Waking Pan by Nico Silver

Author:Nico Silver [Silver, Nico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Raven Press

Chapter Thirteen

Out in the cold air of the evening I suck in a deep breath to try to shake off the weird feeling being in the cafe has left me with. It doesn’t make any sense – even if the mocha was decaf, coffee tends to wake me up, not make me sleepy.

“Do you feel dopey?” I ask.

“Not really,” says Silas. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I had dinner,” I say, more sharply than I meant to. Something has made me irritable, but I don’t know what. I try to shake it off and just enjoy walking in the autumn evening with my… is he my boyfriend? Oh God, I think I have a boyfriend. (I want him to be my boyfriend.) I scratch the back of my hand absently.

“So, Ego… he seemed a little… touchy, didn’t he?” Silas says. He’s got his hands in his pockets, and I know why he’s not holding my hand. I might have had good experiences in class so far, but Great Valley isn’t known for being tolerant, and Friday night brings out the frat boys and other unsavory types. Even though most of the bars are farther downtown, there are too many rowdy pubs and houses to pass on the way home. Neither of us fancies spending our evening getting beaten up.

“He seemed fine to me,” I say.

“I don’t mean touchy as in sensitive,” he says. “I mean touchy as in he kept touching you.”

Did he? I remember him putting his hand on mine once.

“I didn’t really notice,” I say, after thinking about it for too long.

“You like him,” Silas says, and though his tone is teasing, I think there might be an accusation in it, too.

“Jealous?” I say, and then regret saying it. Why am I like this? Am I trying to provoke him into a fight? Was my ex right and I’m the cause of all the bad things that happened between us?

Silas stops suddenly and I’ve taken several steps past him before I realize. I turn to look at him, and I expect him to be angry, or annoyed, to be ready to snark back at me until everything is a shouting match.

But he doesn’t look angry, he looks concerned. “Are you okay, Alder? You seem… off.”

“How do you know how I seem?” I say, and what the fuck am I doing? Usually, I can’t get words to come out; right now I can’t seem to keep them in. And they aren’t even words I mean. “You don’t even know me.” I turn away and keep walking, hands in fists inside my jacket pockets.

“Sweetheart.” He’s suddenly right beside me, arm over my shoulder, steering me into a doorway. My apartment doorway, I realize. I almost stomped right past my own fucking door. I fumble for my keys, and I realize everything is blurry. I’m crying. Why am I crying? (Seriously, why the fuck am I crying?)

“Hey,” he says, taking my keys, unlocking the door, and pulling me inside, where he wraps his arms around me.

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