind whispered to me, and stayed my hand. It promised me the joy that Elodie would have, getting to taste the treat. And I'd already made my point with Bansi, when I'd thrown his chocolates back in his face. If I took just this one and gave it to Elodie, he would never know. I'd already chased him off by then. What difference would it make, if he thought I'd thrown them all out? What difference would it make to Elodie, to have the opportunity to try this, which I could never offer her on my own?
In the end, it was pettiness that made my decision. It pleased me to think that Bansi, who had not wanted a child of his own and would surely have scorned Leisl's bastard daughter, was providing for the child he'd have cast aside, despite himself. I had used him earlier, in my shop, and I was using him now, and it was no less than he deserved.
Elodie deserved everything. I would bend my principles just a little, if it meant seeing her smile.
She shut her eyes at my command and opened her mouth wide, waiting. I placed the candy on her tongue and watched her face as she ate it. When she bit down, her eyes flew open wide and latched on me. The delight on her face swept away any lingering doubt I might have had that this was the right decision. "It's so good!" she cried.
"Of course it's good." I nudged her with my shoulder. "Would I give you something to eat that wasn't delicious?"
"Well..." She dragged the word out and shifted her glance around, looking everywhere but at me. "You gave me those funny looking beans, once. That was gross."
"Guilty. But I only gave it to you the once, didn't I?" I scooped her up into my arms and stood with her. She giggled and snaked her arms around my neck. "Let's go in and tell Corine I'm here, before she thinks you ran off into the street and got trampled by a horse."
"I wouldn't!" She reared back to stare up at me, her face a picture of horrified indignation.
"Of course you wouldn't." I kissed her noisily on the cheek. "Let's go inside all the same. I could use a cup of Corine's tea."
"All right, Papa." She wriggled in my arms until I sat her down, then scurried in ahead of me.
I followed her in, two paces behind, and found her tugging at Corine's skirts. Corine was bent over, her ear to Elodie's mouth, and Elodie was up on her toes whispering into it. When I came in, Corine glanced at me, laughter in her eyes, and said, "You're right, Miss Elodie. He does look happy."
"See?" Elodie wrapped her arms around Corine's leg and beamed at me past the folds of Corine's skirt. "I told you."
"You did indeed. You're a very clever girl, aren't you?"
Corine mouthed, "Tea?" over Elodie's head, her brows raised to make the question clear. I nodded, mouthed, "Thank you," back at her, then called Elodie over. "Where's Yvas, Elodie? Call him in here, will you? I want to see how much he's grown since this morning. I bet it couldn't possibly be as much as you have."
Elodie ran off into one of the other rooms of the house. I took a seat at the table and ran a fingertip along the wood grain as I waited for my tea.
Corine set the kettle down on the stove with a clatter. "All right, you." She came over and took the seat opposite me, fixed me with a shrewd look. "Your daughter's right. You are happy. What happened?"
I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. "What's all this about my happiness? Am I sourpuss most days and no one's told me?"
"You're grinning at my furniture."
"I am not," I said automatically, bristling. But I was. I had been, sitting here grinning to myself as I traced the patterns in the tabletop. I tucked my hand in my lap and scowled harder to make up for it.
Corine laughed. She looked up at me through her lashes, fighting to restrain grin. "You're not sour, Renad. But you don't usually show up glowing after a day at the shop. So tell me everything. What happened to put that light in your eye?" She gasped. Her hand flew up to her mouth, then she leaned forward across the table, biting at the pad of her thumb as she beamed. "Renad Davyas, did you meet somebody?"
"I meet people in the shop every day, Corine. You know that."
She sat back and drummed her fingers against the table's edge. "Don't you play coy with me. You know very well what I mean. Did you meet someone special?"
I knew what she meant. She meant, had I met someone I fancied, someone maybe I wanted to pursue a relationship with, someone who might someday become another father to Elodie. And the truth was that the only thing that might have put such a smile on my face or a spring in my step that both Elodie and Corine had noticed it was fucking Bansi. The thought of it evaporated the smile right off my face.
"No," I said, maybe a bit too harsh, too raw. Corine's delight disappeared right along with mine, leaving her looking uncertain and concerned. "No, I didn't meet anyone."
She sighed and slumped a little. Her shoulders fell. "That's a shame," she said. "You really ought to. You know I wouldn't mind looking after Elodie a while longer, if you wanted to go out--"
"No."
She sighed again. I knew how she felt on the matter, knew that she thought the best thing for both Elodie and me would be if I found someone else to love. She'd been after me about it for years, after all. Elodie had still been a babe, too young even to crawl, when Corine had offered to watch her on the rare days I closed the shop. I had stared at her and demanded, "Why on earth would I need you to watch her then? I'll be home," and she'd heaved a great, gusty sigh that seemed to say that I was the greatest fool in the whole city.
"I know you love Elodie," she'd said. "And that's just as it ought to be. But don't you think you deserve to love someone who can actually hold a conversation with you, too?"
I hadn't been ready, then. Just the thought of it had filled me with an emotion caught in some indefinable space between fury and panic. But that had been three years ago. The thought of pursuing a relationship with someone didn't fill me with panic now. It didn't fill me with anything. That was the problem.
"Don't, Corine," I said with my own sigh. "Just don't."
She gave me a thin-lipped look, so different from the beaming smile of just a minute earlier. Then, all at once, her expression softened, saddened. "It's a real shame, what he did to you."
I couldn't help but laugh, though there was no warmth in it at all. "A shame? That's one word for the way he abandoned me, though I can think of a few more I like better."
"I don't mean that," she said, and kept talking right over my disbelieving scoff. "I mean putting you off all the the other men out there. Not everyone's going to cut and run on you like he did, Renad."
"This isn't about him." It was practically a snarl. I hated that she was bringing this up again, when I'd thought the topic well and truly buried the last time we'd had this conversation. I hated that even now, four years on, all we needed to have a discussion about him was a pronoun, even as I was relieved because it meant I didn't have to keep saying his name. And I hated the realization that I was lying to Corine, because this time, it was about him, just not in the way she would have ever imagined.
When Elodie came running out with Yvas, shouting, "He was hiding!" and "He's only taller than me 'cause he's got his boots on!", I slid back from the table and smiled at them both, and made a production of standing them back to back and measuring them against each other, and so neither would feel put upon, I exclaimed, "My lord! I believe you've both grown a full inch since this morning! Whatever are we going to do with you two little weeds?", and Elodie giggled and bounced in her excitement, while Yvas puffed up his chest with pride.
I didn't linger long, after that. I was grateful Corine hadn't made the tea yet, because if she had, I'd have been obliged to linger until we'd finished the pot, and I was sure she'd have pressed me further about the issue of finding someone else to love.
I offered to carry Elodie as we left Corine's and walked back home, so I had an excuse to hold her tight against my chest. I didn't need somebody else to love. I had all I needed right here with Elodie.
*
I was only a little surprised when Bansi appeared in my shop again the next day. I supposed that some secret part of me had hoped that once I'd fucked him, he'd be on his way and finally leave me alone.
We were busy that day, the shop full to bursting and deafening with the clamor of a dozen different voices, and I counted it a blessing in more ways than one. I half expected Bansi to stride right up to the counter and demand the whole of my attention. It was always wealthy folks like him who thought that because they had coin in their pocket, they could do as they pleased and everyone else who had been in the shop before he arrived would just have to step aside and let him.
He didn't come up to the counter, though, or make conversation with me, or even flash his brilliant smile at me from across the shop like a bright bauble tied to a fishing line. He just lingered in the back of the shop, behind all the other customers, rocking his shoulders against the wooden boards and watching me with a somber look. There was a slight furrow between his brows, like I was some puzzle he couldn't decipher, and he meant to just stand there and watch me until he'd figured out how I worked.
Eventually, I decided that I was doing myself no favors by staring back at him. He was here because he wanted my attention, and I wasn't going to give it to him. I turned my attention to my customers, and turned my smile up even brighter than usual, and I hoped he was watching every minute of it.
An hour on, when the initial rush had slowed down, I turned from my counter with my smile plastered firmly in place for my next customer, and found Bansi standing in front of me instead, looking uncertain but hopeful.
My smile nearly vanished. Instead, I dragged it back in place and kept it fixed there, bright as a candle flame. "Back already? You really do have the stamina of a horse, don't you?" He flinched, and looked taken aback. "I'm busy, Bansi, and you're crowding my shop. Go away. If you want another fuck, come back at the end of the week. Maybe we'll be slower then, and maybe I'll be in the mood for it."
I was shocked at the words that came from my mouth, appalled that I had just invited him back when I had been trying all along to get him to go and stay gone. But I couldn't forget how good it had felt to have that release again. To take what I wanted from Bansi, as he had taken from me, and leave all the rest behind. He had had me floundering and frustrated for weeks, and for the first time yesterday when I'd faced him, I had felt strong. Powerful. For the first time, I had been the one in control.
Bansi's sudden, sharp breath made me feel that way again. This time, I was the one throwing the barbs, and he the one kept off balance by them. "Renad." He hissed my name through his teeth, grabbed the edge of the counter and leaned across it. "That's not why I'm here. You know that's not what this has been about."
"Hasn't it? My mistake." I spread my hands flat on the countertop and gave him another brilliant smile. "Go away, Bansi. Come back later, if you like. I'm much too busy for you right now."
He went, shoulders slumped and head held low. If he'd been a dog, he'd have been scampering off with his tail between his legs. He'd looked like that a little the day before, too, when I'd peeled myself away from him and grabbed my clothes up from the floor. He'd been ignoring his own, leaning back against my work bench as naked as a babe and as comfortable as if he'd been clothed, watching me dress. I'd glanced up at him as I fought with the laces of my boot, arched my brows, and said, "Well? Go on, then."
And for the first time since he'd reappeared in my life, he'd left when directed to, without even a word. He'd lingered in the door to my shop for a moment and I'd thought maybe he'd speak then and ruin this, but though he opened his mouth and shut it again like a fish, no words came out. He turned on his heel and left, and the rush of pleasure from that had been almost as great as that of my climax.
I watched him go now and waited for that same flush of satisfaction, but this time something tainted it, a hard twist beneath my breast where there should only have been pure, glowing pleasure.
I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned at the door, vexed by my own ambivalence. What was there to be torn about? Bansi was a pest, and I should have felt nothing but satisfaction at having shooed him away. He deserved it.
He deserved it, but I still didn't feel good about it, and that took all the fun out of turning the tables on him. I sighed, my good mood gone for the day, and forced my thoughts back to the customers and the shop and the work that I was supposed to be doing.
*
The next day, I dragged myself to the shop in the cold, dark hours of the morning, and stopped halfway down the block, staring. There was something before my shop door, some misshapen lump of a thing that I knew hadn't been there the night before, because I'd have walked right into it if it had.
I continued my approach more cautiously, frowning and trying to squint to see it better through the early-dawn light. Nearer, it resolved into the shape of a person, and I wondered if it was a street urchin, taking shelter in the meager protection of the doorway, whom I'd have to chase off for the sake of my business despite the sympathy that stirred beneath my breast.
But as I drew even closer, the shape formed itself out of the dark, and my slow, cautious steps faltered. I knew the shape of that profile. It was Bansi, and I could hardly believe my eyes. Bansi had never been one for rising early, and even I was reluctant to be up so early as I was today. I hadn't even had time to sit with Corine and sip a cup of tea, because the increased traffic I'd been getting at the shop lately, while a boon, meant that I had precious little time while we were open to get much work done or things made. I'd wanted to come early and get ahead of some things, while it was still dark and quiet.
And now Bansi was here, ruining all of my good intentions. What on earth would he have done if I hadn't decided to come by early today?
Stood shivering on my front step until dawn? It made me eminently grateful that I'd never let him learn where I'd moved to.
I'd stopped moving as soon as I saw him, but he must have noticed me all the same. He stepped away from the door and came toward me. As he passed under one of the gas street lamps, I could see that he had another damned basket in his arms. I groaned and scrubbed the heel of my hand over my forehead. Would he never learn?
"Renad." He smiled at me as warm as if I'd greeted him with a kiss and open arms. "I brought you breakfast."
Gods. I hadn't even been up an hour. I hadn't even had tea. What had I ever done to deserve this trial? "Yes. I see that." I moved past him, already pulling my keys out of my pocket. Maybe if I slipped inside and locked the door behind me, he'd get the message and go away.
Or maybe I'd come out to open up in a few hours and find him still shivering in my doorway like a stray dog.
I unlocked my door and tried to slip inside fast enough to close Bansi on the other side, but he was right on my heels with his basket and his smile, shouldering it open like he hadn't even noticed that it was rude.
I stood my ground and stared him down. "My shop's not open yet."
"Good thing I'm not a customer, then," he said with a wink. He didn't move at all, just stood there waiting for me to let him in, like any guest sure of their welcome.
No. If you were a customer, you'd actually buy something, instead of standing around taking up space. But I didn't want to tell him that. It would probably just give him ideas. I'd come by one day to discover that he'd bought out my entire inventory, and then I'd have no choice but to take his charity.
"Why are you here?" I demanded, suddenly angry. "What do you want?"
"Oh, I cleared my schedule for the whole day." His smile, if anything, glowed brighter, like he expected me to take this as some sort of wonderful news. "I'm yours all day. I can help you with your work. I'll be your assistant. It'll be fun, don't you think?"
I stared at him in dismay. I didn't think it was going to be fun at all. It was going to be dreadful. My hand clenched on the edge of the door as I fantasized about slamming it in his face. But if I did that, I'd just be taking us back to the way things had been before, where he pursued and I denied him and he completely ignored me when I told him to leave me alone.
I wanted that even less than I wanted him around.
I couldn't bring myself to invite him in, though, so I just turned and walked away, leaving the door open behind me. He followed me in, as I'd known he would. He'd probably have just climbed in through the back window if I'd sent him away. I'd have turned away from a customer and discovered him standing there at my elbow as though he'd been there all day long, smiling that infuriatingly stubborn smile at me, daring me to say something.
I couldn't decide what to do with him. If I threw him out, we'd just be back where we were before, and I'd go back to being helpless in the face of his determination. But if I took him in, if I let him help, then I'd just be giving him exactly what he wanted, and there was no abiding that, either.
In the end, I settled for giving him exactly what he asked for, and working him like an honest assistant. I sat him at the counter and gave him one task after another, and kept him working the whole day long, even when his fingers cramped up and I could tell from the way he kept stretching it out that his back was bothering him. I didn't get to stop working just because I was tired or uncomfortable, so why should he?
By the time the day was over, I thought maybe he'd learned his lesson. When I came to the shop early again the next morning and my front step was vacant, I was sure of it. But he showed up less than a quarter-hour after I had, long before anyone else in the city would be up and about. He had dark bags under his eyes and yawned relentlessly, but he didn't once complain about the hour or the work. I kept my eye on him as I set him to work, hoping to catch him in a moment of weakness, but every time I watched him he seemed perfectly happy to be there.
It was the last day of the week, and I hadn't forgotten what I'd said to him. When I grabbed the box of parts Bansi was working with and pulled them away, he shot me a surprised look.
I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him flush against me, watched as the alarm in his eyes shifted to interest. His hands settled on my waist and he leaned in, bending his head toward mine.
I turned aside and froze until he stopped, his head bowed and lips tickling my cheek. He let out a small breath, warm against my skin, and continued the motion down to kiss the side of my neck as though that's where he had meant to go all along.
I pushed his trousers down to his knees and tore mine open with shaking hands, and jerked us both off together with one hand circling our cocks and my teeth buried in the muscle of his shoulder. He stroked his hand over my hair as though I needed soothing, and when we parted, both of us sticky and gasping, he didn't even comment about the mess I'd made on his stomach, though his fancy shirt was probably ruined. He kept his back to me while he cleaned himself off and I watched him with my arms crossed, head tipped to the side, wondering if he was sulking and I'd gotten the upper hand back after all. But when he turned, his shirt balled up in his hands, he was smiling just a little bashfully, and asked if I didn't have a spare stashed about somewhere, because he'd probably make a poor impression on my customers if he put his own back on.
I did, as it happened, keep a spare shirt in the back of my shop, because sometimes I got grease on mine and I had the same fears. I pointed it out to him and left him to change, mostly because I only half believed he'd actually deign to wear something of a quality that I could afford, but also more than a little because if he did, I wanted to witness the sight.
His smile didn't waver, not even when he came out from the back with my shirt on, stretched just a little too tight over the width of his chest, and just a little too short for the length of his torso, and I clapped a hand over my mouth and collapsed into fits of laughter. He just leaned up against my counter, took himself in with a glance, and gave me a wry grin, like he understood the joke.
"Gods and devils," I gasped, when I had managed to get control of myself again. "You look like a fright."
He accepted the teasing with a smile, settled down onto the stool behind my counter and said, "Maybe I'll just spend the day sitting here," then cut me a quick, amused glance when I started snickering again. The bastard. I was dead sure he'd done it on purpose, just to make me laugh.
Of course, in retaliation, I made him get up and walk across the shop at every opportunity. I hadn't been lying before, when I'd told him the week's end was generally slow, so there were relatively few about to appreciate the absurdity. But he didn't seem to mind it, so long as I was about to laugh at him.
At the end of the day, when I'd closed the shop up behind the last customer, I turned to find Bansi leaning against my counter, his gaze steady on me, one brow raised with a gleam in his eye that made me nervous.
"I always took you for a man of your word, Renad."
"Aren't I?"
He shrugged, too blithe, and leaned his elbows on the counter. He looked ridiculous in my too-short shirt and his too-fine trousers. "It's the week's end. You said I could fuck you today."
I gave a shocked laugh. "Maybe. I said maybe. And this morning wasn't enough for you? What are you, a rabbit?"
"We didn't fuck this morning." He advanced on me. There was something unnerving about the intentness of his gaze, the way he walked straight toward me, his footsteps calm and measured, like a predator.
I made a joke and tried to seem glib, tried to shrug it off. But it wasn't a minute before he had me sitting on the edge of the counter, legs bare and wrapped around his waist. I held on to him as he drove into me and told myself it was because I'd slip off otherwise. It was because the pleasure made my fingers want to curl into something yielding, and the only thing in the shop that suited was Bansi.
I hated the way he made me feel, mostly because I enjoyed it so much. This was wrong, and despite everything he'd done to me, there was some part of me that still cared about that.
When we parted, I was too limp to care about anything anymore. Bansi withdrew from me and moved away to gather my clothes for me, but when I had my trousers on and was still wrestling my shirt on over my head, he moved in close again, laid his hands on my waist and pulled me in so my hips rested lightly against his. It was close and intimate and it made me want to circle the counter and put its solid bulk between us.
"Ren," he murmured, and I knew my fears were founded. He touched my hair. I moved my head away from his touch, but he didn't flinch, didn't withdraw. "Come home with me. Let's do this properly."
I gave a sharp laugh and drew back, slipping out of his hands. "No."
Even if I'd wanted to -- which I didn't -- I couldn't. Bansi didn't want me to come have supper with him, he wanted me to spend the night, and I had Elodie to think of. Elodie to care for. It was a sobering reminder of where my responsibilities lay. This... this was just a distraction.
"No," I said again, firmer, when it looked like he was going to insist. "I don't even want you here, why would I want to come home with you?" He dropped his gaze a little, and smiled a little, but otherwise gave no reaction. "I have my own home. My own life. I've responsibilities."
"Surely none that can't wait."
I jerked back. I couldn't have been more shocked if he'd slapped me. "You don't know a thing about me anymore." I planted my hands on his shoulders and pushed him at the door. "Get out."
He went, and for the first time all day, the cracks in his facade showed. He looked bewildered as I slammed the door in his face, then sank down to sit on the floor with my back against the work table cabinets.
It was a long time before I could rise and gather my things with hands that didn't shake and breath that didn't come fast and hard, even longer before I could leave without wanting to strike blows at everyone I passed on the street.
Corine was curious, when I arrived late. She didn't ask anything, but I could see the question in her eyes. But she wasn't concerned, which told me that she was wondering if maybe I'd taken her advice, and found a good man I could be interested in. It was so far from the truth that contempt made bile rise to coat the back of my tongue.
I resolved, afterwards, to hold Bansi off and deny him at every turn. I turned him away from my shop, I denied his offers of assistance, I did everything short of bar my door. But, though I'd put him off the once, now his smile and carefree ease were invulnerable. He showed up day after day with that same smile, that same easy stance and quicksilver grin.
For a week, I held strong, and grew more and more short-tempered at home, until Corine started to make sure that the tea was already brewed before I walked through the door -- so I could be on my way more quickly, I was sure -- and Elodie took to presenting me with drawings and woven flower wreaths and little gifts upon my return at the end of the day, as though to pre-empt any foul mood before it could be directed at her.
It didn't take long before my patience snapped. Bansi was a constant presence in my shop, to the point that regular customers had started to take him for a fixture, and ask their questions of him when I was busy. I might have found it less infuriating if Bansi hadn't astonished me by having the answers they needed, as ready as though he'd been doing this all his life.
When I would not give him a task to do, and he had no curious customers with which to keep himself occupied, he took it upon himself to do what I had already taught him, and more than once I found him at my elbow, working steadily, passing me the instruments I needed before I had done anything more than lift my head to look for them.
I hated that he was so competent. I hated that I got more work done easier with him at my side, that the shop ran more smoothly and I was able to leave for home earlier and it was all to do with the work he did, not mine.
My helplessness to do anything to keep him away, his constant imperviousness to every protest I made or order I gave, held at a low simmer, but the heat of my anger rose with every day that passed, until at the end of the week it burned through my resolve and I closed the shop for lunch just so I could push Bansi down to the floor and ride him mercilessly.
For the first time all week, I felt like things were within my grasp. I drove my hips down against him, and an answering shudder ran through him, and everything felt just a little bit easier. A little bit better.
When I'd come, Bansi tried to pull me down to lie against his chest. I rolled aside instead, found his clothes and threw them at him. He took the hint and dressed, and when I opened the shop again after lunch, I took a simple pleasure in the way his gaze followed me like a touch, the way he always seemed to orient himself toward me no matter where I moved about the shop, like a plant turning to follow the sun.
When I went to pick up Elodie that night, she had something tucked behind her back and her gaze was guarded. But she saw me and a smile bloomed across her face. She threw herself at me, the picture in her hand flapping as she ran. "Papa!"
I knelt down and let her hurl herself at me. Her arms went around my neck, her face pressed into my shoulder, and the weight of her slammed into me with an impact that rocked me back a little. "Hello there, darling. What have you got for me?"
She drew back and looked at the drawing in her hand. "I'm saving it," she said. "You don't need it."
"I don't? But I love your gifts."
"You don't need it," she said again, firmly. "You're happy today."
I was nonplussed, but she was a child, and often made comments that amused or bewildered me. I didn't think much beyond it, but when I picked her up and carried her inside, Corine glanced at me and her gaze lingered, one degree too intense.
I drank my tea without lingering over it. When I rose to leave, Corine reached out and put her hand on mine. "Stay," she said. "I'll make another pot, shall I?"
I froze, then slowly lowered myself back to my seat. "That would be wonderful," I said carefully, uncertain of what she intended. But when she had refilled the kettle and put it back on the stove, she sat down across the table from me, propped her chin in her hands, and said, "Do you want to talk about it?"
I turned the empty cup around in pointless circles, staring down into the dregs that remained. "I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, don't you?" She laughed, a slightly derisive sound. "You've been in a state all week. But you look better today. So." She smiled. "Do you want to talk about why you've been so unhappy?"
Dread turned my mouth to ash. "I really don't," I said past the dry taste of it on my tongue.
I hated Bansi all over again for having this effect. For making me awful to the people I cared about, and then for being the only thing that made me any better.
"I'm fine."
"Oh, certainly. I can see that well enough." She set back and folded her hands in her lap, but something seemed to be making her restless, uncomfortable. She couldn't keep her hands still, kept shifting them from her lap to the table, clasping them together, wrapping her fingers over the table's edge, drumming her fingernails against the table's grain.
"Very well," she said at last. "Do you want to talk about what's made you happy?"
I released a shaky breath of a laugh. "No," I said, shaking my head. "I really don't."
Her fingers stilled. The abrupt silence made a prickle of misgiving run down my spine. "I tell you everything, Renad," she said. It was true, but the way she said it made it sound like an accusation.
"Everything? I doubt that." I tipped the last drops from my cup onto my tongue, and savored them before I swallowed. "I don't know what you had for lunch today, or what you were doing before I got here, or how--"
"Everything important," she snapped.
I looked down at my hands, spread wide across the table. When I looked back up at her, she seemed more sad than anything else. I'd have liked it better if she was angry. "This isn't important," I said. "I promise. It's..."
I didn't even know how to finish the sentence. What was happening between me and Bansi... it wasn't anything. It was irritating, a nuisance. It was unwelcome. And the fucking, that was just me trying to make the best of a rotten situation.
"It's nothing."
She looked thoroughly unconvinced. But as her gaze lingered on me, she sighed and shook her head, then rose. She took my cup from me without asking. "You showed up in such a good mood, and now I've ruined it. I'm sorry." She refilled my cup from the new pot of tea and set it down in front of me, steaming hot and smelling wonderful. "You don't have to tell me anything, of course. But if nothing becomes something, I hope you will."
"It's not," I said, heavy with determination, and drank.
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