Chapter Four — The Trouble with Being Two Men (continued)

The bench outside the streetcar stop had a crack down its middle, one crooked leg, and an advertisement above it promising that the city's public transport was going places.

Asher had spent eleven minutes sitting there, becoming less certain that he knew where he was going at all.

At noon, he'd called Luna. She'd answered on the fourth ring.

“Ten minutes,” she'd said when he asked to see her. “And please don't make me regret giving them to you.”

Now it was six-fifteen, and he was holding two paper cups of tea. He'd bought the second without asking. It was lemon. That particular gamble felt safer than most of the things he'd said yesterday.

He saw her coming between a flower kiosk and a line of commuters. Blue jacket, hair tied up, expression suggesting that any attempt at charming his way out of trouble would be met with a swift and educational death.

“Hi,” he said, standing.

“Hi.” She eyed the cups. “Is one of those a peace offering?”

“It's tea. The peace has to be negotiated separately.”

“Good. Because I don't accept ceasefires that taste like boiled paper.”

He handed her the lemon tea. She took it, though she remained standing.

Asher didn't reach for her hand. He'd replayed the coffee-kiosk conversation enough to know how easily a joke could become an escape hatch, and how quickly he liked to disappear through it.

“I was a prick,” he said.

Luna blinked. “Well. You certainly haven't wasted the ten minutes.”

“I mean it. The mask joke was petty. You were trying to explain why something mattered to you, and I acted like that made you ridiculous.”

“You also told me I didn't know the person behind the stage act.”

He looked toward the rails. Of all the stupid things he'd said, that one had been the hardest to live with. It was true in a way she couldn't possibly understand, and false in the way he'd used it.

“I did,” he said. “And I said it to win an argument, not because it helped either of us.”

Luna lowered her gaze to the cup. “I didn't like hearing it from you.”

“I know.”

“No. I don't think you do.” Her fingers tightened around the cardboard sleeve. “I've heard strangers tell me to get a life because I care about his work. Usually they're online, and usually they're just bored. With you, it felt like something I'd trusted you with had turned into ammunition.”

That stopped him.

He remembered her talking about the library, and the cassette with a father's laugh hidden between instructions about a drawer. How fiercely she'd defended the importance of things other people dismissed. There was no reason music should be different.

“You're right,” he said. “I made a cheap shot at something that's part of you. I'm sorry.”

A streetcar rattled past without stopping, its windows full of tired faces. Luna watched it go.

“I was rude too,” she said after a moment. “You were telling me something about your day. I looked at my phone, and I made you wait while I argued with people who weren't even there.”

“You did.”

“I know. That's my apology, by the way. You don't get to use your little wounded expression to claim an extra one.”

“I don't have a little wounded expression.”

“It's practically upholstered.”

He gave her a look. Her mouth twitched, despite herself.

“Sorry,” she said again, more quietly. “For making you feel like an interruption.”

Asher let that settle. He could have made it about the impossible absurdity of competing against his own masked face, but she didn't know that was the joke. He didn't intend to punish her for failing a test nobody had told her existed.

“I got jealous,” he admitted.

Luna's eyebrows rose. “Of VESPER?”

“Not one of my finer moments.”

“You do realize how unfair that competition is.”

“Please don't give me the statistics.”

“He has a stadium tour.”

“Luna.”

“And the cheekbones on that mask are a public service.”

He covered his eyes with one hand. “You're enjoying this.”

“Some of it.” Her smile faded into something more cautious. “But I wasn't choosing him over you. I was thoughtless for a few minutes. That's different.”

He nodded. He could manage that distinction, if he was willing to be honest with himself.

“Next time, tell me you want my attention,” she said. “Don't take a swing at something I love.”

“And next time,” he said, “can you finish telling the internet it's wrong after I've finished telling you my story?”

“Depends how wrong the internet is.”

He raised one eyebrow.

“Fine,” she said. “Yes. Unless someone's actively on fire.”

“Reasonable exception.”

She sat on the bench, taking the side with the sound leg. He sat beside her, leaving room enough that she could choose the distance herself.

For a while they drank tea and watched a courier try to negotiate a bicycle through the crowded platform. The silence wasn't comfortable yet, but it was no longer sharp.

Above them a flyer had come half loose from the timetable board. Asher reached up to flatten it. A local greenhouse was holding a fundraiser the next evening, selling neglected plants that needed new homes.

“Look,” he said. “An opportunity to adopt something with worse survival prospects than my lantern.”

Luna inspected the flyer. “You want to buy a plant?”

“I want to see you tomorrow. The plant seems like a useful chaperone.”

“You've already killed one paper structure.”

“And saved it in a storm. My credentials are mixed, but impressive.”

She considered him over the rim of her cup. “Tomorrow. Seven. We don't pretend yesterday didn't happen.”

“Agreed.”

“And if you bid against me on a fern, we're enemies again.”

“Finally, clear rules.”

Her hand settled on the bench between them. Not reaching, quite. An invitation, or the beginning of one. Asher placed his beside it, palm open. She slid her fingers into his after a moment, and he felt the particular relief of being chosen without having asked her to forget why she'd been angry.

“Now,” Luna said, “you owe me the end of the radiator story.”

He turned to her. “You remember it?”

“Every humiliating detail. Don't get smug.”

“The technician insisted the click was coming from a snare microphone. Nico made him audition the radiator for the band.”

“And?”

“It failed the audition. Kept rushing the beat.”

Luna stared at him. Then her laugh broke across the platform, sudden and helpless.

Asher let himself grin. This time he'd reached the punch line. She'd stayed to hear it.