Page 5 of Bear My Heart

"You said you grew up here? In Virtue? And your Dad was from here?"

"Yes? Why?"

"But you're not…" Peter trailed off, then shook himself a little and smiled. "Nothing. I was just imagining you knowing about people turning into deer."

To her own surprise, Shanti laughed. Not loudly, but it was a laugh, and she'd laughed more than once already this evening. It was hard to remember the last time she'd laughed much at all, so noticing it in the moment was nice. "No one I know turns into a deer. Not as far as I know, at least. You?"

"No deer," Peter replied, and then, straight-faced, said, "A couple of moose, though."

Shanti bit her lip but couldn't stop another little smile. "I've never seen a moose. Are they as big as they look in the internet videos?"

"Yeah. They're enormous." Peter gestured above his head, like he was trying to demonstrate a moose's size.

"Well, I can't see how that would work." Shanti gave up trying not to smile. It felt nice to just be quietly happy. "It would take at least three people to make up a moose's mass, wouldn't it? Even big guys like you."

"It would have to be magic," he murmured. Their drinks arrived, and Peter took his like it was a lifeline, indulging in a big slurp while Shanti stared at her own in fascination. It was unusually clear for ginger ale, with a pool of gold-ish liquid at the bottom of the glass beneath the ice.

"It's homemade," their cheerful waitress told her. "Ginger syrup and soda water. You'll need to give it a good stir before you sip."

The waitress and Peter watched both watched as Shanti gave the drink a vigorous stir and a tentative sip that ended with her eyes widening. "Oh, that's good."

The waitress beamed and left the table while Shanti tilted her drink toward Peter. "Would you like to try?"

"Oh. Sure? Let me—" He took his straw from his own drink and knocked it against the outside of his glass a couple times to get the beaded soda off it, then put it into Shanti's ginger ale and took a small sip. His eyes widened too and he withdrew the straw, looking astonished. "It's almost spicy!"

"It's great," Shanti said happily. "My aamāu, my Nepali grandmother, used lots of ginger in her cooking. She would have loved this. Do you cook?" She had no idea why she asked, except to keep the conversation going and to keep it more focused on Peter than herself.

He chuckled and shook his head. "I'm one of those guys who does well if you give them a grill but never learned my way around a kitchen. Fire good, oven scary."

"Fire's much scarier than an oven!"

"I know you're right in every logical way, but…fire good. Oven scary." He gave a caveman grunt, and Shanti giggled. "What about you," he asked. "Do you cook? I get by mostly on microwave meals, honestly."

"I do, I cook, I learned… well I cooked for Gran and Gramp here, but I also learned to cook Nepalese food from my aamāu."

"So you must have spent real time there? Unless you're the fastest learner in the world."

"We visited twice when I was little, before my parents died," Shanti said quietly, wondering how the conversation had come back to her. "And then my grandparents, all of them, they put so much effort and money into making sure that they all got to spend time with me. So I went to Nepal every summer almost all the way through college." She hesitated, then shook her head. Her grandparents in Nepal had died unexpectedly when she was a junior in college, and she didn't want to go into that right now.

Peter studied her momentarily before nodding. "What'd you study in college?"

Disconcerted heat flushed through Shanti. That was the second time, at least, that Peter had read her well enough to handle a subject delicately. By changing the subject entirely this time, in fact. Shanti wasn't accustomed to anyone doing that at all. For a few seconds she just gazed at him, wondering if he was this observant with everyone, or if she just showed her emotions very clearly. Though she didn't think she did. She'd spent a long time making sure big feelings stayed quiet and tamped down inside her. "Nursing. I was going to study literature, but then…"

So many things had happened. Shanti took a breath and picked one of them, which was as true as any others, if nowhere near the whole truth. "…I decided I'd like to be able to find a job in my field."

Peter gave a low rumbling laugh. "Yeah, it's tough out there, isn't it? I went to trade school. Welding, so I could work on railroads. There are probably more jobs in nursing, but I'm not brave enough for that kind of work."

"Not brave enough?"

"Well, first off, I don't like needles."

Shanti ducked her head to hide a laugh, then looked up, trying not to smile. "Not a good career for you, then, no. Although they're not as bad when you're putting them in someone else instead of⁠—"

Peter actually shuddered and went pale beneath the warm browns of his skin tones. Shanti, amused, said, "Oh, you really don't like needles. No tattoos, then?"

He went from pale to nearly green. "No. You?"

"I don't know if I should tell you," Shanti said, almost laughing despite herself now. "You might faint."