7-2

“Hey, what are you—”

Clover stuffed a bouquet of flowers in her face.

With a huge push and a massive snort, Carmina saved herself from drowning. A few students in the hall stopped and lingered in the hall to watch; Clover took Carmina by one arm, secured the flowers in her grip with another, and hustled them on.

“I didn’t know these bloomed in late summer.”

“They don’t. They’re not supposed to.”

“…They smell really good.”

Clover heard something soft and raw in her voice that made her heart flutter. The only thing that dulled the moment was her inability to separate her own affection from plain surprise.

With her free hand, Carmina was sifting through the petals of roses, daisies, and a riot of blooms that Clover couldn’t name but had chosen for explosive color and thick, honeyed scent.

“Can we not go outside with this?” Carmina asked twenty steps before the door. “It’s going to attract bees.”

“There’s no bees on—” Clover’s heart stuttered again. “You tell jokes now?!”

“Yeah. I’ve been learning from someone…named you.”

That line was not smooth at all. But there was no way of knowing whether the narrowed eyes Carmina showed her as she said it were real flirting or the sign of a put-on. Or both.

“Now,” Clover said when they entered the booming quad, “I’d like for the place we’re going to be a surprise until we get there…kind of like how the bouquet was a surprise until I shoved it up your nose.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So would you mind tying your scarf around your eyes?”

Carmina always had at least one red accessory on. She could be wearing any kind of bargain-bin slop heap, all sorts of muddy colors, but it was hers as long as she wore the touch of red.

She turned and smiled at Clover. “Can’t I just close my eyes?”

Clover wanted to scream. Okay, she had passed the threshold of confusing her uneven heartbeat for fear or a medical condition. This had to be new and thrilling territory. She had no soft spot for Winster the bird, saw babies as “pointless,” and hated the street-urchin animals always pouncing on scraps and nipping the hands of idiot kids. But seeing a smile on a face that had never smiled…resting her hands on either shoulder…she saw that Carmina in this moment was just adorable.

“No,” she said. “You might peek. …Wait, I have an idea you might like. Close your eyes.”

“I’ll trust you…” She closed them.

Then Clover moved Carmina’s hands so they were shoving the bouquet into her own eyeballs and noseholes.

She just stood there for a few seconds. “What do you call this… Cheating? Unfair? …I can’t breathe, Clover.”

“I’m just impressed you held out that long.” She lowered the flowers and smiled. “Well, maybe one surprise is enough. Come on!”

The amulet around her neck twinkled in the lamplight. She looked down on it with thankful prayers, still not trusting that the things she was experiencing had come from herself.

Fancy enough for a special evening, but not so fancy they’d need special dresses—that was the goal when Clover set out for Promenade. The rug beneath their feet was the color of wine. A waiter led them past a loud bar and up the stairs to a lonely and peaceful deck. There they could see the last crest of sun over the forests of Bearland.

The waiter passed out menus and talked up the steaks and briskets. Clover suddenly remembered all her theories about Carmina—none of them substantiated, but all of them possible. Maybe she loved a bloody brisket, but maybe she couldn’t stand it… A brief wormy feeling passed through her.

But when the waiter left, Carmina’s stoic look was totally unchanged. While a candle sat in the center of the table, the flowers sat in a vase as close to the railing overlooking Littleburo and beyond as possible.

Clover didn’t take long to decide on her order. She looked at Carmina quizzically, not even trying to hide her interest. Carmina, for her part, was totally absorbed and never noticed.

“Hey, Clover…do you mind if I get really, really drunk?”

“Why?” Clover said, too quickly. She tried to cover it up with a dramatic pout and a joke-not-joke. “To tune out the rest of this evening with me?”

When Carmina looked up from the menu, her eyes widened—which was also pretty much new for her. “No! I just have never been drunk before.”

You don’t wanna be, Clover almost sighed, but, well…it took her long seconds to realize she didn’t know that. “Sure! Better here than someone’s basement. I’ll help you live the college dream.”

“Thanks. Um…wait…would you have to carry me home?”

Clover snorted. “I better. What kind of an asshole would I be if I didn’t?”

“Okay, but…” Carmina’s eyes drifted, scanning her everywhere but her face. “I don’t even know if you eat meat.”

“What?”

“You…your arms.” Carmina poked her own. “There’s nothing on them.”

“What?” she said through a giggle. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re mages.”

“Sure. Then you’ll have to expend kinetic blasts just to launch me down the street.”

“Launch you down the street?!”

“Yeah, launch me down the street.” Carmina looked away. “I guess that is a funny mental image.”

Clover spat vigorously enough to have spat out a drink, were any present. “No! You don’t have to worry, Carmina. I do work out!”

“I’m sure you do,” she said, smiling, “but…how?”

Scooting loudly away from the table, brushing the tail of her coat aside, rolling up the hem of her skirt, Clover revealed what she was really hoping to be a developed calf muscle. It was hard to tell, though. Most legs were meaty.

“I’m supposed to be impressed?”

“Quit shaming me!” Clover cried, but she was enjoying this. She’d never had the kind of friend you could take mutual potshots with. Even now a small but vocal part of her was afraid she’d bite back, say the wrong thing, step too far over an unseen line, and Carmina would leave. But instead, for the moment, she hastily flopped her leg and lab coat back into place as the waiter came to take their orders.

“You ordered mushrooms for the table?”

Clover narrowed her eyes. “So you are a carnivore,” she said. “Yes I did, to prove they are a valid, filling, and protein-rich food.”

Carmina looked suspicious. “Hmm.”

A platter of fried, curly brown things arrived, as well as a slender wine glass. Carmina looked suspicious of this too. “Why is there so little?” she said, picking it up and sniffing it close.

“Because consuming alcohol can be quite dangerous,” Clover said primly, “especially when one does not know how their body will react. Make sure you drink lots of water and take it slo—”

She had already downed the whole thing.

Carmina closed and opened her mouth, like a dog trying to lick peanut butter from the roof of it. She still looked suspicious. “I think I’m sleepy,” she said.

Clover came around the back of her chair and gently took her by the shoulders, making sure she was steady. Wondering if she was being too cautious, but remembering how many things must be new to her; always aware that she shouldn’t always come on strong; newly aware that Carmina was vulnerable. She insisted that Carmina drink the whole cup of water and sweetened the request with a joke. She sat again and the waiter brought refills.

“How are you liking the appetizers, ladies?”

Carmina swallowed. “These are great. The texture is crispy on the outside, but chewy yet tender on the inside. Going from one to the other is like a…like a food adventure. And those earthy natural juices are…”

Sighing playfully, gazing at Carmina as she described the wonders of eats, Clover thought, Ah, the waiter must be so tired of this.

The girl in the red scarf finished three-quarters of the mushrooms—proving Clover’s point, she thought with silent pride—and right away came the main event. Both had ordered rare, glistening steaks.

As she stared at the dish, Carmina took another slow, long, investigatory drink of wine. “Hmm… What happens if we don’t finish?”

“We can take the rest home, don’t worry.”

“What happens if we…eat none of it?”

“They’ll be offended, but we don’t care about that.”

“But if I don’t eat it soon, it’ll rot.”

“…I’m really hoping you have a fridge back home, Carmina.”

“I do, yeah.” Carmina began to flop forward into her juicy steak. Quickly Clover pulled the vase in front of it so she flopped instead into the airbag of flowers. Carmina, not seeming to notice, bounced off the flowers and backward in her chair, her head dangling precariously over the headrest.

“Damn!” Clover hurried over to help get her upright. “See? You have a really low threshold. Height matters.”

Carmina made a sound in between “yeah” and “ububbuh.”

Even though surely Clover was only half as full, and the food looked tantalizing, she called it there and ordered the check. She found the sight of a drunk Carmina less cute than unsettling. So was the idea that she had become a sort of caretaker for the night. Nobody but nobody had entrusted her with anyone’s care. She grew up an only child and a social outcast, and now suddenly she was being trusted to hoist a friend, or date, or someone, to her feet. But she would rather be here facing the challenge than anywhere else. She wanted to help a fellow lonely girl explore and have a good time.

And maybe…that was all it was. Not every person went through life wanting money or power. Not everyone walking with purpose had an ambition. So could that be it? If Carmina was coming out of an illness, was she just widening her realm of experience, reaching for whatever she could catch in the stream, making up for lost time?

The town around campus was humming gently with nightlife. Carmina was steady enough to walk with an arm around her waist. Clover knew that keeping her engaged in a steady conversation was the way to keep her awake, but she was too distracted by the thoughts and wormy worries running in her head to offer more than the most banal of topics. She wasn’t worried about not being able to make it to Carmina’s dorm, but…

Damn. This is ridiculous. I don’t think she knows.

She looked down, but of course she couldn’t see her amulet that easily. I don’t think I know.

The terms Clover had been using were “enchantment,” “fixation,” and “deep fascination.” She felt “attached to” and “endeared to” Carmina. She would love, love, love to say that she loved her, but when it came to owning the responsibilities of being a lover, she had no faith. It was easy to joke and laugh with people. Easier still if they were truly funny. Not so easy to stand with them and project sympathy.

She guessed she could practice. She would rather not keep practicing on real suffering people…