Page 58 of Salt Kiss
Namely, I go up to the bar on the fourth floor to drink until the obsessive ache in my chest stops hurting.
I’m sitting at the dark wooden bar—having just finished a pea soup with fresh cream and preserved lemon (and the Lyonesse signature of edible flowers)—when Goran sits next me.
“Mr. Trevena cloistered with Ms. Trevena?” he asks, reaching over and taking a slice of my bread without asking. The bartender sets a glass of clear golden beer next to him, and he winks at her.
I push the small ramekin of butter his way. “They’re having dinner.”
“The terror twins,” Goran says. “You know, they used to get sent out into the field together because they didn’t even need to speak to communicate. They say that the two of them used to be able to dismember and then dispose of bodies together without ever having to say a single word.”
“Are you saying Melody Trevena is as scary as Mr. Trevena?”
Goran gives me an incredulous look. “Dude, she’s scarier. She’s stillin, you know, still at the agency. Except she’s the one who calls the shots now.”
I try to remember Melody from the wedding. Tall, I think, with the same blue eyes as her twin brother. A sleek, blond ponytail and a pantsuit. She had a pretty wife with big glasses who talked to anyone who’d listen about storing energy in molten salt.
“What do you think they’re talking about right now?” I ask.
Goran lifts a shoulder. “She’s probably trying to cajole him into divulging some Lyonesse tidbit or other. He’s undoubtedly trying to do the same in the opposite direction.”
I can picture it now, the two them facing off across the table, blue eyes against blue eyes, plates speckled with flowers and rich sauces and tiny bones between them.
I like the idea that someone can challenge him, resist him. God knows I can’t.
“I’m worried about Drobny,” Goran says abruptly and then takes a long drink of his beer. “Real worried.”
Same. “Yeah, me too.”
“The security assessments came back fine, which almost bothers me more,” he admits. “But they were thorough as fuck, so I don’t have anything to go on other than a gut feeling.”
“It’s something about Kulov,” I say. “He never got riled up. It’s like he was pretending to be offended that Mark didn’t trust him, but he expected it.”
“If it were any other day but Saturday,” Goran grumbles, and I nod. The logistics for the open house are complicated enough—that many guests, that many demonstrations, with rooms and booths booked solid...the place will be a zoo. And yes, the whole team will be there, and we’re bringing in additional security, and all the guests have been vetted in advance—but still.
Like most parties, it’ll be a lot more fun for the guests than the hosts.
“At least if it’s a clusterfuck, it’ll be a fun clusterfuck, eh?” Goran says with a wide grin as he tips his glass to my beer bottle. By this point in my life, I’ve seen people react to stress in every way imaginable. There are the types who get quiet, the types who get pissy, the types who—like me—get sad. And then there are the people who already have big, easy smiles, who slap you on the shoulder, who joke and joke and will probably die joking. Their smiles just get wider when they’re barely holding it together, their shoulder slaps harder.
I wave for the bartender and ask for a bourbon, neat.
Beer isn’t working fast enough.
Goran watches me take the first long swallow with his eyebrows raised. “You okay, kid?” he asks.
I look at him. His dark eyes are kind.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I’m surrounded by wood and leather and lighting pendants that have probably been featured inArchitectural Digest. I’m making more money than I ever could have dreamed, doing a job that’s actually pretty easy, and once or twice a day, I’m fucked blind by a man so magnetic that people turn to look at him when he walks through a public park.
Ishouldbe okay. Being in love with someone who doesn’t love me back should be as familiar as the sunset behind the farmhouse. But this time it’s not okay at all, and I feel the loving of him like I felt the wax burning on my skin.
Dangerous, addictive.
Impossible to resist.
“I like you,” Goran says after a minute. “A lot of people who get out young—well, there’s usually a reason, and that reason can make them hard. Like they’ve grown an extra skin to protect themselves. Sometimes that skin is as heavy and rank as old body armor. But it’s like you’ve grown a shell of glass instead.”
A shell of glass.
Is that what it feels like to be Tristan Thomas now? Like the daydreaming prom king is still there, just in a translucent chrysalis now to keep him and his tender heart safe?
