Chapter 20 Naomi
TWENTY
NAOMI
Devil’s in the Details
It was the day of the mixer, and I wanted to throw up.
“It’s going to go great,” Carolina reassured me as I helped her out of the car.
I was beginning to think that my being a nervous wreck was actually helping my friend.
Although this wasn’t her first time out of her apartment since that fateful outage, it was by far the biggest event she’d been to since puberty, and I really wanted it to go well.
Not just for me, of course, but for everyone who might be attending. We’d had a few RSVPs, so I had hope that it wouldn’t be a complete bomb, but one never knew.
“I hope so,” I answered as I closed my car door behind her, still gripping her hand.
Physical touch helped ground my friend, so I tried to make sure to do it whenever we were out and about.
That was still a rare occurrence, and only happened maybe once a month, but it was incredible, considering where my best friend had started. “I really do.”
We’d all put so much work into it. Between online forums, flyers, and word of mouth, I felt like we’d really crammed as much as we could into the time we had. And speaking of the time that we had, I couldn’t believe that Rowan and I were approaching six months of being a couple.
Absolutely wild.
It was insane to me that it had been eight months since we first started chatting on the app, eight months since I thought I would be single forever.
It hadn’t even been a full year yet, but we’d already passed so many milestones.
We’d spent our first Halloween together.
And although Rowan didn’t traditionally celebrate Christmas, we’d shared that as well.
We’d welcomed in the new year. Spent countless nights counting the stars, and visited more restaurants than I could count.
And through all of that, I’d fallen far deeper in love than I’d ever expected.
It was perfect. Well, nearly perfect, because there was one thing that was driving me absolutely batty.
And it was that Rowan was so fucking SLOW!
Not his intellect. No, that was as sharp as ever. It was just that after about three months of dating, I realized that the timeline for things was just straight up different when dating someone who was over a hundred years old.
It was easy to forget my boyfriend’s years when he looked younger than me, but whenever I got worried that we hadn’t dropped the L-word, or even mentioned a possibility of moving in together, I reminded myself that not only was he from a different time, but he also genuinely experienced said time differently than I did.
Besides, we were also insanely busy between being Tweety’s main support and preparing for the mixer.
So, it wasn’t like we weren’t doing really important things together.
And I supposed that I could be the one to drop the L-bomb first, but it was the first time in my life that a relationship had lasted so long, and I didn’t want to ruin everything by pushing Rowan into something he wasn’t ready for.
Even if I really, really would like to tell him how I felt about him.
“You ready to head in?” I asked Carolina, bringing myself back to the task at hand. “I made sure we would be the first ones here, and we have a quiet room set aside only for me, you, and Rowan.”
“I’m fine, for the moment,” Carolina said with a lot of confidence. I could tell that some of it was put on, but not all of it, and that was a victory already. “Let’s head inside. Rowan should be here soon, right?”
He was usually my passenger princess, as it was hard to get a license when one immigrated to the USA about eighty years ago.
Rowan had insisted he arrive with Iko. The cyclops could have Ubered to the event himself, but my boyfriend wanted them to get ready and arrive together, and me with Carolina.
Almost like a bit of a prom. Was it silly?
Potentially to some. But I thought it was sweet.
“Yeah, he should.” And I couldn’t wait to see him. Although we’d only been apart since he’d kissed me before he went to sleep at dawn, I already missed him intensely.
“That’ll be good.”
“Very.” I was quite tickled that my best friend liked my boyfriend so much. I didn’t know what I would have done if the two were at odds, because they were the most important people in my life. “Let’s head inside.”
We were the first to arrive, just like I’d planned.
Inside, I could see the decorations Rowan and I had been putting up every night for the past week in the light of day.
Well, the light of dusk. The sun was setting, the rush of the day bowing out to the slower pace of twilight, and soon it would be dark enough that Rowan would rise and head to Iko’s.
“How many hours do we have until people are here?”
“I think an hour until the DJ. Food should be delivered in… two hours? That’s around when Rowan will get here, and then people who are on time will arrive about an hour after and the lates will arrive anywhere from one to two hours after that.
” I looked to my friend uncertainly. “You’re sure that’s not too long for you?
If you want to go back to your apartment and wait until later, I understand. ”
But she shook her head. “I want to be here for my friend. Besides, we’ve been training for this. Time to see if all the hard work has paid off.”
“I’d say it has if you could be here at all.”
“Sap.”
“You know it.”
We hugged, and it just affirmed everything I was doing. This mixer was going to go great. It had to. Because I believed all the way down to the depths of my heart that outside of the most heinous people, everyone deserved a best friend.
Or at least the chance to find one.
“I believe you had a checklist of last-minute details and things to make sure are right?” Carolina said when we parted, both of us a bit misty-eyed.
“I do. I’ll work from the top and you from the bottom?”
“Excuse me, if either of us is a bottom, it’s you, Miss Thang.”
My mind flooded with many scenes of my time with Rowan that proved just that.
One probably would assume the opposite from our dynamic from outside of the bedroom, but when we were in between the sheets, I loved when Rowan took control.
And goodness, he was so good at it. Sure, I challenged him sometimes, but that was only because I wanted him to earn it that time, and it was just as delicious to lose.
“Guilty as charged.”
Laughing, we went about our business, making sure all trash cans had lids, that all the drink stations were set up and only waiting to be filled, and that the freezer in the kitchen was filled with bags of ice.
There were lots of other little things too—toilet paper in the several bathrooms, brooms and mops ready to go in case of spills—stuff I wouldn’t normally have thought of if I hadn’t tried to plan everything to a T.
I was sure there were some gaps in my extensive list, but I had done my best to mitigate them.
And the best was all I could do, really.
Things started to pick up once the DJ and caterer arrived, making me that much more cognizant of how much time was passing by, and I was relieved when I heard one of the side doors open and a familiar, booming voice echoed down the hall from the kitchen.
“If you just want to park me somewhere out of the way, my good friend,” Iko said at his typical volume. “I’ll keep myself occupied. I brought that book your darling gave me for my birthday.”
I blushed slightly at that. I had gone on enough outings with him and Rowan to know I liked the guy, but it would behoove me to bring along earplugs for especially long interactions.
Naturally, I’d been quite flattered when the cyclops had invited me to his birthday a couple months back, and I’d done a whole lot of searching online to get him the entirety of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books in braille, as he’d mentioned liking the author, even if he knew her works had been heavily edited by her daughter.
I’d been bemused at that, remembering reading about the little cabin tucked deep into the big woods myself, but that bemusement had turned into me genuinely being touched when Iko started carrying around at least one of those books with him “just in case he had time to read a lick.” He was a sweetheart, sweater vest and all.
“Rowan’s here!” I said, turning to Carolina as she got tape out of a cabinet, so we could secure the corners of the tablecloths to the serving tables.
Although it was the dead of winter, some magical folks needed it colder than others, so we had a cooler part of the room with fans and a warmer part with heaters.
It was creating just enough airflow to make the table coverings flap around, and irritating the shit out of me.
“Let’s go say hi,” Carolina said, all smiles even though I could tell she was definitely getting tired. Hopefully, she would take a nap in our quiet room if she needed it. Her weighted blanket was in my trunk for when she needed it.
“You sure? You don’t have to. If you want, you can stay here and kind of just… be for a little bit.”
She shook her head. “Nah. Rowan put just as much work into this as you or I did, so he’s part of our team. Let’s go greet your man and give him all the updates.”
I took her hand. “Thank you,” I murmured, hoping she could tell that I was expressing gratitude for all of her. For being who she was. And for being my friend. I was so proud of her for how far she’d come.
“Of course, girlie. Come on.”
We hurried out of the kitchen to what I called the landing zone.
Although the main entrance was in front, this was a quieter one in the back with less lights for those who needed it.
It had a rather austere sofa, several chairs, and a couple of coffee tables in case people wanted to sit and talk in smaller groups away from the crowd but not necessarily be in the isolation of the quiet room.
If we had a crowd, of course. That remained to be seen.