AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“For the record, men in the Middle Ages were considerably smaller than the average man now.” His hands smoothed the front of the chest piece as if that might put things in order.
The many dents in the helm and plates suggested he’d used a hammer to get them on. “Is that… Ned?”
He cleared his throat. “It is.”
“Why? What? How?” Allison couldn’t make sense of anything. Not with him standing here looking likethis.Not with her heartbeat slamming in her chest.
He was here. She hadn’t chased him too far away.
The armor clanked as he shifted from foot to foot, a heavy metal symphony. “You wouldn’t talk to me. And the texts weren’t helping. I had todosomething. I needed to show you I was sorry. To make clear how much you matter to me.”
“And you thought murdering Ned would do it?”
Colin tipped his head and the faceguard dropped lower, knocking his glasses to the porch. Watching him try to retrieve them was almost worth the emotional price of admission to this performance.
After another enjoyable minute, Allison saved him from his misery.
He poked himself in the eyes twice fitting the glasses back on his face.
“I’m not really into LARPing so I’m not sure what you’re doing.”
Colin coughed, then cleared his throat again. “I just—I thought maybe if I could be the thing you love, speak your language, then I could make you understand.”
Even as they were expressed by this uncanny love child of the White Knight fromThrough the Looking Glassand Don Quixote, his words were beautiful.
“Colin.”
He held up a hand to quiet her.
With a series of clumsy percussions, he extracted a piece of paper from his pocket. Only he (and maybe Ethan) would come to an apology with a pre-written speech.
But when he shook open the note, Allison saw it wasn’t an outline. Instead, scribbles filled the page, upside down, sideways, perpendicular, in that barely legible scratch he called handwriting.
“And ther seyde oones a clerk in two vers,/What is bettre than gold? Jaspre./What is bettre than jaspre? Wisedoom./And what is better than wisedoom? Womman./And what is bettre than a good womman? Nothyng.” He stumbled over the pronunciation, missing half the syllables and spoiling the rhythm. Still, the words sang to her.
“‘The Tale of Melibee,’” Allison whispered.
Color bled into his cheeks, but his hazel eyes remained honed on his script. “Thus, in this hevene he gan him to delyte,/And ther-with-al a thousand tyme hir kiste;/That, what to done, for Ioye unnethe he wiste.”
“Troilus and Criseyde.”
He turned the page over, ready to start anew. Allison reached out. She was careful to catch the paper in her fingers and not his hand. “What is this? Every love quote in Chaucer?”
Beneath all the armor, Colin’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His hands trembled against the thin paper. “If these aren’t right, I’ll find a better one—”
“Colin.”
“Oonly the sighte of hire whom that I serve,/Though that I nevere hir grace may deserve,/Wolde han suffised right ynough for me./‘Odeere cosyn Palamon,’ quod he,/‘Thyn is the victorie of this aventure./Ful blisfully in prison maistow dure—/In prison? Certes nay, but in paradys!’”
A passage from “The Knight’s Tale.” The one they’d disagreed about all those weeks ago in Wendy’s class.
“This is incredibly romantic—”
“I never got to tell you how I really felt about those lines.” He crumpled the paper in his fist, his gaze as erratic as his flitting hands. “It reminds me of us. All the ways that love is messy and imperfect, and yet still so powerful. Like we’ve always been.”
Tears stung Allison’s eyes, and her heart stuttered against her ribs. When he started to recite another, she grabbed his hand this time.
“Colin, we should talk. Without the helmet and the cheat sheet. And maybe inside? Where we’re not freezing?”
