Steelhands - Jaida Jones [47]
What was more, though I hadn’t known it before, I’d found myself attracted to someone whose preferences were the same as my own. This was the first time such a thing had happened to me. I had to press my hands against the table’s surface to keep them from trembling. It was too much freedom to contemplate all at once.
I’d wash them—and my gloves—later.
Now, however, there was the problem of making my exit since the law of averages dictated that, for however many times I’d looked over at Hal and longed for him to look back at me, my getting up in the hopes of leaving anonymously would be the one thing that managed to draw his attention. No matter how quietly I moved, making an effort not to scrape my chair or—bastion forbid—bump into anyone else, I was rather effectively trapped.
As much as I was happy for Hal, I didn’t actually wish to stay and observe his tryst as it progressed. That would fall into the category of an invasion of privacy, or what Laure termed “creepy,” and never once had such a thing been part of my intentions.
A shadow fell across my table, and just as I was about to assure the waitress that I didn’t want anything currently, thank her for her time, and inform her of the coffee stain, I realized it was someone I knew, not the waitress at all.
“Toverre?” Gaeth asked, as though he didn’t already know. It was a curious kind of politeness that didn’t quite make its way back around to being coy, I’d decided, and it didn’t exactly bother me.
Mostly because it seemed he wasn’t even aware of it himself, which made it endearing instead of completely awful.
“Hello,” I said, instantly more panicked than concerned with impressing him. No one really ever spoke to me without Laure present, too. Or, at least, no one came over to speak to me, given the choice between that and the chance to avoid talking to me entirely. Gaeth obviously hadn’t learned that lesson yet, but he would in time.
At the present, I supposed I had only to be grateful for the very large shield he made, which hid me quite effectively from Hal’s table.
“Are you meeting someone?” Gaeth asked, casting a glance to the empty chair at my table. “I’m probably interrupting.”
“I was just leaving, actually,” I told him, making a decision then and there. It would look less suspicious if I were to leave now, and I could hide behind Gaeth until we made it out of the café and onto the street.
Our professor—the former Chief Sergeant of the Dragon Corps—would have been so proud of my sudden burst of strategy. Thinking on the spot when all your plans went to piss, as Laure would have said.
“Have you tried the coffee in this place?” Gaeth asked, as I pulled on my coat. He was still wearing that beastly gray monstrosity of his—I supposed he didn’t have anything else—but one couldn’t be picky when it came to one’s instruments of escape. I was less inclined to be forgiving of his shabbiness than I once had been, now that I’d had some time to absorb how important fashion was to Thremedon. “I think it’s bad, but then I’ve never been much of a fan of coffee in the first place.”
“It’s cheap,” I sniffed, arranging myself on his right side before we set out together. “I suppose that’s why the students like it.”
“That’s what I heard, too,” Gaeth admitted, holding the door open for me. If he was under the impression that a show of good manners was going to cheer me in the slightest, then he clearly had no understanding of the depth of emotion a person like me was capable of.
A shame, really. Considering how handsome he was, he had absolutely no finer breeding.
In the light of day he seemed a little flushed but less absent than he’d been when I’d run into him with Laure in the Amazement. His eyes were clear, the whites very white and not at all bloodshot,