Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
HALEY
We met outside my building.
I’d changed three times, which was ridiculous. This wasn’t a date. We were just two people who worked together, who happened to live across the street from each other, getting food at a restaurant that was conveniently located near our buildings.
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 them had 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 knees didn’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.
Our feet touched under the table, but neither of us moved them.
It happened again thirty seconds later when I shifted my weight. My ankle brushed his shin. The contact didn’t last long. He didn’t pull back, and neither did I.
Savina returned with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. She set them on the table between us and poured without asking if we wanted any.
Tolrek didn’t object.
He nursed his glass. I had two. Not quickly, but enough that the edges of things went softer. Enough that I stopped editing myself the way I usually did.
“I found my apartment by accident,” I said. “I was looking at a different building and got off at the wrong subway stop. I walked past the building and there was a sign in the window. It felt like the kind of mistake that was supposed to happen.”
He watched me like people did when they were actually paying attention. I hoped he was and that I wasn’t boring him out of his mind.
“I furnished it with thrift shop finds,” I continued. “And this antique place near the university that has things piled everywhere and the owner doesn’t label anything. You have to dig. I like that. I don’t want new. I like things that were already loved by someone else.”
I stopped, catching myself. “Sorry. I’m rambling.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. I do this when I’m—” I cut myself off before I finished the sentence.
When I’m nervous. When I’m trying not to think about how close we’re sitting. I noticed every single time our feet touched under the table and he didn’t move away.
Savina appeared with bread and oil, setting them on the table between us with a flourish. She smiled at Tolrek, said something in Italian, and disappeared again before I could thank her.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“That you’re easy to feed.”
I laughed. “Is that a compliment?”
“From Savina, yes.”
“How did you learn Italian?”
“Duolingo.”
“Oh.” Lots of humans used the app. Why not orcs?
We ate bread. He tore his piece in half before dipping it, which seemed like the kind of detail I shouldn’t notice but couldn’t stop seeing. His hands were large enough that the bread looked small in them.
The words rushed out of me. “I didn’t tell you my name at the welcome dinner because you were talking to me like I was a regular person.” I said it to my wine glass, which felt safer than looking at him. “I didn’t want it to stop.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s alright. I don’t mind any longer.”
I looked up, finding him staring at me. He’d probably been watching me the entire time I’d been focused on my glass.
“My mom used to bake,” I said, because apparently I was just going to keep talking.
“All the time. Cookies, cakes, bread. The whole house always smelled like butter and sugar. I barely remember how they tasted, though. Isn’t that sad?
I had her in my life, and I know I loved her, and then she was gone.
I didn’t realize I’d started doing the same thing until my neighbor mentioned it.
An older couple rents the place to the right of my apartment.
They thanked me for bringing them cookies a lot, and I didn’t even remember deciding to make them. ”
Tolrek leaned forward, and his easy expression made me keep going.
“There’s a single mom on my left. Her son is twelve, and he says my chocolate chip cookies are better than the bakery ones. I think he’s telling a tall tale, but it’s a nice story, so I keep making them for him.”
“What do you put in them that makes them special?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It’s my mom’s recipe. I have all her recipes now.
But I don’t think it has anything the others don’t.
Vanilla. Extra vanilla. More than the recipe called for.
I didn’t notice until I tried making them from the recipe card she’d left, and they tasted wrong.
Then I realized she’d been doing it the whole time but she just hadn’t written it down. ”
He nodded and silence fell between us.
“Renkar would’ve liked this place,” he said, his finger tracing the pattern on the tablecloth.
“He would’ve made friends with Savina within five minutes.
He did that. Talked to everyone like he’d known them for years.
I never understood how, because that’s just not me.
Twins, but we weren’t alike in that way. ”
His tone made me sit very still.
“He would’ve ordered half the menu. Then convinced me to try everything. And he would’ve been right about all of it.”
The candlelight caught the edge of his jaw, creating shadows I couldn’t read.
Savina brought over our meals. Pasta, more than two people could eat. She set them down, beaming at both of us, making no effort to appear subtle. She spoke more Italian. Longer this time, with a rhythm that sounded like a question.
Tolrek replied.
“What did she say?” I asked after she’d left.
“She said you look like someone who’s good for people.”
I tilted my head. “Is that an accurate translation?”
He picked up his fork. “Close enough.”
We ate. The pasta was perfect. Rich and simple.