Chapter 9
Devin
Friday morning. Tyler's bed is empty.
I text back: Glad you're having fun. Be safe.
Dev did you GET SOME???
Going to do laundry now.
That's not an answer!!!
That's the only answer you're getting.
DEVIN GOT SOME!!!!
I turn off my phone before he can send more capslock excitement.
The shelter's laundry room is in the basement. Four ancient washers, three working dryers, and a booking sheet that people fight over constantly. Friday mornings are usually quiet. Most people are at work or school or sleeping off Thursday night.
I throw in my darks, settle on the cracked plastic chair with The Name of the Wind.
But I can't focus. I keep touching my lips like a stupid person in a romantic movie, feeling the ghost of Silas's mouth on mine.
The overlook. The city lights. The way he wrapped his jacket around both of us and I fit against his chest like I was designed to go there.
My phone buzzes. I turn it back on.
Not Tyler this time. Silas.
How's the head this morning?
Clear. Told you I don't drink.
Good. Reading?
Always. Laundry room today. Very glamorous.
I'm sure you make it look good.
My face heats. He's flirting. Through text. The man who communicates primarily in book recommendations and strategic grunts is flirting with me.
Kvothe is being insufferable at university.
He peaks at insufferable around chapter 40. Then circles back to almost likeable.
Almost?
He's Kvothe. Almost is the best he gets.
The washer buzzes. I switch everything to the dryer, start my whites. Three shirts, two pairs of jeans, a week of underwear and socks, one hoodie that's getting threadbare. My entire wardrobe fits in one load.
Another text: Still on for tonight?
My pulse kicks. Tonight. The date. Dinner at the Italian place on Pine.
Yeah. Still on.
Good. Pick you up at six?
I can meet you
Dev.
Right. Okay. Six.
Wear whatever you want. I'm wearing whatever Knox doesn't veto, which probably means a button-down.
Knox vets your outfits?
Knox vets everything. It's an alpha thing. Or a control thing. Possibly both.
I'm smiling at my phone in a basement laundry room that smells like industrial detergent and someone's forgotten gym socks, and I don't care. I have a date tonight with a man who reads my favorite books and kisses like he means it and brought me vending machine coffee every morning this week.
The laundry takes two hours total. I fold everything precisely, carry it upstairs, put it away. Check my three shirts. The blue one is the nicest, Tyler was right about that, but I wore it last night. The gray henley is clean. It's fine. It's a shirt. Silas won't care what I'm wearing.
Silas won't care what I'm wearing because Silas doesn't care about shirts. Silas cares about books and quiet and the sound I made when he kissed me, which I'm not thinking about in the shelter hallway at 10 AM.
I'm thinking about it.
* * *
The library is my holding pattern until noon. I read in my usual spot but nothing sticks. Kvothe's adventures at the University blur past because my brain keeps looping back to last night. The motorcycle. My arms around him, the vibration of the engine through both of us. The overlook.
Can I kiss you properly?
Properly. Like there was an improper version and he wanted to make sure I got the real thing.
I got the real thing.
At 11:45 I go to the café. Robin's already there, and he takes one look at my face and grins.
"Good birthday?"
"It was fine."
"Fine. He says fine. Dev, you're glowing. You look like a person who's been kissed. Have you been kissed?"
"I'm clocking in now."
"That's not a denial!"
"It's not a confirmation either."
"Your face is a confirmation. Your face is a billboard." He hands me an apron. "Silas came in this morning, by the way. Before you got here. Ordered tea."
"He doesn't drink tea. He drinks coffee. Black."
"Today he ordered tea. Sat in his booth for twenty minutes staring at nothing, drank half the tea, and left." Robin raises an eyebrow. "That's the behavior of a man who had a very eventful evening and is processing."
"Robin —"
"I'm just reporting facts. The man ordered tea. In my café. That's news."
The lunch rush saves me from further interrogation.
I fall into the rhythm. Steam, pour, tamp, pull.
The espresso machine and I understand each other.
I know its moods, its temperamental portafilter, the angle that gives the best crema.
My hands are steady and sure on the equipment even when the rest of me is vibrating with anticipation.
Silas walks in at 12:45.
Everything is different.
He's wearing a dark henley, sleeves pushed up, and I've seen him in henleys before, he basically lives in them, but today I know what's underneath the fabric.
Not details, not yet, but the shape of him.
The breadth of his chest where my back was pressed last night.
The strength in the arms that wrapped around me.
The warmth of his throat where I could feel his pulse when he held me.
"Hey," he says, and his voice is lower than usual, rougher, like he didn't sleep much either.
"Hey." I reach for the blue mug. "The usual?"
"Yeah."
Our fingers brush when I hand him the coffee.
Neither of us pulls away. It's maybe two seconds of contact, his index finger against my knuckle, but it sends heat up my arm and into my chest and I have to look down at the register because if I look at his face right now I'm going to say something embarrassing.
"Thanks," he says. Quiet. Warm. A whole paragraph in one word.
He goes to his booth. I go back to work.
But the air between the counter and the corner is charged in a way it wasn't before.
Every time I glance over, he's looking at me.
Every time he glances up from his book, I'm looking at him.
We keep catching each other and neither of us looks away fast enough anymore.
Robin watches this with barely contained glee.
"The sexual tension in this café is affecting my pastry cream," he says during a lull. "It's going to curdle."
"That's not how pastry cream works."
"It's how it works when two people are eye-fucking across my display case."
"Robin!"
"I call it like I see it. Go take your break."
It's only 2:15 but Robin's already pushing me toward the booth. I untie my apron, grab my water, and slide across from Silas.
"Hi," I say again, because apparently my vocabulary has shrunk to one word.
"Hi." He closes his book. The bookmark is still my first note, the dragon recommendation, the smiley face, now joined by three others. A small library of us. "You okay?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Didn't sleep much."
"Me either."
We look at each other. There's a beat of silence that isn't empty. It's full of last night, the overlook, the kiss, his hands on my face, the way he said can I kiss you properly like it mattered that I said yes.
"About tonight," he starts.
"I was thinking about what to wear and I only have three shirts."
"Wear any of them. I don't care about shirts."
"That's what I figured, but Tyler will have opinions when he gets back. He'll want to style me like a project."
"Tyler has good instincts. The blue shirt looked good."
"You noticed."
"I notice everything about you." He says it simply, echoing what I said at the overlook, and the callback makes my chest tight. "Dev —"
"Don't say something serious. I can't handle serious right now. I'll start crying in the café and Robin will never let me live it down."
He almost smiles. "Okay. Not serious. What chapter are you on?"
"Twenty-three. Kvothe just got to the Eolian."
"The music scene?"
"The music scene. It's beautiful and I hate him for making it look easy."
"Nothing Kvothe does is easy. He just makes it look that way."
"Is that a character observation or a life philosophy?"
"Both."
We talk about the book. About Kvothe's performance, about the difference between talent and practice, about how Rothfuss writes music in prose in a way that makes you hear it. It's our language, books, and falling back into it after the charged silence feels like breathing.
At 2:35 Robin calls me back. The afternoon passes.
Silas reads. I work. The rhythm is the same as every day this week but the frequency is different, higher, tighter, more aware.
Every time I walk past his booth to deliver an order, I feel the pull.
A gravity between us that wasn't there when he first walked into this café and ordered a large coffee, black.
It's only been about a week since a note in a pastry box to this, to him in my phone, in my chest, in the space behind my eyes where I used to keep only books.
At six, I clock out. Clean up. Pack my things. Robin hands me the pastry bag, extra full again, conspicuously so.
"Have fun tonight," he says. "And by fun I mean —"
"Goodbye, Robin."
"Be safe! Use protection! Not that you need protection from books, but —"
I'm already out the door.
Silas is waiting outside. Leaning against the brick wall of the library, hands in his jacket pockets, book under his arm. The late afternoon light catches the angles of his face and I think, not for the first time, that he looks like someone a better writer than me would know how to describe.
"Hey," he says.
"You waited."
"Said I'd pick you up at six. It's six."
"The date's not until — I figured you meant you'd pick me up at the shelter."
"I'd rather walk with you. If that's okay."
It's more than okay. We fall into step together, heading toward Madison.
The October evening is cool but not cold, the last of the daylight turning everything gold.
Our shoulders brush. His hand hangs at his side, close to mine, and I think about reaching for it but don't. Eight days is not long enough to know if someone wants you to hold their hand on a public street.
"You're thinking loud," he says.
"How can you tell?"
"Your eyebrows do a thing. Like they're arguing with each other."
"My eyebrows argue?"