Page 21 of Finding Her
He propped himself up onto an arm and stared down at me through his dark lashes. “I’m thirty-two years old. I bartend at the pub down the street.”
“Keep going.” I closed my eyes to focus on the sound of his voice.
“I was born on the Eastern Continent and decided to move West because I loved the snowy winters.”
His immediate silence after answering my question let me know he wasn’t used to talking about himself. I would happily assist. I was making myself an expert in asking questions these days.
“Why the nice attire all the time?” I nestled my head into the crook of my shoulder comfortably, picturing the sharp collar of his dress shirt always tilted perfectly parallel to his jaw.
He shrugged. “I’m not rich today, but we were dirt-poor for all my childhood. My mother had a job in a factory that paid her next to nothing. My father had to stop working after a nasty carriage accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. I never wanted to feel like a poor, starving boy in rags again. So once I started making decent money bartending, I bought myself the wardrobe my younger self associated with success.” He smiled faintly, dreamily, for a moment, before his expression was neutral again. “I was ridiculed at first, of course. You might have noticed Theo’s pub doesn’t exactly have a dress code. Now I imagine they accept it as a quirk.”
“Are your parents still in the East? Will we see them on this trip?”
“No, they had me at a fairly old age. I took care of them in their last years of life. They left this world around the same time, unsurprisingly, since their souls had always been so intimately intertwined. It’s been over ten years since I lost them and moved to the West. I’ve tried to spend it living for myself in ways I couldn’t when I was younger.”
“For somebody who wants to live for themselves, it seems odd to take in a total stranger you found on the side of a road, half dead,” I remarked. It made sense that he had been a full-time caretaker before, and I felt guilty for forcing him back into that role.
“I haven’t had this much motivation to roll out of bed in a long time.”
Despite its morose themes, that confession was a breath of fresh air. It filled the holes in my mind on why Graysen was so pleased to bring me home, and why he didn’t seem eager to get rid of me. I was something to care for to bring him out of a depression. “The same way people adopt dogs for their mental health,” I thought with amusement.
“What were you doing on the road that night?” My fingers absent-mindedly found their way to the bow of my satin collar.
An unexpected pause caused my eyes to crack open. His face held the same blankness it had many times before.Fuck. I was losing him again.
“Looking for something I had lost.”
“Did you find it?” I tucked a wave of fallen hair behind my ear, and shifted to face him more intentionally.
He was quiet a long moment before replying with a brief and emotionless, “No.”
“I’ll help you find what you lost if you help me find my way home.” I sheepishly smiled in hopes of lightening his dipping mood.
“I’d like that.” He forced a smile back and nodded his head. His cool eyes were delving into my soul relentlessly. I could feel them skimming the pages of myself that even I couldn’t make sense of.
Squirming under his intensity, I raised the pitch of my voice to be more cheery, “So what are we looking for?”
“We’ll know once we find it.” His head turned away from me. “Much like with your predicament, I don’t know how to start looking.”
The pounding of hooves against the road had grown rapid, and wind whistled against the walls of the carriage. Our drivers must have been nearly at a full sprint. Compared to the bumpiness of their town trot, the speed of the Silvates made it feel like we were floating. I could hear what sounded like violently crashing waves in the distance and the air began to smell of salt and seaweed.
“Are we near water, Graysen?” I asked, squinting through the brightness of the open shutters and seeing pale pink sand spanning the horizon. There were dunes and the occasional large piece of driftwood, but most of the landscape was a blank canvas.
“Very,” he answered, reaching behind himself and pulling an additional thick pane of glass out of the square sill. It slid across the original layer and fastened to the other side with a snap. “And in a matter of moments, we’ll be in it.”
“Oh, are there tunnels here?”
“Those are hardly necessary.” He rose to his feet, ducking his head and flipping his thick twisting locks to one side to keep them out of his face. Realizing he was on his way to my window, I squeezed myself into the corner of the bench to make room. He bent at the waist, securing the glass on my side. He had to leanover my lap in the confined space, a waft of campfire filling my senses.
I stared at him in anticipation and raised my eyebrows, waiting for a reassuring “I’m just kidding”.
He plopped down next to me, our knees barely avoiding contact with one another. “This is a good example of why I don’t want a car—they can’t handle water.”
“Graysen,” I said sternly. “Don’t you hear those waves?” I didn’t have to see the water to know that beaches didn’t typically sound so threatening. This didn’t seem like the best way to convince me of his carriage’s robust design in comparison to a motorized vehicle.
“It’s the only way to our destination. I promise it’ll be alright.”
Suddenly, the entire carriage jolted violently, and translucent teal water crashed against the window. I fell forward, grabbing onto Graysen’s upper arm and burying my face into his shoulder. With eyes closed tight, I let out a pathetic squeal. I waited for the windows to shatter and the walls to buckle in on themselves as we descended. Any moment now, water would seep through the wood, and we would drown.
