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Maybe she doesn’t need me at all. Somehow that makes me feel worse. I picture her laughing and flirting with the new guy and want to punch a hole through the freshly repaired dam we just spent all morning welding new panels into. “It’s fine.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Hrrrusek asks, sliding out of the welding suit through the side window. The thing stands upright on its own, an exoskeleton built to heft the heavy power supply for the welding arc. “Take a break.”
I slip out of my suit, too, leaving the two welding suits unattended like a couple of abandoned carapaces. I head over to where the air-sled is parked and pull out my canteen, taking a drink of cool water. Since meeting Tabitha, I’ve learned to appreciate and savor how fresh the water is here. Every time I take a sip, I think of her face, and how she reverently cups the glass of water in her hands, drinking as if each mouthful is precious. I drain half my canteen, my thoughts on her. My brother is still watching me with a worried expression on his face, so I confess what’s bothering me. “Tabitha has visitors today. The vet sent her assistant to set up her barn for meat-stock.”
Hrrrusek grunts. “That’s good, isn’t it? You said she didn’t have cattle because it made her worried, and now she’s getting cattle. That means something positive, doesn’t it?”
I pause, and then grumble, “I don’t like that she has a visitor. A male visitor.”
My brother makes a sound of understanding in his throat. He knows what it’s like to be a possessive, territorial praxiian, after all, and still gets fussy over his new mate. “You marked your female’s door, didn’t you?”
“I did. Still don’t like the situation.” It’s less about a male sniffing around Tabitha and more how she feels about the situation. I know she gets spooked easily and the thought of some male tromping around at her home—her sanctuary—bothers me. What if she feels threatened and has to resort to her weaponry? No one will understand that she’s skittish, that she needs to protect herself. They’ll think she’s violent.
I should be there to protect her…but she didn’t ask me. Perhaps that’s what bothers me the most—that she could have asked and I’d have said yes. Either we aren’t close enough that she feels she can ask, or she doesn’t trust me.
I hate the thought of both.
Hrrrusek is clueless, though. He waves a hand in my direction. “You marked her door,” he says, as if that takes care of everything. “It’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t get it. I bite back my annoyance because Hrrrusek is trying to be helpful in his own way. It’s not his fault that his mate is easygoing and mine is complicated.
Because Tabitha is my mate. She just doesn’t know it yet. Then again, maybe she does. I think about the kiss last night and how she’d watched me with avid eyes as I marked her door. She still hasn’t invited me inside, but…it’s a step.
“You should bring her sweets,” Hrrrusek says suddenly.
“Sweets?” I glance over at my brother.
He nods. “When Chelsea has a bad day, she wants sweets. It’s a human thing. They find them comforting.”
“Sweets,” I echo, thinking. “I got her a jug of sweetener once. Like that?”
“No, sweets that someone else makes. That’s part of the charm.” He nods as if this explains it all. “There’s a human female in town that just set up a booth full of baked sweets. She’s down by the town hall with a little cart. The one with the yellow and pink awning. Chelsea stops there every time now and buys one of everything.”
This sounds like something I can do, a task I can focus on to appease my female and let her know that I’m thinking about her even when she doesn’t want me around. “Yellow awning,” I say, nodding to myself. “And you think she’ll be selling her wares in town today?”
“I know she will,” Hrrrusek says with an amused look in my direction. “I have instructions to stop by after work and before I head home. And when Chelsea gets sweets, Chelsea gets happy. And then I get happy, and—“
I put a hand up to silence him, because I know all about him and Chelsea getting happy, all right.
We abandon work early, since I’m still useless and distracted, and I rush into town to find the food stall that my brother mentioned. I buy one of everything, much to the female human’s amusement, and when I see she has decorative paper and a charming box to put it in, I buy a second of everything, just for the box.
After all, Tabitha can always use a box to store some weaponry, or all the candles I bring her. Mostly I just want to see her smile, and if it means bringing an absurd amount of cloyingly sweet baked goods to her door, I’m going to keffing do it.
