Page 35 of In Somnis

Glasses gawks at me. “Uh, nobody, ma’am.”

Ma’am? I almost snort.

“Yeah.” I reach back and wrap my hand around Shaw’s bracelet-covered wrist. “Respect your elders.”

The crosswalk sign turns to go, and I pull him after me across the street, only dropping his wrist when we make it to what feels like a safe distance away, about halfway down the next block. He stops moving and stares at me with the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, peeking out under messy curls.

Then his face transforms, breaking into a crooked grin. Dimples. Of course, the fairy has dimples.

“Respect your elders?” He smirks. “How old are you, like… twenty-five?”

I snort for real this time. “I already rescued you. No need for flattery.”

“It’s not flattery. You look the same age as my brother. How old are you?”

“Add ten years, and you have it.”

His eyebrows shoot up, but I glance over his shoulder and see Glasses coming down the street toward us. I put a hand on Shaw’s back and get him walking. “Where do you actually need to go?”

“To the inn at the end of the street.” His curls bounce with every step.

“Good.” I tighten my grip on my grocery bag and keep marching, glancing back a few moments later to see Glasses is still trailing behind us. “Does that asshole bother you a lot?”

“On a daily basis, yeah.”

“Is he seriously following us right now?”

Shaw sighs. “Probably not. We’re kind of neighbors.”

“Okay. Then I’m staying with you.”

“That’s not necessary,” he says quickly. “He does this every day. And it’s not like he’s wrong about the weird part.”

I stop dead and look at him straight on. “He is wrong.”

“You don’t know me yet.” He huffs a soft laugh. “And everybody who does says so.”

“Then everybody else is wrong.”

His smile brightens, and I smile back before I start walking again. “Listen, I got bullied plenty in school, but you know what? I have never once been hated by someone I’d want to trade places with.”

“What if I do want to trade? Most of them have money and normal families. They fit in…” His voice is barely more than a mumble, and it makes my heart hurt.

Poor baby.

“If they have the time and energy to be that cruel for zero reason? Trust me, honey, you do not want their life.”

Dad used to say the exact same thing when I came home crying. “Lenny, miserable people only know how to make more misery. You stay sweet.”

God, I hated high school.

I glance back one more time, and there’s no sign of Glasses anymore, so I take a step away from Fairy Boy, and we both sort of hover.

“I’m sorry.” I shift the grocery bag again. “That was… probably too handsy.”

He shrugs. “Don’t worry…. ma’am.”

Little shit.