Nine-Tenths

Twenty-One

Dav kissed my hand.

It's all I can think about.

I don't want to sit out the back of Beanevolence for our break. I need to be in public or I won't be able to trust myself.

"Let's go out," I suggest, as Dav dons his shirt and waistcoat, attention laser-focused on his buttons. He's suddenly bashful. For being caught in just his under-shirt? (How cute, he still wears an under-shirt.) Or being overheard by every customer? Or being shouted at by Hadi? Or kissing my hand? "How about the board game café at the top of the street?"

"As you like," he agrees softly.

I'd like you to mean this. Please, don't let me misunderstand. Please don't let me fuck this up.

Dav said he didn't want my love confession to be a joke. Then he'd kissed my hand.

My stomach fizzes as we head out, avoiding the gazes of the dwindling crowd.

Dav kissed my hand.

I float the whole block to the resto. The owner, a woman with bright red corkscrew curls and an infectious smile, offers up some free craft beer when she finds out we're part of the café crew, and begs us to let her know when we'll be selling packets of our new roast so she can start slinging it here.

When she's dropped off our lunches, Dav twirls his spoon through his chili and, like he's ripping off a band aid, blurts out: "I have nothing else to do."

I look up from my burger, caramelized onion dripping out the corner of my mouth. Oh, yeah, real attractive. But Dav kissed my hand, so he doesn't care.

"Sorry?" I dive for a napkin, because I'm still replaying that kiss like a looped GIF in my mind, and this isn't where I thought this conversation would start.

He sinks back into the banquette, the closest thing to a slouch I've seen from him. "You've asked me, repeatedly, why I came to the café every day."

"Okay." I give him the space to elaborate, instead of making a joke about how it's obviously because he thinks I'm cute. You don't kiss the hand of people you think are not-cute.

Dav stabs his chili. His spoon stands straight up. "I have nothing else to do." For the first time since the kitchen, he meets my eyes. His face is unshuttered again, that's something, but he looks deeply unhappy. I want to kiss the worry away, but I don't know if we're there, yet. I don't know if that's actually what he wants.

I decide to focus on the conversation he clearly wants to have, instead of the one Hadi interrupted and I'm dying to get back to. Who knew I'd be all communicate-y. I've never been the one who likes to talk it out in a relationship before. Dr. Chen would be proud.

Relationship, I think, biting down the goofy grin that's threatening. Dav kissed my hand.

"That can't be true," I press. "Everyone knows dragons work in government, or head charities, or, or wealth management portfolios, whatever those are, or all the important shit for maintaining an estate."

One corner of Dav's mouth curls into a self-depreciating smirk.

"Odious letters of business," he says, paraphrasing Pride & Prejudice, in the bit where Caroline is pestering the dragon Darcy as he tries to attend to his correspondence. Dav remembers that I like Jane Austen. It makes me giddy. Maybe we can read them together.

He kissed my hand.

"Yeah, like that."

Dav shakes his head. "Not me."