Page 60 of Wild Thorns

"Something like that."

She gives me a look that suggests she knows something I don't, the same look half the town seems to have perfected, the one that sits just on the edge of I could tell you things without crossing into it, and then she moves on to the next customer. I take my coffee and sandwich to a corner table and try to collect myself.

I'm about halfway through the sandwich when Eli sits down across from me.

Not asks if he can sit. Sits. Like it's a given, like the chair across from mine was always going to be his. He orders tea, just raises his hand and Mel nods, because apparently Eli doesn't need to speak to be understood here. Then he folds his hands on the table and looks at me with those precise, perceptive eyes.

He doesn't say anything for a moment. He just looks.

It should be uncomfortable. It isn't, quite, which is its own kind of uncomfortable.

"Did you sleep good last night?," he asks.

"Well, there was a lot of howling going on last night. How did you sleep?"

"Ah. I suppose I slept well."

I wrap both hands around my coffee cup.

He tilts his head slightly, something careful in his expression. "The howling bothers you?"

I consider lying. It's a reflex, the same one that kept me careful for three years, that learned to give the answer that closed conversations rather than opened them. But Eli would see through it. He sees through most things, the way he's always a half-step ahead of whatever's happening, the way he looks at me like he's reading something in a language other people don't know exists.

"Yes and no," I say. "It’s not discomforting, not really, but—" I stop. "I do find it confusing. There’s a lot about this town that I find confusing. If I’m being completely honest, you and your brothers confuse me. The way you all—" I stop again.

"The way we all… ?"

I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t say, The way you all make me feel.

"The way you all move like you're connected to each other. Like you're aware of each other in ways that don't require words or—or sight, even. Like there's something... ," I set my coffee down. "Something I don't have a word for yet."

Mel delivers Eli's tea without fanfare. He thanks her with a nod. She goes.

"We’re close," he says. His voice is quiet, certain in the way Eli is certain about things—not arrogant, just accurate, the way a fact is certain. "We always have been, but you feel like a part of that, like family. We thought, maybe you feel the same?"

I go very still.

"That's the second time someone's said something like that to me."

"It won't be the last."

"Eli." I lean forward, keeping my voice low because there are other people in here and whatever this conversation is, it feels like it should stay between us. "That is very sweet, and I’m grateful to all of you, truly. But I’m still finding my place i this town, and there’s like a million questions I need you to help me answer."

Something moves in his expression. Not reluctance, exactly. Like he's working with a sequence he can't yet disrupt. "I know."

He picks up his tea. "We can do that." He meets my eyes over the rim. "You ask good questions, the right questions, Serena. I enjoy that. Most people don’t wanna know."

"I'm not most people."

"No," he says it simply, like it's something he's observed and confirmed. "You're not."

He stands. Leaves exact change on the table; he always has exact change, I don't know how, and buttons his jacket.

"Eli—"

"Come find me when you have time." He's already moving toward the door. "I’ll be around."

And then he's gone, out into the afternoon light, and I'm left sitting in the coffee shop with a half-eaten sandwich and the uncomfortable sense that I'm standing at the edge of something… Something that's been there all along, waiting for me to look directly at it.