Page 11 of Orc'd At A Wedding
Bliss follows my eyeline, as the micro-tension returns to her shoulders, the way her grip tightens slightly on the champagne flute. She has a remarkable capacity for composure under pressure. It leaks only at the seams: the shoulder tension, a barely-perceptible tightening at the corner of her jaw, the way she smooths the front of her dress when she doesn't need to. I have catalogued these tells over the past two hours with thesame automatic precision I give to everything, and I am not examining why I find the cataloguing so absorbing.
"What does she want?" Bliss murmurs.
"More data. She's running an authenticity assessment." I reach past her to place my empty glass on a passing tray, and as I do I catch her perfume, jasmine and something warm underneath it that is entirely her, and I catalogue that too and then firmly close the file. "Let me handle it."
"Olog—"
"Five-star service, Bliss. Trust the rating."
Susan arrives with the directness of someone who has spent decades deciding that social approach angles are for people with things to hide. She does not open with a pleasantry.
"So," she says, positioning herself squarely in front of me. "The diving? Where was it?"
"The Noce," I say. "Northern Italy. Class four in late April when the snowmelt comes down. Bliss was in the middle boat of a three-craft group. The guide misread the entry line on Bridge Rapid and they caught a lateral wave at the wrong angle." I pause to take a fresh champagne flute from a tray, and offer it to Susan, who accepts it without breaking eye contact. "She didn't panic. Most people panic. She braced, went with the current, and was already angling toward the bank when I reached her. I remember thinking she was remarkably calm for someone who had just been deposited into snowmelt runoff."
A silence.
Susan looks at Bliss.
Bliss, to her extraordinary credit, simply raises her glass slightly in a gesture of gracious confirmation, her face a masterwork of serene composure, only the faint brightness in her dark eyes giving away the fact that she is performing extremely rapid internal calculations.
"Italy," Susan says.
"She hadn't mentioned it to the family," I say. "I think she prefers to allow her experiences to remain her own."
"That is extremely Bliss, actually." Susan's mouth does something complicated. "And you, what were you doing in Italy?"
"Working. I do a great deal of travel-adjacent work. Bliss was on the same organised trip. We spent the first two days not speaking." I glance at Bliss, and for the benefit of Susan and anyone within ambient range I allow my expression to do something it has not done professionally in the two hours since I arrived at this resort, which is soften, in a deliberate and targeted way. "She was clearly intelligent, clearly capable, and completely uninterested in making conversation with strangers. I found that compelling."
Bliss is looking up at me with an impression that I cannot immediately categorise.
"And after she capsized?" Susan asks.
"I gave her my dry kit. She told me she didn't need it. I told her that her lips were turning blue. She took the kit and saidthank you, but don't be smug about it." I pause. "I was somewhat smug about it. She objected twice more over dinner that evening and then let it go. I considered that progress."
The sound Bliss makes is quiet enough that only I catch it — a small, involuntary breath pushed out through her nose, the specific register of someone suppressing an actual laugh, which Bliss does by pressing her lips together firmly and staring at a fixed point slightly above eye level. I have noticed she does this when I say something she finds genuinely funny rather than strategically amusing. The distinction has become, over the course of this evening, surprisingly important to track.
Susan looks between us. The interrogation light in her eyes has shifted into something that functions more like appraisal.
"Fine," she says, which seems to be her version of a verdict. "You're not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"I expected someone decorative. She has a type." Susan glances at Bliss with the specific exasperation of long-term genuine affection. "She picks impressive-looking things that fall apart under scrutiny."
"Susan," Bliss says, in the flat warning tone.
"I'm complimenting you, pay attention." Susan points at me again. "Don't let her run the whole relationship as a project management exercise. She will build a spreadsheet. There will be milestones. Resist it." She finishes her wine, hands the empty glass to a passing server with the casual authority of someone who has never once held onto an empty glass for longer than convenient. "Dinner is at eight. Don't let her skip the appetisers; she does that when she's anxious and then becomes unbearable by the second course."
She leaves.
I look down at Bliss.
"I skip one appetiser course one time?—"
"How often?"
"That is not the point." She turns to face the patio properly, her chin coming up, her shoulders settling. Something in her posture has changed from when we arrived. The defensive brace has come down incrementally, and what is underneath it is more relaxed and also, I notice, considerably more interesting. She looks out at the assembled wedding guests with an attitude that is not performing ease but actually experiencing a low-level version of it. "She liked you," she says, for the second time this evening.
