“Luck makes the man.” The vendor gave him a small stuffed gnome. “Your prize.”
Nico handed it to Valerie. “Would you like it?”
She was almost starry-eyed. Jake had kept any prize he’d won. “I’m going to call her Odile.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s her name.” She couldn’t explain it, but the gnome was clearly Odile. “Want to get something to eat?”
They got in line and Nico went up to peruse the options. He was the kind of person to look at a menu online before going to a restaurant. She knew it. They ordered two meads and a single brontosaurus-sized turkey leg.
“That’ll be thirty-eight dollars.” The guy behind the counter was wearing a Spock costume.
After some joint sticker shock and a brief scuffle about who would pay, Nico pulled out his card.
“Cash only.” Spock pushed back his hairnet.
“I only have twenty-five,” Nico said.
Valerie tensed, waiting for him to get offended about the prices to cover his embarrassment, the way Jake always did, but he only turned to her. “Valerie, can you help?”
Valerie searched through her pockets—she loved this skirt—to find the twenty she’d shoved in thanks to her mother’s one piece of advice growing up, which was never to leave the house without some cash.
“Thanks.” Nico took it without making a fuss or a joke to point out how comfortable he was taking her money. It was truly no big deal to him. This was the best date ever. If it was a date.
She wanted it to be. It had to be. Was it? She glanced over at those leather pants again.
Yes, she decided. It was.
She’d make sure he knew it before the night was over.
Twenty-Two
They found a place near the performance zone on a hill overlooking the stage. It was dark, but the spotlights illuminated the surrounding area enough to see. Nico tested the ground for damp as the crowd below cheered on a juggler dressed like the joker in a card deck.
“Have you ever used a scythe?” asked Valerie, bending down to nestle the mead tankards (actually recyclable takeaway cups) into the high grass before she sat down. Her skirts took up a wide radius and she tucked them close to her body.
“No, have you?”
“Never. It looks easy but I imagine I’d slice my leg off in seconds.” She made a face. “That would be messy. Speaking of chopped legs and messiness…” She brandished the smoked turkey leg. “How should we eat this?”
Nico pulled out the wad of napkins he’d grabbed after witnessing a fellow fairgoer attack his leg Henry the Eighth style. “We dig in.”
The turkey was somehow both too dry and extremely messy, and they resorted to wiping their fingers in the grass before they were donepassing it back and forth. He made sure to leave the best parts, such as they were, for her. Valerie sipped her mead with a thoughtful expression. “It’s like melted Popsicles but with a bit of a sour aftertaste. Gets better, though.”
She drained the cup and dabbed her lips with a dainty gesture before stretching. Nico stared unashamedly as she lifted her arms. He didn’t have any complaints about what she usually wore, but that corset was doing things to him.
He wondered what she’d look like wearing it and nothing else.
Valerie lay down in the grass and closed her eyes. Nico let her rest, the sounds of a lute drifting up from the stage and a welcome change from the Gregorian chants of earlier. It was rare that he simply sat and let his thoughts drift, but as he did, he found them coalescing around a single subject, like a dust cloud swirling to form a star.
Valerie.
The fight in the car had been hard. He’d cycled through a lot of emotions, which had left him with the lingering feeling that he wasn’t the kind of open, adventurous, expressive guy she’d go for. The entire mess had been capped off by the dejection of not finding Yvette.
However, this was counterbalanced by the buzz of Valerie telling him she wanted to sleep with him—technically, in the sense that they would be sleeping in the same room—and the promise of the shared tent.
When she’d come out in that outfit, in acorset, for God’s sake, he’d been stunned into silence. It wasn’t only how beautiful she looked, but how happy she was to be having this adventure. She was always lively, and this made her almost electric.
