Page 85 of Orc'd At A Wedding
I sip my champagne.
"She seems very relaxed tonight," Susan says, apparently deciding this is safer ground.
"She is," Olog agrees. "I work very hard to ensure that."
Susan excuses herself approximately thirty seconds later, and I see her retreat toward the ice sculpture with the bearing of a woman who has just reassessed several foundational assumptions about the evening.
I lean up toward Olog's ear. "You just told my aunt you monitor my stress hormones."
"It is relevant information," he says.
"It was perfect," I tell him.
My father cornersus near the dessert table.
This is less comfortable, because my father does not retreat the way my mother and Susan do. He plants his feet and holds his ground and looks at Olog the way men of his generation look at anything they cannot immediately categorise or control.
"Bliss," he says, and then, grudgingly, "Olog."
"Ronald," Olog replies, which is my father's name and which my father has never, to my knowledge, been addressed by at a formal event in his life, because everyone calls him Mr. Vance or sir.
My father's jaw tightens, but he adjusts.
"I owe you an apology," my father says, stiffly, looking somewhere between Olog's collarbone and the middle distance. "The comment I made at the wedding was inappropriate."
He means the checkbook. Thehow much is my daughter paying youmoment that Olog levelled into dust with nine words and a silence that lasted approximately three seconds and felt like three years.
Olog looks at him for a moment.
"Bliss is extraordinary," he whispers. "Anyone who has been too preoccupied to notice that has simply been looking at the wrong things. I hope you have more time for her going forward."
My father opens his mouth.
Closes it.
"Yes," he says, after a long pause. "Well."
He picks up a small plate of petit fours, nods once in the way men of his generation gesture toward emotions they have no vocabulary for, and moves away.
I stare after him.
"Did you just," I start.
"I did not humiliate him," Olog says. "He is your father. It serves you better if he is functional."
I look up at him and feel something warm and immovable settle in my soul.
"You're incredible," I say.
"I am thorough," he corrects, but his hand finds mine.
We leave at half nine.
The party is still running at full pitch behind us, the sound of the string quartet and a hundred conversations spilling through the heavy doors as they close. The night outside is cold and clear, the city lit up around us, and my breath makes small clouds in the air as we walk down the wide stone steps toward where Olog's car waits at the curb.
I have my heels in one hand and my clutch in the other because I shed the shoes approximately forty minutes ago on the grounds that I have nothing left to prove tonight and my feet have done their part. The stone is cold under my bare feet, and seriously, who cares?
Olog matches my pace without comment, which is generous given that his natural stride covers roughly twice the groundmine does. I know he slows down for me. He always has. I used to think it was polite professionalism. Now I know it's just him.
