Something in my throat makes it hard to swallow. My eyes catch on the strands of Jenna's pale blonde hair trailing in the breeze. She's so beautiful.
"Be careful, okay?" she says.
I laugh. "I'm not afraid of Doug."
She blinks and looks up at me, and I barely have a second to avoid the entrapment of her stare. I know if she catches me, I won't be able to look away. I'm more afraid of that than I am facing Doug and his six best friends without my armor on. My heart is pounding. It's a narrow escape. This time.
I turn and head for the door of Doug's tent. It is poorly made to vaguely resemble something from the period, but it's nothing next to my pavilion-style tent. The fabrics he's used are not authentic, and it appears as if he does not care. I've noticed that the only thing he does care about is fighting--and winning. There is no other interest in the period for him. He spends very little time acting as part of the community or helping younger fighters rise up through the ranks.
I reach up and tug on the bell hanging from a string at the entrance.
"Come," says the voice from within.
I lift the flap of the canvas and enter with Jenna right behind me. Doug spins and looks at me, then at her, then back to me. "What do you want?"
"I've come to retrieve the item that belongs to Mistress Kovac."
His mouth curls up into a smile, but it looks more like an animal snarling. "I don't have anything that belongs to her. And if she's sicced you on me because of her little tiara, that's mine. I bought it."
Jenna steps forward to stand next to me. Her pale head of hair barely clears my shoulder. "You had no right to buy that back from Tim. I told you I didn't want to borrow money from you."
"It's my money, Jen," he says to her. His tone of voice and the way he shortens her name make me want to punch him. Right in the mouth. That way, he'll never use that mouth again to say anything that will hurt her.
I step forward. "I'll purchase it from you. Right now. With cash."
He looks me up and down. Maybe he's trying to figure out where I could be hiding the money.
"No." He crosses his arms over his chest.
So he's choosing to be difficult. I don't understand why. Doug and I have never had much to say to each other. Now isn't any different, apparently.
"I will pay you triple what you paid for it, then."
He just stares at me, and since I can't read faces--and don't do staring either--I avoid looking at his face. I have no idea what's going through his mind, but when I glance up again, he's staring at Jenna and smiling. A quick look at her confirms that she is not smiling at him.
I should be happy that she's angry at him and doesn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. I've liked her for so long and it's angered me all these months that she was with him. I have no claim on her now, but someday...I will.
But right now I'm worried that she's going to change her mind. That she's going to decide she wants to be with him after all, even if it is just to get her tiara back. Come to think of it, I've never seen Jenna wear a tiara--or any sort of expensive jewelry. This must be worth a good sum in order for her to pawn it for two thousand dollars.
Doug's now looking at me with his head tilted to the side. "I see why she brought you in here. You've got money. Isn't your brother a billionaire or something?"
I shake my head, annoyed now. "I don't have a brother. You mean my cousin. Yes, he's a billionaire, but I don't spend his money. I have my own job. Now, if I give you fifteen thousand dollars today, will you give her back the item?"
He holds his fist up in the air and makes a sound like a buzzer at a game show. I have no idea what that means. "Try again."
Jenna is tugging at my arm now. "Come on, Wil. We can take it to the clan council. They're meeting after lunch."
"Yeah, you do that, Jen," Doug taunted. "Go--and take your idiot with you. You know what they say, like attracts like."
I stiffen. There it is again...that word. Idiot. Just like the others I've heard throughout my life. Moron. Retard. But this is much worse. He called Jenna that name, too.
Her fists tighten at her sides. "How dare you--"
"Jenna," I interrupt, stepping forward and putting my arm out to block her from advancing on Doug. I can fight my own battles. To Doug I say, "I haven't insulted you. I don't care if you insult me because your opinion means nothing to me. But you won't insult her. Apologize."
"Not gonna happen."
I take another step toward him. His eyes get round, but when I think he's going to step back, he doesn't. We've just had a confrontation while both dressed in armor. This feels much more real, more immediate, just inches from each other and no metal between us. "Whatcha gonna do, retard?"
Suddenly, heat rushes up from the depths of my being and my skin is on fire. I reach out and grab a handful of Doug's t-shirt. "Stop trying to provoke me."
He pushes against my chest and I let him go. He takes two steps back, brushing himself off. "Back off, psycho."
"I don't need to back off. You just did. Now apologize."
Silence.
I'm getting ready to take another step toward him when he holds out his hand. "Fine. I'm sorry. Get the hell out of my tent."
"You should be ashamed of your unchivalrous behavior toward Jenna."
Doug's face scrunches up. "Get out."
Jenna tries to push past me again and I hold her back. "Let's follow the rules of the clan, Jenna. We can take this issue to the council."
She mutters under her breath, saying a lot of unchoice words about Doug. I won't argue with that opinion of him. He was never going to be a friend under the best of circumstances, but now, not ever...and especially not after the way he spoke to her.
And to think that they were together until today. He had called her his girlfriend, and yet he turned around and treated her this way. I can't understand how he could be so cruel to someone he once liked or even loved.
Doug is not a good person. And now I am even angrier with myself for having made such stupid mistakes during the duel. I could have won. I could have proved what I'd set out to prove all those months ago when I'd challenged him. All those hours I spent working out, and all that time and money spent with a private martial arts trainer. I could have been the better man...I could have been worthy.
But I hadn't proven myself. I'd failed. Yet again.
That same frustration stabs painfully in my chest. My fists tighten and I escort Jenna out of the tent. She has her head down and her skin is flushed.
"Are you all right?" I ask. I can't tell by looking at her--or anyone, really. These are things that come so easy to everyone else, but I have to study
mannerisms, gestures and tone of voice. Even then, I rarely get it right.
Jenna doesn't say anything for a long time, but finally she nods. We are making our way up to the center of the park. There's a large main tent where the council will meet shortly. I turn to her. "You need to eat. And so do I. When the council meets after lunch, we can speak to them."
She reaches out for my hand, and before I can pull it away, she squeezes it. "Thank you so much. It was very kind of you to stand up for me. I..." Her voice trembles and fades away as she blinks rapidly. "It means a lot to have a friend with me for this."
She drops my hand, and I'm left confused as we make our way over to the cook fires to buy some lunch. What did that mean? That's the second time Jenna has taken hold of my arm. She likes to touch people. But I've never been able to understand exactly why and under what circumstances she touches them.
We are served bread and stew in wooden bowls, along with mugs of mulled beer. We're sitting down on opposite sides of a nearby picnic table when my knee brushes against hers. She doesn't pull away. I look up and she's staring right at me.
Oh crap. My eyes drop to her hands on either side of her plate. She wears a plethora of rings--one on almost every finger, even her thumbs. Some are made from semi-precious stones. I recognize hematite and tiger-eye. And the fingers them
selves are long and slender, half the size of mine. I'd like to know what it would feel like to wrap my hand around hers, to hold it tight.
She looks away and begins fiddling with her rings. "I could go to small claims court," Jenna was muttering. "I could win that case."
I frown, shifting my eyes to her. "Would it be rude to ask you why you put the tiara up to secure a loan?"
She's still for a moment, but then she reaches over, breaks the roll in half and dips it into the gravy of her stew. "It's not rude to ask, no. I told you. I needed the money."
I puzzle this for a moment, rubbing at the whiskers on my chin. I usually don't shave while I'm at an overnight outing. It bothers me to have itchy whiskers, but it's more tolerable than trying to shave in ice-cold water while we are camping.
"You're not in some kind of trouble, are you? Because I'd help you if you are."
Her hand pauses, the bread immersed in the gravy. Then she slowly begins moving it again, and I follow the path of that drenched morsel of bread from the bowl to her mouth. Jenna has lovely pale pink lips, as elegant and refined as the rest of her. She presses the piece of bread to those lips and opens her mouth to take it in.
A familiar buzz of heat and excitement runs through me, and now I'm thinking about what it would be like to kiss her. I've kissed other women. It was all right. But I think it might be different to kiss Jenna.
"I'm not in trouble." She grimaces. "Not how you're thinking, anyway."
"Hey, kids!" Someone plops down suddenly beside Jenna, and I turn to see that it's her best friend and roommate, Alex. "That smells good. I'm 'a get me some of that."
"Here, have the rest of mine. I'm not super hungry." Jenna pushes the bowl toward Alex after only three bites.
Alex turns to me, speaking between scooping up spoonfuls of the stew and swallowing. "Hey, William. That was such a good fight. I'm sorry you didn't win."
I shrug. "You needn't apologize. You are not responsible for my loss."
Her spoon pauses on its way to her mouth. "No--I...uh, I mean I feel bad that you didn't win."
I don't know how to respond to that comment. Should I thank her or nod? Instead, I move on in the conversation. "It was unfortunate. I didn't follow the rules. I was distracted by the crowd. I've been training a great deal and I judged that Doug and I were equals in skill level, but the distraction caused me to make an error and injure Doug's shoulder. I apologized to him during the bout and explained my difficulty with the crowd, but he still seems quite angry, even though he won."
"Wil, why did you tell Doug that the crowd was bothering you?" Jenna asked.
"To explain my reasons for breaching the rules."
"He used that against you to win." I frown, failing to understand her logic. She sighs. "I purposely agitated the crowd in the second and third bouts, trying to get us to cheer louder. When he came over to ask for my favor, he said he was having trouble hearing us through his helmet."
"What he did was not against the rules," I observe.
Jenna's open palm slaps the table. "But he was exploiting your weakness."
"Also not against the rules."
"But the jerk wouldn't have known if you hadn't been so open with him."
"That is a dick move." Alex pushes a lock of dark, curly hair behind her ear and looks between Jenna and me a few times. Then she turns to Jenna. "You, uh, seem pretty unhappy with Doug. Did you two have a fight?"
Jenna glances at me and then away. "I broke it off with Doug."
Alex's mouth twists and she rubs her jaw. She looks like she's thinking, but Jenna appears irritated--well, I think that's her irritated look, anyway. I've seen that look often enough that I should probably know it by now.
"Don't say it, Alex." Jenna stares at her roommate between narrowed eyes.
"You know I'm going to say it." Alex laughs. "What's the date? That's three months on the dot, right?"
Jenna rolls her eyes. "I'm not in the mood."
I'm completely confused--not at all an alien feeling. There is subtext between these two that I am not picking up. And since I often have difficulty with regular text, subtext is far beyond my meager abilities.
As she often does, Alex picks up on my bewilderment. I'm grateful. I've observed that Alex has a keen knack for social behavior and perceives a great deal that isn't being said with words.
"I'm just teasing Jenna because of her pattern," Alex says.
"Her pattern?" I ask.
"Shut up, Alex," Jenna says with a sigh.
"She doesn't go out with guys for very long, and I've taken to graphing them. Six weeks here, three months there. Her longest was five-and-a-half months, because I guess six would have been considered too long-term."
"I don't like to settle down." Jenna shrugs, her cheeks and neck turning a very becoming shade of pink. "Drop it, okay?"
Alex and Jenna share a long look filled with more unspoken words. If they were touching, I might assume it was some kind of Vulcan mind meld between roommates. But Vulcans can't read minds out of nowhere. They need to have skin contact in order to share the thoughts of another.
Sometimes I wonder if everyone has the ability to read thoughts except for me. It feels like I'm deaf in some ways, missing half of what's going on around me. I can't tell what people's faces and gestures are trying to say, what words they're using that aren't coming out of their mouth. It seems like another language, one I'm not familiar with.
"So if you broke up with Doug, then do you want to head home with me this afternoon? I'm sure you won't be sharing his tent tonight."
Jenna looks away, fidgeting. "I have my sleep roll. I can just camp out next to the fire tonight. I'd like to stay and participate in the evening activities."
"It'll be too cold for you to camp outside tonight," I say. Both heads turn toward me.
Alex's mouth stretches into a wide smile. "Do you have room in your tent for her, William?"
Jenna blushes and punches Alex in the arm. "Ow!"
"I can't allow you to sleep out by the fire tonight, Jenna," I say. "That would be unchivalrous of me. There is room in my tent, and I have a comfortable bedroll mattress that I made myself. It's period authentic and it's comfortable. You can sleep there and I'll take the floor."
Jenna hesitates. Then she opens her mouth as if to answer, but we are interrupted again, this time by my cousin Adam and his fiancee. Mia is also my new stepsister, but she doesn't like it when I call her that so I just think of her as Adam's future wife instead.
The two of them sit down on my side of the bench, but I'm still looking at Jenna, waiting for her to answer.
Chapter 3
Jenna
I was so going to kill Alex when I got her alone. She thought she was hilarious, putting me in this position. But she knew damn well that I didn't get mad, I got even. Perhaps it had been too long since I'd demonstrated that. Instead of answering William's generous offer, the wheels were turning inside my head as I plotted my revenge on my mischievous roommate.
William was hot. Everyone knew it. And it was obvious he took this chivalry stuff very seriously. That made him even more appealing, really. But I had just barely broken up with Doug the Douchebag, and whether or not this was a romantic overture on William's part, there was no way I could follow through. Not now.
Yet there he was, watching me, waiting for me to answer when Adam and Mia appeared--as if it were timed that way. Fuck. My. Life.
"Hey, William," Mia said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "That was an intense fight. You did an amazing job."
William hesitated for a moment, as if in answering Mia he'd miss my reply to his question. I knew I shouldn't just let it slide, but it was so much easier that way. So I went along with it.
"He would have won, I think," I said.
"Sure he would have. What happened, William?" Mia asked.
"I violated the rules," he said, and the obviousness of his answer would have made me laugh if it wasn't said so solemnly.
"So what's
the plan?" Adam asked his cousin. "Are you going to keep fighting duels?"
"I don't know," replied William, who was still staring at me, then pulling his eyes away whenever I looked at his face. My face was starting to warm from the attention.
Perhaps Ann was right. And if I wasn't having such a crappy day, I'd be more than a little flattered that he seemed interested. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me. It was so hard to tell with him. With his aloof and stoic manners, he kept everything close to the vest.
Minutes later--and smack in the middle of Mia's story about working on a cadaver in her first year of medical school--William checked his watch and then abruptly stood. Her voice faded out as her eyes followed his movement. Thank the goddess for William's interruption, albeit a rude one, because I was squeamish about stuff like that. Mia didn't seem upset, so I guess he was excused because they were family.
"I need to go to the Clan Council." William stepped over the bench and gathered our dishes. "Jenna has to come too," he said and then left the table.
I popped up and followed him, but not before noting how Mia's dark eyebrows arched upward. After quickly catching up to William, I fell into step beside him as we made our way to the large pavilion tent that belonged to our organization, the Barony of Anaya. It was named after two different cities in Orange County, Anaheim and Santa Ana. Above the doorway of the tent hung the heraldic banner, designed ages ago. It bore a white unicorn on a silver shield against a backdrop of deep purple--purpure in heraldric terminology.
Divisions of the Renaissance and Medieval Reenactment Alliance were patterned after feudalism. Territories called "baronies" grouped together under duchies and then under a kingdom, which represented a quarter of the country.
Kingdom leaders were usually chosen by combat competition. In fact, Doug had let me know it was his ambition to rule our kingdom. Goddess forbid. Thankfully, our local leadership had been chosen by consensus, and I was confident that they'd treat this situation in a fair and intelligent manner.
William and I stepped into the war tent, and I was relieved to find it empty except for the five people sitting at a table at the very back. One of the things I loved most about these weekend campouts was the feeling of living in another time period. We weren't completely authentic, but we tried, wearing clothes that imitated medieval fashions and trading goods and skills in order to help each other out. I felt wildly inappropriate standing here in my jeans, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do.