Chapter 21 Bliss #2
"Ronald," Olog replies, which is my father's name and which my father has never, to my knowledge, been addressed by at a formal event in his life, because everyone calls him Mr. Vance or sir.
My father's jaw tightens, but he adjusts.
"I owe you an apology," my father says, stiffly, looking somewhere between Olog's collarbone and the middle distance. "The comment I made at the wedding was inappropriate."
He means the checkbook. The how much is my daughter paying you moment that Olog levelled into dust with nine words and a silence that lasted approximately three seconds and felt like three years.
Olog looks at him for a moment.
"Bliss is extraordinary," he whispers. "Anyone who has been too preoccupied to notice that has simply been looking at the wrong things. I hope you have more time for her going forward."
My father opens his mouth.
Closes it.
"Yes," he says, after a long pause. "Well."
He picks up a small plate of petit fours, nods once in the way men of his generation gesture toward emotions they have no vocabulary for, and moves away.
I stare after him.
"Did you just," I start.
"I did not humiliate him," Olog says. "He is your father. It serves you better if he is functional."
I look up at him and feel something warm and immovable settle in my soul.
"You're incredible," I say.
"I am thorough," he corrects, but his hand finds mine.
We leave at half nine.
The party is still running at full pitch behind us, the sound of the string quartet and a hundred conversations spilling through the heavy doors as they close.
The night outside is cold and clear, the city lit up around us, and my breath makes small clouds in the air as we walk down the wide stone steps toward where Olog's car waits at the curb.
I have my heels in one hand and my clutch in the other because I shed the shoes approximately forty minutes ago on the grounds that I have nothing left to prove tonight and my feet have done their part. The stone is cold under my bare feet, and seriously, who cares?
Olog matches my pace without comment, which is generous given that his natural stride covers roughly twice the ground mine does. I know he slows down for me. He always has. I used to think it was polite professionalism. Now I know it's just him.
At the bottom of the steps, he draws me off the pavement and into the quiet of a broad stone alcove, out of the wind, and I turn to face him.
He is backlit by the street beyond, the city light catching the silver of his eyes, and he looks at me with that focused, unhurried attention that I once found unnerving and now find is the most grounding thing I have ever experienced.
He straightens my coat lapel, which is already straight.
"Did the evening meet your expectations?" he asks.
I laugh, the sound bouncing off the stone.
"Olog."
"It is a reasonable operational debrief."
"My aunt left two hours early. My father apologised to you and then ate his feelings in the form of miniature pastries.
My mother told me my dress was lovely, which is the first time she has complimented my appearance since the summer of 2019.
" I count these off on my fingers, looking up at him.
"Susan hasn't texted the family group chat a single critical word, which is unprecedented in recorded history.
So yes. Yes, I would say it met my expectations. "
He considers this.
"Good."
"Very good," I say. "Exceptional, actually. Five stars."
"The contract has been voided," he says. "Reviews are no longer applicable."
I step closer, tipping my head back. "Then consider it a personal recommendation."
His hands come to my waist, warm through the fabric of my coat, and he looks down at me with an appearance that is not quite smiling and is more than smiling, is something that lives past what smiling can hold.
"I don't require a rating," he whispers.
"I know." I reach up and curl my fingers into his lapel.
"But you're getting one anyway. Because you showed up in that hotel lobby in the best suit I've ever seen and you introduced yourself to my ex-boyfriend like you were filing a police report, and you slept on the floor of a luxury suite because you were taking the professional ethics of a gig-work fake boyfriend arrangement completely seriously, and you stepped in front of a glass of red wine to protect a silk dress, and you got down on one knee in a car park and offered me a throwing knife. "
"It is a traditional—"
"I know what it is." I pull his lapel gently and he comes down to me, his forehead dropping to mine, his breath warm. "And I'm keeping the knife forever, and I am keeping you forever, and so for the rest of your life, every single day, you are getting five stars."
He makes a low sound in his chest.
"That is a logistically unsustainable rating," he murmurs. "Standards require comparative—"
I kiss him.
He stops talking.
His arms come around me properly, both of them, encompassing and warm and certain, and he kisses me back the way he does everything, with his complete and undivided attention, with no part of him somewhere else, and the city goes on around us in its entirely unimpressed way, and I don't notice it at all.
When we separate, my heart is doing its specific Olog thing, the one I have stopped trying to regulate.
"Take me home," I tell him.
"Yes," he says.
He takes my shoes from my hand without being asked, tucks them under one arm, and opens the car door, and I slide in, and he rounds the car, and when he gets in beside me, filling the driver's seat the way he fills every room, he rests his hand on the centre console with his palm open.
I put my hand in his.
He closes it.
We drive home.