Chapter 179 179
Chapter 179 179
Lucian's POV:
Dinner was Mom's chicken thing with the rice and the sauce that had too much garlic in it, which it always did. She'd also made rolls and what looked like a pie on the counter that I was ninety percent sure hadn't existed two hours ago.
Emma sat next to me. Across from Marlen, who was being suspiciously well-behaved, which made me think she was saving her worst material for later. Dad was at the head of the table eating steadily and not talking much, which was Dad's version of acceptance, and Mom kept getting up to refill things that didn't need refilling: water glasses, the bread basket, the salt.
"This is really good, Kalessi," Emma said.
"Thank you! It's all garlic. I put garlic in everything. Erik says too much garlic but I don't think there's such a thing."
Dad looked up from his plate. "I said it once. Two years ago."
"And I remember."
I kicked Marlen under the table before she could say anything. She kicked me back harder. Emma noticed, looked at both of us, and bit her lip.
Annabeth and Kaelen came for dessert. They showed up around seven-thirty, Kaelen carrying a bottle of wine, and Annabeth with a bag of chips because she said she didn't trust anyone's pie until she'd tried it and wanted a backup plan.
The kitchen got crowded. Kaelen leaned against the counter next to the fridge, his spot, and Annabeth sat on the counter itself with her legs dangling, which Mom pretended not to see.
"So," Kaelen said, looking at Emma over his wine. "Lucian told me you're writing a novel."
Emma looked at me, a bit surprised and a bit embarrassed too. "You told your brother, who’s a professional writer, about my novel?"
"I may have mentioned it."
"He said it was about dragons," Kaelen said. "Which, given the circumstances, is either the most ironic thing I've ever heard or the most fitting."
Emma laughed. Short, disbelieving. "I started writing it last spring. Before I knew any of this. Before I knew any of you." She shook her head. "It's about a fire dragon who lives as a human. He's trying to pass, trying to be normal, and nobody knows what he really is. And the whole time I was writing it I kept thinking the dragon parts felt fake. The dialogue felt real but the actual dragon stuff felt like I was making it up."
"You were making it up," Marlen said.
"Yeah, but it felt MORE made up than it should have. Like something was missing that I didn't know how to find." She looked at me. "Turns out the thing that was missing was sitting near me in Comp Sci correcting my fire mechanics."
"I corrected you once."
"You told me dragon fire doesn't come from the stomach. In the middle of the cafeteria. With this face like you'd just watched me put ketchup on a steak."
Annabeth was grinning, and Kaelen asked a couple more of questions to Emma from writer to writer, and also gave her some advice.
The rest of the dinner was pretty quiet, and for the first time in so long I didn’t feel any kind of pressure about hiding myself. I could just be me, in front of my family and in front of Emma.
So it felt kinda perfect.
I walked her home after. Through downtown Emberdale, past the closed-up shops and the Denny's, which had a new sign in the window advertising some kind of holiday milkshake that looked terrible. The streets were quiet and dark and cold and our breath made little clouds and her hand was in mine and I could feel her pulse against my palm, human-fast, warmer than the air.
"Your family is nice," she said.
"They were on their best behavior. You should see Marlen when she's not trying to impress."
"I'm pretty sure Marlen wasn't trying to impress."
"That was the restrained version. Trust me."
We turned onto Maple Street. Her house was three blocks down. We were walking slow, both of us, the kind of slow that meant neither of us wanted to get there.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Yeah."
"And you'll answer honestly?"
"I told you I'm a dragon. I think we're past the dishonesty phase."
She stopped walking. Under a streetlight, which was one of those old yellow ones that made everything look like a sepia photograph. She turned to face me and her eyes were serious and her mouth was doing that thing where she was trying not to smile and failing.
"I know your biggest secret," she said. "I've met your family. I've seen the burned pillow under your bed. I've sat in your kitchen and eaten your mother's garlic chicken. I've talked to your sister about your soap dispenser problem. Your five-year-old ally cried happy tears because the pinky promise is finally over." She paused. "And you still haven't asked me to be your girlfriend, Lucian Ellsworth."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I... uh..."
"Just pointing it out."
"I thought we were... I mean, aren't we already...?"
"Are we?"
"We kissed. Multiple times. You said you were in love with me. In a forest. With burned leaves."
"That's all true. And yet."
I stared at her. She stared back. Brown eyes, the scar on her chin, the streetlight making her hair look warmer than it was. She was enjoying this. She was absolutely enjoying this and I was standing on a sidewalk in the dark realizing that I, Lucian Ellsworth, golden dragon, survivor of the Order, healer of five-year-olds, had forgotten to do the single most basic thing a guy is supposed to do when he likes a girl.
"Oh my god," I said.
"There it is."
"I didn't, I mean, with everything that happened, the forest and the operative and the family and the pillow, I just, it didn't occur to me that I still had to, you know, formally..."
"Formally?"
"Okay not formally but like, SAY it, out loud, as a question, to your face—"
"You're spiraling."
"I'm aware."
She waited. Arms crossed. Smiling now, full smile, the kind that made me forget how breathing worked.
I took a breath. Ran my hand through my hair. Took another breath. Looked at the ground, at the sidewalk, at a crack in the concrete that had a weed growing out of it.
"Emma Thomas," I said. "Will you be my girlfriend?"
"Nope. Try again."
"WHAT?"
"You're looking at the ground. Look at me."
I looked at her. My heart doing something violent in my chest.
"Emma. Will you—"
"And maybe lose the panic face. You look like you're asking me to cosign a loan."
"I am going to lose my MIND—"
"Just ask me like you mean it." Her voice went softer. "Like it matters. Because it does."
I stopped. Stopped panicking, stopped spiraling, stopped thinking about how stupid I was for not doing this before. Took her hands. Both of them, in both of mine, and they were cold from the night air and I was warm, too warm, always too warm, and I held them and looked at her face in the yellow streetlight.
"I'm not good at this," I said. "I'm not good at any of the normal stuff. I break things and I forget things and I didn't know I was supposed to ask because nobody taught me how this works, I was too busy learning how to hide to learn how to be someone's boyfriend." I swallowed. "But I want to be yours. I've wanted to be yours since you returned my ID card and called me by my name and I thought the Order had found me and then it was just you, just this girl with brown eyes and a novel about dragons, and I've been falling since that second. So yeah... Be my girlfriend. Please. Because I don't know what I'm doing but I know I want to do it with you."
She didn't answer right away. Her hands tightened around mine and her eyes were shiny and she blinked and a tear ran down her cheek, which she wiped with the back of my hand because hers were occupied.
"Yes," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Yes, you idiot."
"Cool. Great. Awesome." I was grinning now, the stupid grin, the one Marlen said made me look twelve. "So we're, like, official?"
"We're like official."
"Can I kiss my official girlfriend?"
"You'd better."
I kissed her. Under the yellow streetlight on Maple Street with a crack in the sidewalk and a weed growing out of it and the porch light from her house three blocks away and my hands too warm on her face and her hands too cold on mine and none of it mattered because she said yes and she was mine and I was hers and for once, for one single moment, being what I was didn't ruin something.
It made it better.