Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
She arrived at Rasker’s door at exactly six o’clock. Nervous. Yes, she was. Bean was not. He wagged his tail and looked at the closed door with calm expectation. He probably smelled food through the door, too.
Rasker opened the door and waved them inside, sparing a generous pat for Bean, who accepted it as his due. “Thank you for inviting me,” she said. “I mean, us.”
Holly could smell the food, now, too. The suite’s table was filled with dishes, displayed on plates so vivid and beautifully painted that Holly’s father would have been captivated. Smaller plates arranged around a centerpiece of what appeared to be a whole fish, its skin charred and glistening.
“How did you…” But then she saw it. A compact food replicator sat on the dresser, sleek and obviously expensive.
Another device, larger, rested on the floor beside it.
She assumed that one had heated the food.
There were a few other things, too. A personal transmitter unit that could send encrypted communications, and a secondary screen propped against the wall.
Perfectly normal and typical for a person who worked as much as Rasker did and lived out of hotel rooms for months at a time.
“Oh.” She smiled crookedly. “Our amenities aren’t good enough for you, I see. ”
He took it as the joke she intended and raised one eyebrow. “Hmm. I like to eat food. Not rations. Exceptions made for your food, however, which is very good.”
“I’d like to upgrade the NuProds one of these days.” She glanced at the room’s ancient and forlorn NuProd unit that Rasker had relocated to a far corner of the room. The one Rasker had brought for his use sat prominently on the dresser. “If we can afford to upgrade the hotel.”
“You’ll get there.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and for the first time that she could recall, he looked awkward.
It was disarming on a man who was generally composed to a fault.
“Well. I hope you like dinner. This is not from the NuProd, by the way. I stopped by the Grand Market on Colossal-6 on my way back and picked up some favorite dishes. Kept them in stasis bags in hopes you’d join me in eating them. ”
“Wow, really?” Holly blinked at him. “It all looks delicious. And your dishes are stunning, too.” She leaned down, admiring the plates the food was on with their bold colors. “Did you get these at the Grand Market, too?”
He shook his head. “The Emporium. Those two Vepins always know what you like, even if you wish you had more subdued tastes.”
“I know what you mean.” Holly gestured to the turquoise dress she had on. She’d found it in The Emporium weeks ago—before she spent the rest of her credits on an air circulator—and had been waiting for a reason to wear it. “Sol-Arc would not approve.”
He pulled out a chair for her. “Well, I do.” He took his own seat across the table and looked at her with those winter-sky eyes, unhurried. “You look beautiful, Holly.”
She blushed. Blushed. Like a teenager on a first date, not a forty-two-year-old woman who had been around the galaxy and back. She busied herself with the napkin in her lap and was rescued by Bean, who had planted his rump on the floor between them and was looking up expectantly.
“He’s not getting any of that,” Rasker said.
“I know.” Holly sighed. “Poor Bean. But it would be poor us if we gave him table scraps.” She cast a dubious glance at the determined beagle. “Trust me.”
Rasker dished out portions on their plates, giving her a taste of everything.
He told her the names of the dishes, and their ingredients, and she forgot most of them immediately, but the smells were extraordinary.
Warm spices she couldn’t identify. Flavors smoky and sweet.
A sauce that was pale green and smelled like fresh herbs and sunshine.
“This one is special. Not from the Grand Market, but from the southern coast of Nakri,” he said, placing a piece of charred fish on her plate.
The flesh was white and flaky, and glistened with oil.
“It’s served with sea salt and a citrus that only grows in tide pools.
You eat it with this,” he added, spooning what looked like a stew of shellfish and dark vegetables onto it.
“It’s something my mother made when I visited her the other day. ”
Holly looked up. He had not mentioned his mother before.
“She’s a good cook,” he said. “But this one dish is my absolute favorite. I told her there was a special woman I wanted to share it with and she made a big batch of it.”
“You told your mom about me?” Every single thing on the table was forgotten as she sat there, fixated on his impending answer.
He smiled and his gills flared just enough to reveal his nerves. “Yes. I didn’t get into details. Our situation is complicated.”
“You left out the part about you trying to buy my family’s space station,” she said, taking in every little twitch. Every glance.
“I did mention that, actually.” He raised his brows. “That’s the complicated part, you see.”
“Ah, yes.” Holly took in a deep, fortifying breath.
“She doesn’t care that I’m human?” Because that was another complicated part.
Nakrians were known to be snobbish with nonaquatic species, and they reserved harsh judgment for humans, who had treated their own oceans poorly for many hundreds of years.
“She did not care that you’re human.” He met her gaze with a hint of amusement. “She asked if you like to swim, though.”
Holly’s thoughts returned to their cavern pool frolic and heat rose to her cheeks. Still, she twirled her fork and lifted one shoulder. “I like it well enough with you.”
One corner of his mouth curved. “That’s what I told her.
” Before she could ask what, exactly, he told his mother about the two of them, he spooned the last thing onto her plate and held up a hand.
“Number one: my mother does not know the details about our relationship. And number two: eat the braised squglit before it gets cold.”
Holly shut her mouth, pushed away thoughts of Rasker’s mother, and tasted the braised squglit first. The broth was rich and slightly briny, and had a delicate sweetness that reminded her of mussels, but with a depth she couldn’t place.
The taste was warm and clean. It settled on her tongue and made her want more.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, watching her. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
She tried everything. The charred fish with its bright citrus.
A salad of crisp, unfamiliar greens tossed with a nutty sauce.
Roasted vegetables in a glaze that was simultaneously sweet and hot.
A flatbread that tore in soft strips and tasted faintly of smoke.
She ate more than she had in weeks, possibly months, and Bean gave up begging to lie down in a dejected sploot on the floor.
The conversation moved between light and serious, but it was always interesting. Holly figured that’s what happened when people stopped circling each other and decided to sit down and stay.
He told her more about Nakri. The coastal city he’d grown up in with a single mother after his father left, where the buildings were carved from a pale stone that changed color with the tides.
The smell of salt on everything. The markets that ran along the waterfront and stayed open through the night, lit by strings of bioluminescent lanterns that the fishermen’s children made from the bladders of deep-water creatures.
He described the sound of the harbor at dawn, when the fishing boats went out and the water was so still you could see straight to the bottom, and Holly thought of the underground pools and the look on his face when he’d been swimming through them. That unguarded bliss.
She told him about her parents. About her father’s pottery and how his hands were always making something, and how her mother chose each word with such precision that conversations with her sometimes felt like watching someone assemble a clock.
She told him what it was like growing up on the edge of a forest, with wolves at the windows and owls in the trees and a quiet that breathed if you were still long enough to notice.
She told him that her father once chased a fox out of the kitchen with a broom and her mother had calmly continued eating her breakfast.
Rasker smiled at that. A real smile, not the practiced curve she’d gotten used to from him. “They sound extraordinary.”
“They are.” Holly looked down at her plate and realized it was nearly empty. “They’re the reason I didn’t turn into a complete drone at Sol-Arc. Every time I went home, they reminded me who I was.” She paused. “I didn’t go home enough.”
“Most people don’t.”
She glanced at him. “Do you?”
“I try to get there a few times a year.” He turned his glass slowly on the table. “When I’m there, I can feel the pull of it. The water. The air. But I’ve been on land for so long that my body forgets that solid ground isn’t my only natural habitat.”
Holly understood and nodded. She’d felt off balance when she’d first arrived at Moone’s Landing.
Her body and mind knew the gravity and patterns of Nova, but this place reminded her more of home than the place where she’d lived for twelve years.
Now, she knew the difference between living somewhere and belonging somewhere, and she couldn’t say she liked knowing that she’d been repeating patterns that didn’t mesh with what she actually wanted.
“You’ll remember,” she said. “And the pools are there for you anytime.”
He looked at her, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. Bean let out a long sigh through his nose, and settled his chin on Holly’s shoe.
They cleared the plates together. Or, rather, Holly tried to help and Rasker waved her off and did it himself, which she protested until he poured her another glass of trineling wine. They chatted and shared and enjoyed each other’s company beside the window that looked out over the square.
The rain system was dropping a soft mist that caught the light of the lampposts and turned the stone paths silver.
Holly could see the fountain, still broken, and the darkened storefronts, and the soft glow of Harry’s mushroom shop at the far end.
It was quiet out there. Peaceful, as Moone’s Landing could be when it wasn’t falling apart.
“I want to show you something,” Rasker said.