Chapter 30 Caramel
POV: Carly
The park was louder now than when they had arrived.
The band on the amphitheater stage had switched from jazz to something with more bass in it and the crowd had responded accordingly, people spilling off the designated dance area and into the walkways and vendor spaces without caring much about the distinction. The whole place felt like it was breathing.
She was glad she stayed.
She hadn't expected to be glad. She had expected to spend the whole night managing her guilt and second guessing every decision that led her here and waiting for something to go wrong. Instead she was walking through a park in Black River Falls on a Friday night eating a caramel apple next to a vampire and feeling more like herself than she had in longer than she could accurately measure.
That was its own kind of terrifying.
She didn't look at it directly.
"You never told me how you know about all these things." She said. "Town events. Bus schedules. The taco place."
He glanced sideways at her. "I told you. I sneak off campus."
"As often as it takes to memorize a bus schedule?" She said.
He shrugged one shoulder. "When I first moved in with my aunt I spent a lot of time learning the town. It was something to do." He paused. "She would take me places sometimes. Show me things." A small smile crossed his face briefly. "She said if you were going to live somewhere you should actually know where you are."
Carly thought about that. "She sounds like someone worth knowing."
"She is." He said simply. No performance in it.
She took another bite of her apple and they walked and the crowd moved around them and she let herself just be in it for a minute without analyzing what any of it meant.
She felt him looking at her.
Not the peripheral awareness she had developed for his attention over the past few weeks. Actually looking. She turned her head and caught him fully facing her with an expression that was open in a way he didn't always allow.
"What." She said.
"Nothing." He said. "You seem different out here."
"Different how."
He considered it. "Less like you're performing something." He said. "More like you're just here."
She looked at the path ahead of them. "Is that a compliment."
"It's an observation." He said. "Though I suppose those are the same thing coming from me."
She kept walking and did not let him see what her face did with that.
They stopped at one of the vendor stalls because something in the display caught her eye. Small paintings. Watercolors mostly, landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, the kind that captured fog and treelines and grey water in a way that felt accurate rather than pretty.
She leaned forward to look at one.
Niko stopped beside her.
She looked at the paintings and he looked at them and she could feel him actually looking at them, not just being polite about it.
"This one." She pointed to a small one in the corner. Just fog and dark trees and a strip of water at the bottom. "It looks exactly like Black River Falls."
"It does." He said.
"Do you paint things like this." She said. "Or just sketches."
He was quiet for a second. "Both." He said. "Mostly I sketch. The painting takes longer and I need to be in a specific kind of mood for it."
"What kind of mood."
He thought about it. "Quiet." He said. "The kind of quiet that doesn't happen much at school."
She looked at him.
He was still looking at the paintings.
She turned back and they stood there for another moment and then kept walking and she thought about the sketchbook that was always with him and the drawings she had caught glimpses of and the one she was almost certain she had seen the edge of in the library that she was not going to think about right now.
They found a bench near the edge of the amphitheater where they could hear the band properly without being swallowed by the crowd. She sat and he sat beside her and she worked on the last of her caramel apple and he finished his drink and neither of them felt the need to fill the quiet.
The band had shifted into something slower. Still live, still warm, but with more room in it. People had paired off on the dance floor below the stage, moving in that easy unhurried way that came with a good song and nowhere to be.
She watched them.
He watched her watch them.
She took a final bite of her apple and the caramel caught the corner of her mouth and she tried to get it with her tongue and completely failed and she could feel him trying not to react to that and not succeeding.
She looked at him. "What."
He pressed his lips together. "You have." He gestured to the corner of his own mouth.
She tried again. Still failed.
He laughed.
Actually laughed. Not the controlled version he deployed when something mildly amused him. A real one, surprised out of him, that made him look younger and less like something to be cautious around and more like someone who was just here on a bench having a good time.
She laughed too before she could help it.
It was a good laugh. The kind that came from somewhere real and didn't ask permission and she couldn't remember the last time she had one that felt like that. Not performed for a crowd or aimed at a joke someone needed her to find funny. Just a laugh because something was actually funny and she was actually here.
"This is not funny." She said while still laughing.
"It really is." He said.
"Stop." She said.
He was already reaching toward her.
"Let me." He said.
She went still.
His thumb found the corner of her mouth and she forgot entirely what they had been laughing about. The touch was light and unhurried and he took his time with it in a way that had nothing to do with caramel and everything to do with the fact that he could and she was letting him.
His thumb lingered.
She let it.
Their eyes found each other and held and the laugh had dissolved completely into something else, something that sat between them warm and charged and neither of them moved to name it or dissolve it.
He was so close.
She could see the scruff along his jaw and the faint green rim around his irises that she had started noticing recently and the way the festival lights caught in his hair. His expression was soft in a way she had only seen a handful of times and each time it rearranged something in her chest that she was running out of excuses to ignore.
His thumb traced the corner of her lip one final time and then he pulled back slowly.
"Your laugh is something." He said quietly. "You should let people hear it more."
She swallowed.
She had no response to that. Not a deflection or a joke or a redirect. Just nothing, which had never happened to her before in her entire life in conversation with anyone.
He looked at her for one more moment.
Then he leaned back on the bench and looked at the stage and gave her the space to collect herself without making her feel like she needed it.
She looked at the stage too.
Her heart was going at a speed that was disproportionate to sitting on a bench.
She pressed her lips together and tasted the faint ghost of caramel and told herself very firmly that she was fine.
She was not remotely fine.
Author's Note:
His thumb. On her mouth. Taking his time. And then saying her laugh is something like that is just a normal sentence to say to a person. I need everyone to breathe because somebody is going to ask somebody to dance and I cannot be held responsible for what happens after that. Drop a like add us to your library and tell me in the comments if you are okay because I am not!