Suite Dreams 2: Flawsome Explorations by Ariella Zoelle & A.F. Zoelle

Author:Ariella Zoelle & A.F. Zoelle [Zoelle, Ariella & Zoelle, A.F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Contemporary, Gay
Amazon: B092W8W5X9
Goodreads: 57880515
Publisher: Sarayashi Publishing
Published: 2021-07-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Zio

At the end of the first day of the conference presentations, I attended the group dinner for all the participants. Even though I had enjoyed spending my trip with Armand and my natural shyness made it hard to socialize with strangers, it invigorated me to interact with other Japanese studies graduate students. It was rare for me to feel like I belonged somewhere, but everyone there was on the same wavelength as me.

I was riding high on excitement by the time I returned to have dessert with Armand in the hotel bar. The sight of him waiting outside for me rocketed my heart into my throat. He was stunning in a pair of pinstripe pants and a formfitting white button-down shirt with a deep V-neck cut that showed off his smooth chest. Now that I knew what was under his clothes, what he was wearing was sexier than before.

He greeted me with a warm smile as he wrapped an arm around me to pull me into an embrace. “Bonsoir, Zio. Welcome back.” He pressed a kiss against each of my cheeks.

Feeling unusually bold, I tugged him down to kiss my lips. It made my good night even better, which was why I said, “I missed you.”

His surprise at my statement gave way to a fond look. I swooned so hard, I was grateful he was holding on to me. “As I missed you. But I’m very excited to hear all about your fun at the conference today.” He blessed me with another lingering kiss on the lips. It took a minute for my brain to realize he probably did it to soothe my need for things to be in even numbers. How had I gotten so lucky?

Once we sat down and placed our orders, I couldn’t hold back my gushing any longer. “It was amazing! There were so many incredible presentations. One woman talked about an anime show about anthropomorphic train stations. She explained they were representative embodiments of place and memory within a society. Isn’t that wild?”

“Are you saying it’s an animated Japanese TV show about train stations who are people?”

“Yeah! Although it’s a shōjo series, she elevated something that most scholars would dismiss as silly. She had a fascinating analysis on how the show’s promotion crossed boundaries from the imaginary into the real. It was so meta, and—”

When I cut myself off, he prompted me. “And what?”

My excited rambling embarrassed me; I hadn’t meant to get so carried away. “Sorry, that’s way more detail than you wanted.”

“Au contraire. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

A tiny seed of hope blossomed in my heart at his words. “Really?”

“Sincerely,” he assured me. “What’s a shōjo series?”

The part of me that was aware most people didn’t care about the stuff I liked warned me to rein in my enthusiasm. But when he asked a specific question, I had to answer. “It’s a genre aimed at girls, but the readership is far wider than the targeted market. I haven’t read much of it, but her presentation made me want to check it out.

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