The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [63]
“And then you’re leaving.”
My brother looks at me and his smile has vanished. What replaces it isn’t unhappiness. Just no expression at all, eyes narrowed against a wind I don’t feel. I can’t appeal to the feelings of this Gabe, because I can’t tell if he has any. “A person can only try so hard. I did my best.”
“That’s not good enough,” I say.
He removes his sleeve from my fingers and opens the door. The sound and smell of the pub swell into the airless room.
“That’s too bad. It’s all I’ve got.” Gabe shuts the door behind himself. I swallow my sadness as hard as I can. It only makes it halfway down my throat.
It’s all up to me. That’s what it comes down to.
I spend a long few minutes in the bathroom after he’s gone, my forehead resting against the door frame. I can’t go out right away, because then Tommy Falk will grin at me and make some stupid joke and I’ll burst into tears in public and I’m just not going to do that. I know that Brian Carroll is probably still waiting at the front of the pub for me, and I’m sorry about that, but not sorry enough to come out.
After a bit, I take a deep breath. I guess I thought, before, that somehow I could convince Gabe to stay. That somehow, through all this, he would change his mind. But it feels undeniable now. It feels like he’s already stepped onto the boat.
I slip out of the bathroom and find there’s a back door a few feet away from it. Two great decisions battle inside me for a moment — go up front, past Gabe and Tommy Falk and the staring men to where Brian Carroll maybe still waits. Or slide out the back door into the alley to lick my wounds and bide my time until the riders’ parade. Really, I just want to go home and crawl into my bed and put my pillow over my head until December or March.
I could eat my shame for dinner, it’s so thick, but I take the back door and leave Brian Carroll behind.
The wind tears down the narrow, stone-walled alley behind the pub, and as I head back to the street, I think crossly of hot chocolate and home that doesn’t feel like home anymore. I can see that there’s an even denser sea of people on the street now, and I’m feeling not at all motivated to swim in it at the moment.
Then I hear “Puck! “ and it’s Finn’s voice.
He grabs my elbow, unsteady, and for a brief, uncertain moment, I think Finn is drunk because I can believe anything of my brothers now, but then I see that he was just shoved from behind by the seething crowd. Finn finds my left hand, opens my fingers, and puts a November cake in my palm. It oozes honey and butter, rivulets of the creamy frosting joining the honey in the pit of my hand. It begs to be licked. Someone nearby screams like a water horse. My heart goes like a rabbit’s.
I let the cake drip and meet Finn’s eyes. He’s a stranger, a black demon with a ghastly white grin. It takes me a moment to properly recognize him beneath the charcoal and chalk striped across his cheeks. Only his lips are pink, where the frosting from his own November cake has rubbed him clean. He wears one of the false spears made of driftwood on his back, secured with a leather thong.
“How did you get that?” I have to shout to be heard over the mob.
Finn grabs my other hand and stuffs something into it. When I go to open my fist to see what it is, he pushes my arm closer to my body, shielding it from general view. My eyes blink at the wad of money in my palm.
Finn leans toward me. His breath is sweet as nectar; he’s had more than one cake. “I sold the Morris.”
I hurriedly shove the money out of sight. “Who gave you that much for it?”
“A silly tourist woman who thought it was cute.”
He smiles at me, teeth crooked and bright in his coal-black face, his hair crazy, and I feel my face soften into a grin. “Thought you were cute, probably.”
Finn’s smile disappears. One of the lines in Finn’s code is that you’re not to say anything about Finn being attractive to the opposite sex. I’m not sure which exact statute governs this,