Chapter 22 Honey
POV: Carly
The restaurant was two blocks from campus and nothing like anything she had been to before.
Small and warm and loud in the best way. Booths packed with teenagers and young adults who were laughing too hard and talking over each other and completely unbothered by everything outside these four walls. Music coming from somewhere she couldn't see. The smell of food hitting her before they even got through the door and her stomach responding immediately and embarrassingly.
None of the customers were supernatural. She could sense it the moment they walked in. Every single person in here was completely ordinary and had absolutely no idea what was sitting down at the corner booth near the window.
It made her feel strangely exposed and strangely free at the same time.
She slid into the booth across from Niko and looked around at everything and tried not to look like someone who had never done anything like this before in her life.
"You've been here before." She said.
"A few times." He said.
"How many times is a few."
He picked up the menu. "Enough to know what's good."
She looked around the restaurant again. All these ordinary people eating ordinary food having ordinary conversations with absolutely no idea. She had spent her entire life surrounded by the supernatural, by people who understood what she was without needing an explanation. Being in a room full of humans felt like being in a room where nobody could read and she was the only one who noticed.
"They have no idea." She said quietly.
Niko glanced up from the menu. "That's generally the point."
"Does it ever feel strange to you." She said. "Being around them."
He considered that. "Not anymore." He said. "It did at first."
She looked at him.
He looked back down at the menu. "You get used to it."
The waitress arrived before she could ask what that meant. Red hair, bright smile, order pad already out. She directed her entire opening sentence at Niko and adjusted her posture in a way that had nothing to do with taking their order.
Carly watched it happen in real time.
Niko was already looking at Carly when the waitress finished talking, apparently unbothered by the attention being aimed at him.
Carly looked at the waitress. Then back at Niko.
"I'll just have whatever he's having." She said pleasantly.
The waitress wrote it down and looked at Niko again. "And for you?"
"Same." He said without looking at her. "Two of everything."
The waitress smiled at him for a beat longer than necessary and walked away.
Carly watched her go.
"You know she was flirting with you." She said.
"Was she." He said.
"Right to my face." Carly said. "I was sitting right here."
"I know." He said. "I was looking at you."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Picked up her own menu even though he had already ordered for both of them.
The food arrived faster than she expected. Four tacos, Spanish rice, refried beans and two Coca Colas on a tray that the same waitress set down while finding reasons to lean across the table that had nothing to do with placing the food.
Carly smiled.
Then she reached across the table and covered Niko's hand with hers and laced their fingers together.
He froze.
She felt it. The whole stillness that moved through him when her hand settled over his. He looked down at their joined hands and said nothing and she could feel him deciding something.
She raised her eyebrows at him slightly. Play along.
He looked up at the waitress.
"This looks amazing." He said pleasantly. "But we're just fine, love. Thank you."
He squeezed her hand.
The shock of it moved up her arm and landed somewhere in her chest and she covered it with the brightest smile she had ever aimed at a stranger as the waitress backed away with a tight apologetic grin.
The moment she was out of sight they both laughed.
Actual laughter. The kind that came from somewhere real and didn't have an agenda. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed like that and the realization of it sat somewhere beneath the laughter and she didn't look at it directly.
They were still holding hands.
They both realized it at the same time.
Throats cleared. Fingers untangled. Hands found reasons to be elsewhere. The air between them thickened for exactly four seconds before Carly pulled her taco toward her and took a bite and the warmth of it and the flavor hit her all at once and she forgot to be self conscious about any of it.
"Oh." She said with her mouth still half full. "These are incredible."
"I told you." He said.
She took another bite. Then another. She was aware she was eating faster than was dignified and she didn't particularly care. She had barely eaten all day and the food was genuinely that good and Niko was watching her with that expression she was starting to recognize, the one that lived between amused and something else she didn't have a name for yet.
"It's rude to stare at someone while they're eating." She said without looking up.
"Noted." He said and kept looking.
She wiped her mouth with a napkin. "So what's the deal with you and redheads."
He blinked. "Sorry?"
"The waitress." She said. "Your girl on campus." She shrugged. "Just an observation."
"Ah." He leaned back. "My newest favorite subject, apparently." He tilted his head. "For the record I don't have a thing for redheads. And Aurora isn't my girl. I thought we established that."
"You established that." She said. "She seems to have a different understanding."
He said nothing to that.
She took a sip of her Coke. "Must be nice."
"What must be nice."
She shrugged. "Having someone that devoted to you and not having to do anything to earn it."
He looked at her steadily. "Is that what you think it is."
She met his eyes. "Isn't it."
He picked up a chip and turned it over between his fingers. "Aurora is complicated." He said. "Most things worth anything are."
She didn't know what to do with that so she went back to her taco.
POV: Whitney
She had texted Carly four times.
Three before dinner and one after and she had read receipts turned on which meant she could see that every single one of them had been opened and not replied to.
Which was not like Carly.
Carly always replied. Even during her most chaotic weeks when she was running three things at once and surviving on four hours of sleep she still managed to send back at least a single word acknowledgment within twenty minutes.
It had been two hours.
Whitney sat at the dinner table with Tommy's pack on her left and her coven on her right and kept her phone face up beside her tray and watched the screen stay dark.
Tommy had noticed too. She could tell by the way he kept glancing at the door every few minutes and then at his own phone and then back at the door. He had texted Carly twice that she knew of and gotten the same silence back.
He wasn't saying anything about it yet. He was doing that thing he did where he performed being unbothered until he could figure out what was actually wrong.
Whitney was doing a version of the same thing.
She picked at her food and watched the door and turned her phone over twice and put it face up again.
Carly was fine. She was probably in the library or in the middle of a coven prep session and had lost track of time. She did that when she was stressed. She disappeared into her work and surfaced two hours later surprised by how much time had passed.
That was almost certainly what was happening.
Whitney took a sip of her drink.
She thought about the study room this morning. The way Carly had seemed slightly off when she came back inside after Tommy's father left. The thing she wasn't saying that Whitney had decided not to push on because Carly would say it when she was ready.
She thought about the hallway rumor that was still circulating.
She thought about the look on Carly's face in the bathroom doorway this morning when she told her about it.
It's nothing. We're fine.
Whitney turned her phone over one more time.
She was probably fine.
She was almost certainly fine.
Whitney kept watching the door anyway.
Author's Note:
Whitney is watching that door and Tommy is watching that door and Carly is across the street holding Niko Monroeson's hand and laughing and none of them are fine. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, are you stressed on Carly's behalf right now because you absolutely should be. Add us to your library because in the next chapter the real conversation is about to happen and it gets surprisingly honest!