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I look at my fingers. “It’s not just that. I don’t know how to stop. It’s an automatic reaction as though I’m worried something bad will happen if I don’t follow all the steps I always have. Any type of change—good or bad—feels like an attack on my nervous system. I want to tell them everything, but I don’t know how they’ll react. If I can’t provide proof, I don’t even know if they’ll believe me. If I do ask for your help in providing proof, I don’t know if they’ll accept it, or if it’ll terrify them. And…if they don’t accept it…if it does terrify them…I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“I can make the event disappear if things go poorly.”
“I know, but their reaction will mean something to me whether they remember it or not.” Running my fingers through my hair to push my curls back, I free a tight breath. “All this is to say I’d like to move in with you, but I can’t until I figure out how to explain everything to them. Favorably. I can’t keep living in a place where I feel constantly obligated to be the right picture they have of me, but I also can’t leave without at least trying to show them the truth. I love them too much to turn all their best efforts into something I…” My voice cracks. “…I blame them for.”
A beat passes.
Another.
Pollux is frozen when I find the courage to look his way.
Eyes wide, he stares at me.
“What?” I blush.
“I’m listening. Not persuading. Or offering advice.” He swallows. “You…you want to move in with me?”
Did I really say that? My face blisters. “Well, move in with you is a bit of a stretch. I’d like to move into the pretty room you were preparing for me. We’ll assess the connotations of moving in with you at other times.” Likely when I’m weak and touch-starved and have accidentally witnessed Pollux fresh from a shower. “I’d just like to come home to a place where I can continue feeling however the day has made me feel without feeling like I have to continue pretending I’m never tired.”
“You’re not a burden, Kassandra. Even when you’re tired.”
I shiver. “You’ve not had to deal with me when I’m tired. Only angry. And since you’re demented, you don’t mind the anger.”
“Would you like to stay over tonight and give me a taste of what you’re like when you’re tired?”
“Excuse you. Good children do not have co-ed slumber parties.”
“You are the human definition of an adult.”
I scoff, cross my arms, slouch, scoff again. “Um.” Another scoff, for good measure. This man. This man. I am obviously three possums in a trench coat. I don’t know what he’s talking about. “No.”
“I am almost entirely certain I have not provided ignorant misinformation.”
“What’s the fae definition of an adult? Maybe those are the genes I take after.”
“An adult is a creature that has fully grown or developed. A faerie that can say they are an adult and expresses as much is a faerie who both is an adult and would like to be treated as one. For the most part within Cael’s domain, every being is treated with the respect humans often reserve for adults.”
“That’s bonkers.”
“Is it?”
“I am not an adult. Please treat me as a child and provide me with nap times and snacks.”
Pollux laughs. “Gladly, dearest. I suppose in that case, we should change seats and I should get you home to bed.”
“Can you drive?”
“Legally, no. I don’t have a license. Physically, I am capable, and these contraptions are far more convenient to commandeer than what they once were.”
Legalities will forever ruin my fun. As will social constructs. And my own sense of morality.
Before I find a way to express that, however, he sees right through me. Probably because I’m pouting and crossing my arms instead of smiling peachily and saying oh no no no, I shouldn’t, I couldn’t, but I do ever so appreciate the invitation.
“You want to stay over,” he says.
“It’s a school night,” I mumble.
“We can go to bed early.”
