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Jade had fifteen minutes left on the clock when the guest Sarah had just checked in approached the counter, and her heart sank immediately. Between the frown and the entitled, dismissive attitude she could recognize at ten paces by now, there was no way she was getting out of there on time.
And of course Sarah was nowhere to be seen now. She took a deep breath and smiled as sincerely as she could. “Hi, how can I help you?”
“Hi,” he responded impatiently. “Can you explain to me why we weren’t upgraded? If this is the way you treat your rewards members, I don’t know how you can bill yourselves as a luxury hotel.”
The Shelton wasn’t a luxury hotel, but she wasn’t allowed to actually say so. The price point should have done the talking for her, but this man probably had no idea how much suites at the Grand or even the Sunfair went for. “Of course. Let me look into that for you.” She tapped a couple keys, trying to access his booking the round-about way, so she wouldn’t have to annoy him by asking for any information. Fortunately, she already knew he was the last processed check-in. “Just to make sure you’re aware, upgrades are subject to availability, and some levels might not be eligible for certain–”
“Are you seriously trying to give me the run around already? You haven’t even looked at my account–”
“No, sir,” Jade said, still smiling apologetically. “I’m just pulling it up now, but it’s policy to make sure we communicate–”
“Just sort it out!”
“Of course.” The booking opened on her screen. “Mr. Richter.”
He huffed.
“It looks like your membership with us is recent, which is fine, and thank you for joining the program. For your tier, it looks like you’re eligible for an upgrade to a double-king room instead of–”
“Yeah, so do it!” Mr. Richter tapped his fingers irritably on the counter. “I swear, none of you customer ‘service’ people can think for yourselves.” He made actual air quotes around service, despite being a fifty-something man in a suit. “Why you didn’t do it automatically when you checked me in–”
“I can’t tell you why the representative who checked you in didn’t okay the upgrade, but it’s possible your eligibility didn’t display in our system like it’s supposed to.” Jade kept her face neutral, but inside she was more than a little angry. Sarah had short hair, glasses, and always wore the largest allowable earrings under the dress code. Absolutely no one could have confused them, but they were both Latina. “Sometimes–”
“I’m not interested in hearing some excuse. For the money I spend–”
“I’m just checking our availability now, sir,” Jade said smoothly, before she could give in to the urge to tell him that he’d gotten a budget room on the lowest rewards tier at a hotel that was more the best of mid-range than the worst of high quality, and that hardly made him a high roller.
And that was why Sarah hadn’t upgraded him; the only available room was in front of the third-floor elevators, with a view of the parking lot and the side of the business apartments next door.
“So I can upgrade you, but it looks like the only available room is not in a desirable location. If you’re more–”
“Is this seriously how your rewards members are treated?”
Jade took a deep breath, mentally counted to three, and gave him a nice, fresh smile. “Unfortunately, our only available double-king room looks out on the side lot, whereas your current room has a view of the park–”
“Unbelievable.”
If he’d inquired politely, Jade might have thrown in a perk or two to soften the disappointment. If he’d been nice about it, she might have overridden the lower-tier restrictions and bumped him up to a deluxe room even though it probably meant getting a lecture from Melody later. But he hadn’t, and now she was going to be the politest brick wall he’d ever met. And if that made her late to meet her boyfriend, well… well, that sucked, and she hated it.
“I’m so sorry, sir. Since you’re at our lowest loyalty tier, you’re only eligible for a single level of upgrade, and I only have the one double-king available. Would you like me to switch you over?”
Ask for my supervisor, she wished silently. Melody would go off on her if she clocked out halfway through dealing with a guest, but if she had a good reason to hand him over then she could go. Plus, then he’d be Melody’s problem, and they both deserved that.
He didn’t, though. Of course not. The one time it would actually be helpful.
“There is no way this hotel is full,” the man insisted, fixing her with a glare. “Don’t try to tell me–”
“You’re absolutely right, but unfortunately our other available rooms are not eligible under the upgrade.”
They went back and forth about that for a minute, him pretending he didn’t understand how the different rewards tiers worked and insisting on a full upgrade while Jade patiently explained three times that he didn’t qualify. When he realized she wasn’t afraid to puncture his bubble of importance by specifying how much money he was actually paying compared to how much he would need to be paying, he switched to demanding she apply his single upgrade, and then upgrade him again to a deluxe room, as if that would somehow get around the limits, and it was Jade’s turn to pretend she didn’t understand him.
He stepped away for a moment, holding up a finger at her rudely, and made a phone call, presumably to his wife or whoever else was in the room. “I’m going to get the upgrade,” he told her, as if Jade couldn’t hear him. “And then they’ll just have to give us a second upgrade to make up for the trouble. It’s ridiculous.”
And she would be the one who got in trouble when he came back down later and complained about being next to the elevators, because she was going to be the one who’d upgraded him. If only Dale was working today, she would be more than justified in involving her supervisor at this point – but Melody would do everything short of writing you up if you passed off a customer who hadn’t specifically asked to be escalated. Jade glanced at the time again, heart sinking when she saw she still had five minutes left. He’d be off the phone by then and she’d be stuck again.
“Hey!” The sharp interjection made her jump and she turned involuntarily toward the speaker, blinking. “Can I get some service here, or do you gotta spend all your time on some idiot?”
Mr. Richter puffed himself up, affronted, taking a step back towards the counter – then deflated just as quickly when Eli shot him a challenging look. Well. That… it really, really should not have been hot. Jade did not approve of threatening people. She didn’t.
Even this guy.
Still, she wasn’t going to say no to an out, even if she wasn’t sure what he was doing. She shot Mr. Richter an apologetic, we’re-in-this-together look, as if to say Let me just take care of this.
He huffed and shuffled, but didn’t make any further trouble, turning away like he’d never paid any attention to anything outside his conversation. Jade slid over. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, sir, but this gentleman was here before you…” She widened her eyes, trying to convey What are you doing?! without letting on to the real guest that she knew him.
“That guy doesn’t even have a real problem,” Eli announced loudly. She wondered how long he’d been listening. “He just wants free shit. I stayed here last week, and the service was terrible! There was a raccoon in my room.”
“Oh… dear,” Jade managed. He was going to get her fired. She was going to laugh in his face and then immediately lose her job.
“And there was no mint on my pillow,” he added, as if those held more or less the same weight. “Absolutely disgraceful.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Jade’s tone was only slightly more strangled than her usual work voice, although she had no idea how.
Eli leaned against the counter, ticking off items on his fingers. “The raccoon. The mint. The six on the door fell down so it looked like a nine and I couldn’t find my room.” Jade bit back a squeak, and his mouth twitched a little, but he kept going. “Kids running in the hall when I was trying to sleep. Someone ripped the whole Genesis chapter out of the Bible in the drawer.” He leaned in closer. “That’s sacrilege.” She nodded helplessly. “How am I supposed to have a peaceful night if I can’t read my Bible?” he added.
“That’s… that’s very concerning, mister…?”
“Navarro,” he said, without an ounce of shame. “That’s N-A-V-A-R-R-O.”
Not knowing what else to do, Jade queried the system. It came back with the expected zero results, save somebody named Sylvia Navarro who’d stayed with them almost a year before. “I’m sorry, Mr. Navarro, but I’m not seeing anything here about your stay.”
“Well, look again,” he said, officiousness so over the top it would have been funny if she wasn’t caught between desperate amusement and confused anxiety. “I spend a lot of time and money here in Neptune, and I can tell you that if this isn’t addressed, neither I nor anyone from my business will be staying at the Shelton ever again.”
That was probably true, since everyone who worked at Fred’s Auto Repair already lived in Neptune.
“What is going on?”
Jade turned to see her boss standing in the door to the office, her stern face firmly on in the face of the magic words never stay here again.
“Oh, Melody, this gentleman just had an issue on a prior stay. I’m trying to resolve it. Could you help Mr. Richter with his upgrade? I’m off soon and I might not have time to give them both the attention they deserve.”
Melody scowled briefly, but she couldn’t argue when it was phrased like that. If you knew how to handle her, life got… well, easier. She stepped up to the other computer and Jade turned back to Eli.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she said. “Can I just get the dates of your stay?”
“It was Monday last week,” he said with exaggerated impatience.
Jade typed a little more, going through the motions just in case Melody looked over and praying he wouldn’t say anything else about raccoons. “I’m not finding anything in the system. Are you sure you stayed with us?”
He paused, and Jade watched as the 59 in the corner of her screen flipped over to 00.
“Oh, you know what,” Eli said immediately, “I think that was the Holiday Inn. Never mind.” He winked at her, the only time he’d broken character in the whole conversation, and then just turned and walked right out of the lobby.
Jade bit her cheek until she could be sure she wasn’t smiling, and then turned and waved to Melody, who couldn’t stop her from clocking out because she was neck-deep in the upgrade nonsense and never broke her own rules about focussing on the guest, and slipped into the back for her bag.
*
Eli was waiting for her out front when she escaped out one of the side doors, not wanting to go past Melody again, and she caught up to him quickly, half-laughing. “What was that?”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissing the side of her head. “That guy was gonna make you late. Besides, it didn’t look like you liked him very much.”
“That’s not the point! You’re insane.” But now she really was laughing, because she couldn’t help it. “Come on, if Melody finds out you’re my boyfriend she’ll flip out.”
“Wants you all for herself, huh?” he asked as they approached the crosswalk. “I’m not afraid of her.” Jade giggled, pulling on the back of his shirt as the Walk sign flipped over to the flashing hand. He slowed reluctantly to a stop at the crosswalk. “You’re such a goody-goody.”
“You’re five,” she told him. “And we stop at the curb so we don’t get hit by the cars.”
“For someone who hates being treated like a kindergarten teacher, you sure do talk like one.”
She flicked him in the side, hampered by their closeness. He just smiled and pulled her closer; Jade nestled into his side a little while they waited for the light to change. She felt a little bit like the main character in one of those artsy European romcoms, walking down the street half-entwined with her boyfriend while the wind blew just a little. If they were in New York and not California, she could get a woolly hat and go for the cute Nora Ephron look, except that the love interests in those movies never looked like Eli.
“I think you’re sexier than Tom Hanks,” she said, tipping her head to the side so she could look up at him.
“Thanks.” He nudged her forward as the white hand reappeared. “You’re sexier than Tom Hanks too. Why are you doing that to your neck?”
“I just like to look up at you sometimes.” She left out the part about being in a movie.
“You calling me short?” He jostled her good-naturedly with the arm around her shoulders.
Jade didn’t try to answer that. She picked up the thread of their initial discussion instead. “What was that, Eli?”
For a second she thought he was going to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about, but then he grinned and said, “I was just going to wait inside for you to be done, but I figured if that guy got his claws back into you you’d never get out of there.”
“I did want to get out of there.” She hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe you should be an actor. I really would have believed all that stuff about the Bible if I didn’t know the last time you were in a church was for a wedding.”
“Christening,” he corrected her, mock-offended. “Literally – they named him Christopher.”
Jade had to stop walking because that made her giggle so hard, which dragged him to a stop as well. “Jade, it’s not that funny. Jade.” After a moment he shook his head, smiling a little. “What is with you?”
She took a deep breath and pulled herself together. “What’s with me?” She poked him. “Raccoons?”
Eli shrugged, unrepentant. “Yeah, well. It worked, didn’t it?”
“Where’d you even get an idea like that?”
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Oh, you know… It’s not the first time. I did something like that in high school once or twice, helping out a friend, that shit.”
Jade eyed him carefully. She was tempted to tell him not to swear, but she was almost certain he’d done so on purpose, to distract her from the fact that he was deliberately leaving things out. “Oh, yeah?”
They separated as they reached the coffee shop in order to get through the narrow door, and Eli reached for his wallet as they slipped into the line, even though she’d told him on Monday that today was on her. “Yeah.”
Jade let it slide until they’d ordered, but once she had her apple cider and her muffin and they were tucked cozily into one of the tables next to the big diamond window, she said, “Spill it, buster.”
He raised his eyebrows at her, mouthing Buster?, but she just looked him straight in the face until he gave in. It was getting easier and easier to do that the longer they dated, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel a tiny bit powerful.
“Fine, but it’s not how it sounds.” Despite the seeming agreement, he toyed with cup for a moment, spinning it around. Jade just waited until his reluctance gave way. “Okay, so this was high school, all right? I had this friend who needed… uh, some evidence–”
“Evidence?” she blurted in shock. “Like – criminal evidence?”
It wasn’t like she hadn’t known he’d done illegal things even before he’d gone to prison, but somehow interfering with evidence seemed worse. Tampering, they called it.
“Well, yeah,” he admitted uncomfortably. “But it wasn’t… we weren’t getting rid of it, or anything. She just wanted to see it. Or hear it, or something.”
Jade blinked. “She?” She’d always assumed that his old gang had been all boys. Maybe that was sexist. Oh, God, was she horribly sexist? She tried to remember what names he’d said before, if any of them could have been girls or if she was a little justified in assuming. “I didn’t know – I mean, I didn’t think girls were allowed in, um…”
He chuckled, looking momentarily relieved. “Definitely not. No, I told you, it wasn’t… My friend Veronica, her dad was a PI, and I guess he was looking into…” He frowned, thinking. “The year before graduation, so it was probably the Lilly Kane case.” Jade’s lips parted, but she managed not to gasp or be stupid about it. Lilly Kane had already been dead when she’d started at Pan High, but the shockwaves had still been rippling out from her death, from Aaron Echolls’s arrest. Eli had gone to Neptune High, he’d grown up here – of course it had affected his life.
Somehow she’d never thought about it.
“Anyway, the sheriff was bullshit back then.” He made a face. “Not like this one is any goddamn good. But she’d work stuff with her dad.” A vaguely rueful smile passed over his face. “Well, not just with her dad. She needed something from evidence, so she asked me to distract some deputy. I bitched at him about noise in my neighbourhood for a couple minutes, did the trick.” His mouth twitched. “No raccoons.”
“This girl asked you to help steal evidence from a police station,” Jade clarified. “And she was your friend?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s not like we keep in touch these days, so maybe not. But I’d do her favours, and she’d help me out when I was in trouble. Proved me innocent a few times, before you jump all over me.”
Jade didn’t want to insult him, but she had to know. “Innocent innocent, or…”
But instead of getting mad, he just sighed. “Mostly, yeah. You only gotta screw up once, and then you’re everybody’s scapegoat for the rest of your life, so…” She would have apologized, but he added after a moment of thought, “She was willing to let me get away with something every now and then, but I don’t think she ever got me off for anything I actually did. My boys, on the other hand…” He shrugged, a ghost of a grin touching his mouth. “Once or twice.”
“I… don’t want to know about that,” she said.
“Probably for the best.” He reached over and broke off some of the edge of her muffin. “It’s not like it matters now anyway.”
“Because no one can prove you innocent of mutilating my muffin.” Jade pulled the plate protectively towards herself, pretending to cover the pastry with her hands. The topic had been heavy enough, for today.
“How were you planning on eating it, unhinging your jaw?”
She raised it to her lips and took a dainty bite, maintaining eye contact. Eli laughed and shook his head.
“I was going to say it would be nice to hear about one of your friends from high school who wasn’t a criminal,” she said after a moment. “But I guess…”
“Hey, as far as I know, Veronica’s never been convicted of anything,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s the conviction that makes you a criminal,” Jade said doubtfully. “Did you ever…” She paused, trying to find the right words. Eli was watching her with something a shade too resigned to be apprehension, but it was clear he wasn’t quite enjoying the conversation. “Did you ever do anything else?”
“Anything else like what?”
“Like…” She was drawing a complete blank of realistic things, so she sucked it up and just picked something he’d make fun of. “Go to the mall?”
“Go to the mall?” He stared at her.
“I don’t know!” Jade shrugged. “Whatever kids do in Neptune that isn’t illegal.”
“You mean, you want to hear stories that don’t have gang crap in them?” he said slowly. Jade shrugged again, self-consciously. She never knew where the line was, where acceptable boundaries became judgement.
“It’s okay if…” She stopped, because it seemed rude to say it’s okay if you don’t have any – but sometimes she wondered.
Eli laughed. “Yeah, sure, sometimes I did her other favours. We played poker with a bunch of rich assholes one time. Gave her a bunch of rides. She helped me with homework a couple times.” His expression slid into something more thoughtful. “We didn’t really hang out, though. Not unless she needed something.” Before Jade could say anything to that, he shrugged. “Not like she didn’t come through for me when I needed her.” He glanced at her face and added, though she didn’t think she looked especially judgemental, “Got me a couple jobs, too – it wasn’t all shady.”
“I kind of wondered how you ended up working at a university,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t be offended.
“Veronica had an in with the dean.” He shrugged. “Before he got murdered. Next one didn’t like me as much.”
“He got murdered?”
“It was a mess,” he said. “First everyone said he killed himself, but then they arrested this teacher who was having an affair with his wife, and then she skipped the country, and then it turned out the guy actually made his TA do it or something, and they had to let him go, so he went to Mexico and murdered her. Or some shit. People said a lot of other stuff too, but most of that was definitely made up. White people scary stories about the big bad cartels and whatever.”
“Oh my god.” Jade stared at him. She couldn’t believe he was so unfazed. “Did that kind of thing happen a lot?” No wonder he hadn’t liked working at Hearst.
Eli shrugged. “Things got a lot quieter after Veronica left. I don’t know if that kind of thing stopped happening so much or if people just got away with it once she wasn’t around, but it got a lot easier to keep my head down, I can tell you.” He stole another chunk of her muffin, chewing it philosophically. “Was kind of nice to go a full year without anyone I knew getting murdered.”
She felt like her eyes were cartoonishly huge, but what on earth was she supposed to say to that? Jade had never known a single person who’d been murdered.
“Who–” As soon as she realized what she was saying she stopped. She didn’t get to just ask about that kind of thing.
He paused, as if he actually had to think about it. “I mean, my dad got shot when I was twelve, so he’s probably the first person I knew who got murdered. But I basically hadn’t seen him for about four years at that point, so maybe it doesn’t count. Then in high school… the last couple years were pretty bad. I don’t know if you heard about the bus crash–”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not a big school, you know – I wasn’t tight with any of them except Cervando, but you know who people are, you know?”
It was the same way in Pan, and Jade couldn’t imagine that six or seven people from her high school could die without her knowing most of them, at least well enough to borrow a pen from or sit next to.
“And my neighbour the year before that, and I, uh, mentioned Felix before. His brother went missing when we were freshmen too. But I don’t think anyone I know’s been murdered since Dean O’Dell.” He snorted. “Maybe it was Veronica. No one expects the pretty white chick to be the murder magnet.”
Normally, Jade would have told him not to call women ‘chicks’, or teased him about saying another woman was pretty, but it really didn’t seem appropriate. Finally, she just said, “Eli, I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “It happened. I guess I don’t mind talking about it, I’m just used to everybody knowing, you know?” He winced. “And I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of thug. Felix was the only one who got killed because of gang shit. And Gus, I guess.”
“I don’t think you’re a thug,” she said.
He smiled crookedly. “Well, I don’t know if you have a lot of company in that, but I’ll take it.” He reached across and broke off another piece of her muffin. Jade didn’t try to stop him. “How about we talk about your bad decisions in high school.”
“I cut my own hair once,” she offered, trying to play ball with his lighter tone.
“So? I do that all the time.”
That pulled a real laugh from her. “I nearly ended up with your haircut in the end. My mom wouldn’t pay for a stylist to fix it – she said it was my fault, so she just chopped it off here to make it even.” She held a hand a little above shoulder level. “I cried.”
“Why? You’d look hot with short hair.” When she gave him a warning look he raised his hands, palm up. “What? I like it long, I’m just saying.” Then he eyed her appraisingly. “Maybe even shorter than that, like a pixie cut–”
Jade shrieked, albeit quietly. “No!”
“I’m not going to come at you with scissors,” he said, laughing. “Come on, you’re so pretty you can pull off whatever. I know you know that.”
“I don’t know that,” Jade said, running a finger around the rim of her cup. She almost did, when he was looking at her the way he was right now, but she couldn’t bring herself to just agree with him.
“Sure you don’t.”
“Oh, be quiet.” She pressed her lips together against a smile. “Just… forget about that.”
“I don’t know, I seem to recall I gave you a do-over and you used it already.”
“That was on our first date, I can’t believe you’re bringing that up!” This time when he reached for what was left of her muffin, she pulled the plate away, holding it off the edge of the table so he couldn’t reach. Eli raised an eyebrow at her with marked dubiousness. “Our first first date, even.”
“You know, I think most people just call them regular first dates.” He feigned disinterest in the muffin, even though she knew he was going to snag a piece the second she set it down again. “And I seem to recall not even getting one.”
“I think it’s a little petty of you to still be dwelling on that,” Jade told him, as seriously as she could manage.
He snorted and shook his head, but didn’t bother responding to that.
“What about after you moved from San Diego?” he said instead.
“I was the new kid, Eli, I was going out of my way not to do anything embarrassing.”
“Not always successful, in my experience,” he responded playfully, grinning at her. Jade rolled her eyes, not quite recovered enough from the conversation’s previous dark turn to really pretend to be offended.
She made an attempt at finishing her muffin instead, breaking the soft base in half and taking larger bites than she normally would, but it didn’t stop him from eyeing the remaining portion. Jade considered whether or not she was willing to slap his hand away if he made another attempt.
“You could have gotten your own muffin,” she said, hoping to at least distract him.
“Don’t want my own muffin,” he said, grinning.
“Of course you don’t.” She cupped her free hand over the remainder, protectively.
“It just tastes better when it’s yours,” he said brazenly, not even pretending to be bashful. “Everyone knows that.”
“That’s French fries,” Jade said sternly, but she broke off half of what was left and left the remainder for him to pick at. Eli snagged a piece of it, looking far too pleased with himself.
“Muffin theft is a serious crime, you know,” she told him, trying to ignore the slight flutter in her stomach. She never knew where the line was, with things like that. She didn’t want to upset him – she didn’t want either of them to think she took it lightly. But if she was going to joke about other parts of his life…
“I can’t believe you’d pay $950 for a muffin,” Eli said easily, feigning mild outrage.
“What – what?” She had no idea where he was getting that number, although he was clearly making some kind of point.
“Well, if it was less than $950, it would be petty theft, so…”
Jade didn’t know what to say to that. She was too shocked to laugh, but she shouldn’t have been, and it was funny, at least objectively, so she sputtered a little to keep the silence from getting too big, finally landing on, “I – how dare you –”
He snapped up the remainder of the muffin, grinning, and she subsided into rolled eyes and a half-sincere huff of annoyance.
After a moment, she went back to something that had been niggling at her. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Eli eyed her carefully. “Like what?”
“I feel like you’re talking around something.” She tried to pin down the specific thing. “You didn’t seem like you wanted me asking about Veronica.”
To her surprise and relief, he laughed. “Nah, it’s just – I thought you were going to ask if we dated or something. We didn’t, but if your girlfriend asks that and you say ‘no’, it never sounds true.” He paused. “I mean, there’s other stuff that doesn’t sound so great, but you probably heard the worst of it just now. And I never touched any of that evidence, for the record. I was solely the distraction.”
“I guess I never think about you having a serious girlfriend in high school,” she admitted. “It doesn’t seem to go with the whole…” She made a vague gesture so she wouldn’t have to say the word ‘gang’.
Eli dragged the wrapper from her muffin over to his side of the table and proceeded to fold it into ever-smaller sections. “Once or twice. But you’re right; when it didn’t end up working out, that was usually why.” He shot her his usual charming grin, lightened with just a touch of self-deprecation, but Jade couldn’t help but feel that his heart wasn’t in it.
After a long moment, he added, “There’s… some ugly stuff, from around then. Not things I did, just not the kind of thing I want to dump on you all at once. I don’t want you to think I’m hiding anything, but it’s just not all coffee shop conversation, you know?”
He looked braced, like he expected her to react badly, but all Jade felt was warm fondness. She hadn’t told him about her dad on the first date, and when she had, she hadn’t thrown all the details out there at once. There were still things he didn’t know, because who wanted to drag a perfectly pleasant afternoon or a romantic evening off the rails with stuff like that? And she had that one thing, that singular source of trauma; Eli had an encyclopedia’s worth of terrible things from his childhood even before the gang and the poor choices started to factor in at all. She was sure there were some important things he hadn’t told her simply because he’d lost track of which specific nightmares from his past she even knew.
“That makes sense,” she said, and covered his hand with hers, wanting to chase away that look on his face in favour of something happier. “I know the main things, right? And I know enough to get the general idea. You can tell me whatever you want when you’re ready.”
The way his face shifted couldn’t really be called a smile, but it felt something akin to it, and his eyes were soft when he leaned over the table to kiss her.