Page 40 of The Goblin and The Dancer
Rosanna finally joined them, looking a little cleaner but very wet, her dress clinging to her in shreds of pink and her fair hair darkened and plastered against her neck and cheeks.She looked terrible, and she also looked beautiful.
Paul and Grik cheered up the moment she reappeared and got to their feet, ready to go on. But before they did, Paul gave Grik a little nod, thanking him for listening.
They went on through a series of hollow caverns that began to narrow over time into tunnels so constricting Paul had to turn sideways at points.They reached a dead end, but on the right side of the tunnel was a large opening a few feet above the ground level.
Paul wiggled around to look down at Grik. “Well? Do we go ahead or retrace our steps?”
Grik was quiet for a moment, trying to focus on his tunneling sense even while he worried for Rosanna, who was obviously trying not to hyperventilate behind him.“I think forward,” he said firmly, even though the fissure looked less than welcoming. “But we had better scout it out a bit first.”
He started towards it, but Paul reached down to stop him.
“Wait,” he said. “You two stay here. I’ll see if it’s safe.”
Grik opened his mouth to protest—he was the goblin; he was the one who knew tunnels. Perhaps it would be better if he went. But then his eyes met Paul’s, and Grik shut his mouth again. The soldier needed to take the risk, to prove his worth and use.
Paul boosted himself up into the crevice, and Grik and Rosanna could hear him moving away, exploring.
Grik was suddenly painfully aware that he and Rosanna were alone. He wrapped his hands together, just to do something with them, and tried to swallow back the heart that seemed to be rising in his throat.
He hadn’t been able to get his conversation with Paul, and the subsequent revelation, out of his mind. He had never been honest with Rosanna. He had played games, trying to win her affections by every way possible except an outright confession. He owed her that much. He didn’t have any more right to worship from afar if he couldn’t admit how he felt. She already knew the worst about him. He had nothing left to hide from her—except this.
“Are you all right?” Rosanna asked, making him nearly jump a foot as her voice broke through his thoughts. “You sound as if you’re choking.”
Grik cleared his throat. “I’m all right.” He took a breath.Do it, Grik.
Only in his most daring daydreams had he ever imagined confessing his love to Rosanna, and when he had dared to imagine such a thing, it had never looked like this. He had envisioned them walking through a moonlit park, sitting at a rooftop restaurant, anywhere and everywhere but here, deep underground, covered in muck and stinking like fury, hungry and cold and miserable. But this was his chance, and he took it.
“Rosanna?” he quavered.
“Yes?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“I wanted to tell you that I’ve . . . I’ve . . . liked you . . . for a long time. Really, really, really liked you.”He felt a little sick as Rosanna turned her head. But she was smiling, and he somehow found the courage to plunge on. “But I thought you couldn’t like me, because I'm just a janitor. I don’t make a lot of money.”
Rosanna tilted her head. “I don’t have expensive taste.”
Grik rattled on towards the next problem. “And I’m not very smart.”
Rosanna gave a little breath of laughter that turned Grik’s stomach into knots. “Oh, Grik, you’re very clever. You know that!”
He blushed and cautiously extended the final excuse that gave him the most anxiety. “And I’m . . . you know, a goblin and”—he swallowed and said faintly—“ugly.”
“I don’t think you’re ugly at all. I think you’re cute.”
Grik blinked. Cute wasn’t the same as handsome, but being cute might be superior to being handsome. Girls seemed to change their ideas about what was handsome from day to day, but once they said something was cute, they didn’t change their minds. He could live with cute.
He sucked in air. “Anyway,” he went on, desperate but determined. “I’ve wished that we could . . . be together . . . forever. Because . . . because . . . because—” He was sweating.
“Yes, Grik?” Rosanna said softly.
“Because I love you,” Grik blurted out.
There was a brief pause that nearly killed him. But then, to his shock, Rosanna reached out and took his hand.
And, to his unending astonishment, she did something more. Rosanna reached out and kissed him softly in the dark and whispered into his hairy ear.“I love you too, Grik.”
