15. Vesper
Vesper
ONE WEEK LATER
“Are you quite sure I do not look entirely undignified?”
Valefar sits cross-legged on my living room rug with a bath towel draped over his shoulders, holding perfectly still. Bethie is perched beside him with the solemn authority of a very small artist, dragging a streak of purple across his left horn.
A warmth spreads through me. Emotional. Intimate. Long-awaited. And completely unexpected.
On the television, Beauty and the Beast is halfway through the opening number. Provincial villagers with their aggressively catchy judgment.
I press my fingertips to my lips and try to give his question the seriousness it deserves. “Not at all, Big Guy. In fact, you look entirely sexy to me.”
I fail spectacularly at containing my grin.
His golden eyes narrow. “I question the objectivity of your assessment.”
“You should. I’m extremely biased.” I smile. I find every part of him sexy. But today? It’s just…more.
Bethie pats the horn with the flat of her brush. “Pwetty.”
His whole expression softens. “Thank you, little beastie.”
“See?” I gesture at her with my coffee. “Second opinion.”
He considers this gravely. “Her judgment carries significantly greater credibility than yours.”
“Rude.” I contain a laugh.
On screen, Belle turns down a proposal in front of the entire village. Valefar’s tail flicks once against the rug, which is the closest thing he has to a running commentary before he actually starts talking. It takes him a few more minutes.
“Why is no one alarmed by the animate candelabra?” he wonders.
“But talking ponies is somehow not worthy of this level of shock and awe?” I can’t help but call him out.
His tail flicks restlessly, his lips pressing together. “You are missing the point, Ves.”
Bethie makes an outraged sound because the horn moved. He apologizes to her, then continues. “And the teapot speaks. As well as the wardrobe. This is quite abnormal. Is this not the most pressing concern in this narrative?”
“Apparently not.”
I lean against the wall, arms crossed. Because it’s far too much fun to watch his reactions to everything. I don’t know if I’ll ever get bored by it…or tired of him.
He falls quiet for about ninety seconds. Then the Beast throws his first tantrum, and Valefar’s brows come down like a storm front. He hisses, “This male has taken her captive.”
“He has,” I acknowledge.
“He also shouts considerably when he has no right to!”
“He does.”
“And why does he not listen to her or the household?”
I lift my mug and sip my coffee. “Remember when I mentioned the miscommunication trope? It’s kind of standard when it comes to fairy tales.”
“It is a hostage arrangement with musical numbers.”
I choke on a laugh.
Bethie switches brushes as if she’s a surgeon changing instruments and starts on the right horn in green, which will be incredible with the purple. Valefar tilts obligingly to give her the angle.
He does not stop watching the screen. He watches through the library, and the snowball fight, and the ballroom, and by the time the last petal falls he has gone very still, studying in that intimate way he does.
I’ve made it to the couch by now. Bethie has moved on to her shape-sorter ball, wishing she could convince the purple triangle that it belongs in the star-shaped hole.
Then the light comes. The Beast rises off the balcony. The transformation happens. Valefar’s jaw sets. “I do not trust this conclusion.”
“What conclusion?”
“She fell in love with the Beast.” His gaze stays on the television. “Then they remove the Beast and present her with a prince she does not recognize.”
I blink at him. “She knew,” I say softly.
“That seems insufficient.”
And there it is. The thing under the thing. I set my coffee on the end table.
He turns toward me then. Purple on one horn, green on the other, a bath towel around his enormous shoulders, and the most careful expression I have ever seen on a face designed by Hell to be terrifying.
Valefar tilts his head. “Would you still like me if I did not have horns or a tail?”
I freeze, throwing him an incredulous look. “Of course I would,” I tell him but can’t help but lean forward and whisper in his ear, “But I really would miss the tail.”
The tail in question curls smugly around my ankle.
“Noted,” he says.
And that’s when someone knocks on my front door. Nobody knocks on my front door at nine-thirty on a Saturday. I get up, cross to the window, and pull the curtain back one inch.
“Fuck.”
My mother’s Buick is in the driveway.
“Fu—” Bethie begins, delighted while banging the plastic shapes against the ball.
I go shock white—but recover quickly. “Nope. Nope. Fun. Mommy said fun.” I’m already moving. “Vale.”
He is on his feet before I finish saying his name. Seven feet of him, unfolding out of a cross-legged position like a drawbridge going up.
“Horns,” I hiss. “Tail. Everything.”
The air shivers. It’s such a small sound, like a match being struck underwater, and then he’s just a very tall man in a borrowed Henley.
In those few moments, Bethie has returned to the paint, several construction paper masterpieces on the coffee table, completely dry. She snatches up more paper, reaching for the paint pots.
I scoop Bethie up. She informs me, loudly, that she is working.
“I know, bug, I know, you can keep playing in here, “I drop her in the highchair, slap the tray down, and dump the paint pots and a sheet of construction paper in front of her. “There. Art. Beautiful art. On the paper. Please.”
She looks at the paper, then at me. She dips her index finger in the purple and wags it, so proud of the gesture. I clap a couple of times.
But the knock comes again.
Approaching the door, I take a deep breath and open it. “Mom. Hi.”
My mother is in a pale blue cardigan, her purse hooked over her forearm, and her attention strays past me to my living room.
“I was out this way,” she says, “and I thought I’d see my granddaughter.”
She is not out this way. Nothing is out this way. Not with how my house sits at the very isolated edge of the neighborhood, bordering the woods.
“Sure,” I say, and step back.
She makes it about four seconds inside before she notices him. Valefar is standing by the couch with his hands clasped behind his back, deciding to remain still and as casual as he can.
“Good morning,” he says politely.
My mother’s mouth thins. “Hello.”
Bethie shrieks with joy, pointing to him. “Pwecious!”
I’m grinning from ear to ear when she strains toward him. Valefar’s entire face softens. My mother’s does not.
“Pwecious,” my mother repeats.
“It’s a nickname,” I clarify, moving toward them.
She sets her purse down on my end table, and I watch her observe his boots by the door. Then the folded stack of his laundry on the arm of the chair because I ran a load yesterday and did not think about what my house would look like to somebody standing in it with an agenda.
“He’s here,” she says.
“Hello to you too, Mom.”
She sticks her nose up. “I thought he was helping at the shop.”
“He was.”
“That was a week ago, Vesper.” She sniffs.
I tap the side of my nose, playing it cool. “Excellent memory.”
Her jaw works. Then, lower, with a glance at Bethie: “Can I talk to you?”
“You are.” I shrug.
“Alone.”
I sigh and follow her into the kitchen. She doesn’t even wait for the doorway to clear. “I don’t think that man should be living here. With her.” She sneers.
I cross my arms over my chest, defensive. “And I don’t remember asking.”
“You barely know him.”
My spine bristles. “I know enough.”
“Do you?” Mom moves farther into the kitchen, setting her purse on one of the stools. Her fingers linger on the strap. “Vesper, I saw something at the shop.”
“I wouldn’t know since you rushed out the door without even saying goodbye.”
She pauses as I open the refrigerator to do a little lunch prep for Bethie. Cutting board? Check. Strawberries, grapes, cheese, turkey, and red peppers? Her favorite. I begin chopping them up into little pieces, segmenting them into child-size plates with the plastic covers.
“I know I saw something. It was…unnatural.” She sniffs.
Focused on the task at hand, I respond with, “You were across a crowded room like a peeping tom and judging a man you’d already decided you didn’t trust.”
Mom exhales through her nose and tightens her hold on the purse strap. “There is something very wrong about him.”
“Your granddaughter would seriously disagree,” I point out, smiling to myself when Bethie giggles and says “Pwecious” again from the other room. “And he’s been the perfect houseguest.”
“He is not just a houseguest if he’s living here,” she mutters.
“And that is the actual problem.” I slide the last pieces of red pepper into Bethie’s container and snap the lid into place. “You don’t get to regulate my dating life, Mom.”
Her eyes flare wide. “Wait. You’re dating him?”
I won’t put a label on what Valefar and I have. But it’s the closest thing. Instead, I carry the cutting board to the sink and turn on the water. “That’s not your business.”
“But Rick—”
“It’s not his business either.”
My tone wasn’t angry, which almost surprises me.
No raised voice, no shaking hands. No annoyance despite how my mother never fails to bring up the subject of Rick in every conversation.
I simply rinse the cutting board beneath the faucet and set it into the dishwasher, while my mind processes how it would have been a screaming match a few months ago. Maybe even a few…weeks.
Before Valefar.
The tether doesn’t tighten. But it does tweak. Like a guitar string strummed, a musical vibration rippling through me, through us.
I close the dishwasher.
Something in Mom’s expression changes. Not acceptance. God forbid we achieve a miracle before lunch. But she stops pushing for now.
After pulling up her purse strap again, she smooths out her floral-print skirt while strategic eyes settle on me. “Let me take Elsbeth to the park for a couple of hours,” she says. “The one by my house. I brought the good sunscreen. You could use the morning.”