Page 7 of Legally Mated
But not here generally. The staff were used to their visits, though they hadn’t seen Garrick in over a month now. But the smile on the young woman’s face seemed genuine when her eyes landed on the two of them, and when they finally made it up to the counter, she pointed at Garrick, “I know what you needtotry.”
“Oh, you do?” Garrick’s smile, too, was unforced and the sight of it created a small, happy glow in the middle of Laine’schest.
“Wait there,” she said, pointing at him, then looked over at Laine. “Espresso with chocolate and vanilla ribbons,mediumbowl?”
Laine didn’t even have time to nod before Garrick began tosnicker.
“Why are you laughing?” Laine asked, though healreadyknew.
“You’re such a creature of habit.” Garrick’s grin spread wide across his face, and Laine had to work at it to keep an answering one from breaking out on his. Didn’t want to encourage him, after all, right? So what if he always got the espresso ice cream with the chocolate and vanilla ribbons.Well, I’ll show him…“Can you put some cinnamon syrup over top of it?” But that only made Garrick laugh harder and Laine turned back to the counter with a faux-grumpy expression and ignored him. The girl grinned at them both and bent over the brightly-colored rectangles of ice cream in the display, her arm moving busily over the containers as she put together theirorder.
It was after, when they’d had their traditional squabble about who would pay and Laine had handed over the cash, when things gotuncomfortable.
They took a booth in the corner, it being not quite time for Garrick to be safely behind doors, and watched the customer come and go while their conversation made its inevitable slide into legaldiscussion.
It quickly became apparent, at least to Laine, that Garrick wasn’t as at ease out here in public as he wanted Laine to believe. But along with the ‘try a new food’ campaign, Laine was also doing his best to not only convince Garrick that humans weren’t all that bad, but to get the humans around them more accustomed to Garrick’s relatively milddemeanor.
Maybe it was Laine’s determination to show the world how easy Garrick was to get along with, or maybe it was the fact that Garrick could hide his emotions and project what he needed like no one Laine had ever before met, but it seemed as if most of the crowd got the message that Garrick was harmless and more interested in playing with his bowl of ice cream than in eating their children. The only problem was that there was still enough tension in the room to keep Garrick on the edge of hyper-vigilant. Nothing seemed likely to happen, but Laine was starting to regret the idea to go out for icecream.
“I should let her surprise me more often,” Garrick said and scooped a little bit off each of the five different flavors of ice cream in the bowl, then picked out a tiny chocolate fish to sit on top. He stuck the bowl of the spoon in his mouth and let go, so the handle stuck out like some bizarre post-modern strand of hay. With a waggle of his eyebrows, he made the handle wiggle up and down in a way that felt tinged with salaciousness toLaine.
The wiggling handle made a little boy on the far side of the room, no more than three years old, laugh madly. Garrick did it again, making Laine snort his own laugh. Right after, the little boy’s chuckles disappeared like a snuffed candle, all the light gone, leaving behind nothing more than its smokyghost.
Laine wouldn’t have thought much of it if he’d been there by himself, except for the subtle shift in Garrick’s posture. Not an overt change, but off by enough that Laine leaned back in false relaxation and scanned the room for the cause of Garrick’s unease. He guessed it had something to do with the sudden quietness of the child, having seen something of the sort happen before, and was disappointed in his fellow humans to realize he wasright.
“We should eat up,” Garrick murmured. “Unless you want to takeithome?”
Laine shook his head and smiled his courtroom smile. “I like being out with you. And we’re going to be stuck inside for the night soon. Let’s stay out as long as we can.” He extended a leg so he could run the toe of his shoe up the outside of Garrick’s calf in obvious suggestion and implied support. That earned him a smile, if a tense one, and he reached for Garrick’s bowl with his spoon to complete the distraction. “So, is thisreallygood?”
Garrick fended him off with his spoon and they indulged in a silly moment of spoon-jousting until Garrick pulled his bowl closer to the edge of the table and tossed Laine atriumphantlook.
Laine grinned back and began plotting how to get his spoon into Garrick’s ice cream, until the gradual fall of Garrick’s expression made him pause and listen again to theirenvironment.
“—call the police? What’s he doing in public? I’m going to go speak to the manager.” Laine heard the scrape of chair legs on the tile floor, then the tapping of heels disappearing toward thecounter.
“We should go. I don’t want to cause them trouble.” Garrick set down his spoon with a sick look onhisface.
“No.” Laine took a deep breath, counted to three before he lost his patience, and dug out his wallet again. “You’re a citizen, you aren’t breaking any laws, you’re properly tabbed and your paperwork is up to date. You have a righttothis.”
Garrick’s eyes flicked toward the other end of the building, where the man’s voice was growing louder, more frustrated. “Laine, I’d stir up shit as fast as anyone, because I’m tired of it all. But that’s part of the problem. I’m tired. Tired enough to just crawl back behind Mercy Hills’ walls and never come out again. The only loser if I stand my ground is me, and by extension, my people. It doesn’t matter if I have the right.” His gaze returned to his half-eaten bowl of ice cream. “I’m not even hungry anymore.” He pushed thedishaway.
“You’ll have to make a stand sometime,” Laineurgedhim.
Garrick leaned toward him. “You think I don’t?” He jerked his head at the seating area of the ice cream shop. “We’ve been working together for how long now and you still don’t see how much push-back there is every time I step foot outside the enclave. Every time I go somewhere, to the law library, to a shop, to your office, people stare at me. They step aside, change their path so they don’t have to walk past me. I smile and say hi, and they look surprised and mumble hello back. Others ignore me—I can’t get service at the coffee shop down the road from your office. I can’t get them to take my money at the corner shop by your house. But if I make a scene—and I did that once, in college—I get the police called on me, or a gun pulled on me.” He sat back and his smile was bitter. “One of the first things Abel had to do after he took over as Alpha was come bail me out of jail because I’d refused to leave a store without being served.” Garrick took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face as he let it out, then let them fall with the heavy weight of exhaustion into his lap. “Let’s just go. I know you like a fight, but I’m not inthemood.”
Laine stared at him for a moment, then conceded the point. “Just let me do one thing before wego,okay?”
“Laine…” Garrickprotested.
“Promise, it’ll only take asecond.”
“Do what you want.” Garrick stood up and gathered up the remains of their ice cream. “I’ll meet yououtside.”
He started to move past Laine, and Laine put out a hand to stop him. “Hey, it’ll be okay. You’ll see.” He wanted to kiss him to give him courage or reassurance, but they’d both agreed that going that far in public wasn’t smart, so all he could do was squeeze Garrick’s forearm, then watch him disappear out the door oftheshop.
But, that left him free to follow through on his intentions. He walked toward the parents in the family, loudly proclaiming their relief that Garrick had left and bemoaning the enclave’s presence outsidethecity.
“Good evening, folks,” he said genially, with a smile that held no warning at all. “Just thought I’d get your names and give you my card, so when the police get here you can give it to them so they can get my side of the story. Tell them I’ll expect to see them before they go off shift tonight or I’ll call down to the precinct tomorrow to have a word.” He passed his card over, watched them read it, realize he was a lawyer, then turn their eyes back on him with the first glimmerings of fear shining in them. “Yes. If you can get back to me with the name of your lawyer, I would certainly like to talk to him about potential civil suits tofollow.”
