Lola
The café is called Tristan’s, which I know because Elsie told me and also because it says so on the sign in hand-painted letters that manage to look deliberate rather than cheap. The font is slightly uneven. I find this endearing and I don’t know why.
It’s early. Early enough that the carnival crew is still setting up and Main Street has that morning wake up atmosphere. Cool air, long shadows, the smell of coffee strong enough to be a physical force from half a block away.
I’ve slept three hours on a mattress that was better than I deserved and I’ve had exactly none of the coffee required for human functioning. I am therefore operating at approximately fifty percent capacity andwith considerably less patience than usual.
The fifty percent reduction is Jack’s fault.
I push open the café door. The bell above it announces me cheerfully.
The man behind the counter looks up, and I perform the automatic checks that I always perform—threat assessment, exit locations, how many other people, what are their body orientations—and land on one staff member, four other patrons spread across tables, and no obvious problems.
Then I recalibrate, because the man behind the counter is something worth looking at. He’s tall. Dark-haired, with muscled forearms that come from actual work rather than a gym. He’s holding a cloth in one hand and looking at me with an expression of such immediate, uncomplicated warmth that I feel my own face do something complicated in response before I can stop it.
“Good morning,” he says. His voice is low and unhurried. “Sit anywhere you like.”
I sit at the counter because I have never in my life sat at a window table, which is a visibility problem I solved at age seven and have not revisited since.
He puts a menu in front of me and then doesn’t hover, which I appreciate. Most people hover. He goes back to whatever he was doing and I look at the menu and feel, for the first time in several days, something approaching calm.
Not safe. I’m not naïve. My panic is just quieter than it was.
I order coffee and eggs on toast. He brings the coffee first, and it’s good. Not just functional, genuinely, ridiculously good. I wrap both hands around the mug and feel approximately thirty percent more human.
“New in town?” he asks, not in a prying way. More in a making conversation kind of way.
“Passing through,” I reply.
He smiles. It does something to his face that I register and file away undernot my problem.“That’s what everyone says.”
“Do they stay?”
“More than you’d think, actually.” He sets a small plate of something next to my coffee without being asked. A pastry of some kind, golden and glossy, smelling of butter and something faintly citrus. “On the house. Carnival week special.”
I eat it without any further feigned reluctance because I am hungry and it smells incredible. It’s extraordinary. I say nothing about this, but something in my expression must shift because he looks quietly pleased in a way that isn’t smug, just satisfied. Like feeding people well is genuinely the point, and I’ve confirmed it.
“Are you Tristan?” I ask.
“That’s me.” He extends a hand across the counter. “You are?”
“Lola.”
His hand is warm, his grip is firm, and he holds it abeat longer than strictly necessary. When he lets go there’s a faint print of warmth across my palm that I am absolutely not thinking about.
The bell above the door goes.
I know before I turn around.
Not the general pressure-shift I felt driving into town last night. Something more specific than that. Something that has been sitting at the edge of my awareness since midnight like a frequency I can’t turn off, a low hum that goes in the direction of the door before I’ve decided to look.
The partial bond.
I haven’t named it yet—I’m not naming it, I’m not giving it the dignity of a name—but I know what it is. Jack bit me. In the height of passion when things were going so well. I had a lot of fun with him…before he went and ruined it. I was never supposed to see him again and now I’m lumped with this damned bite mark that will never go away.
I left him as soon as it happened. Fast. Angry. Taking my bag and my fury and exactly none of his explanations.
Then I spent the rest of the night in Doris Harrow’s bathroom staring at the mark in the mirror and the pull of it—toward him, toward the territory, toward something I did not choose—and being livid about all.
