// Toriv

Over the course of the following week, February moved into March and everything finally started to warm up.

I mean, sort of. It was less of the exciting all-around warming-up of spring and more like when you try to microwave a hunk of leftovers that’s been in the fridge for eons and the middle of it keeps being left cold and hard. Not the most appetizing of metaphors, I know, but darned if it doesn’t describe the awkward Montréal winter-spring transition to a T.

Spring-or-whatever is a busy season for us at the shop, mainly because the rebirth of the post-winter world also means the rebirth of the Café Vanellas’ repertoire. Last year we’d been short on funds so I hadn’t been able to change much, but this year the numbers were looking good and I was feeling change on the wind like the scent of first-thing-in-the-morning ground coffee in the wee hours of shop opening.

“I need,” I said decisively. “An idea.”

“I have one,” Kiv said from the counter. “Give me a raise.”

“I didn’t mean that kind of idea.”

“You didn’t specify.”

One problem I have with idea generating is how long it usually takes me to get an idea, which is kind of the crucial step, I think we can all agree.

“If I give you a raise, am I going to have to give Daeci a raise too? I mean I’d give it to everyone, but isn’t it important you and Daeci get it at the same time? In case I break the universe or something?”

“Uh, that’s not really how twinship works, boss.”

“Like hell it isn’t. There’s gotta be a reason elven twins used to be revered in the old days.”

“Maybe it’s just that we’re really lucky? I mean, what are the odds, right?”

Another problem I have with idea generation is that I get distracted easily, which should be pretty obvious by now. And after extended bouts of attempted idea making, I usually decide to give up the active portion of thinking and just let the thoughts simmer in the back of my mind for a while. Because as you and I should both know, simmering is the key to incorporating every flavour in the dish. And that is the last of the weird food metaphors for a while, I swear.

“I need an idea,” I tried again, “for a new angle vis-à-vis our drinks selection.”

Kiv was leaning half his body over the counter, his phone dangling in his hands, and he still managed to shrug in that totally cool 50s rockabilly manner of his. Not that he’s old enough to have any real idea of what the 50s were like, but if the aesthetic fits.

“I guess the coconut milk slash chili slash almond whipped cream hot chocolate idea was too wild for most people,” I continued.

“Professor Mahendra seemed to like it,” Kiv said. He was staring down at his phone and typing as he said it, but his smarmy smirk was unmistakeable.

The memory of Mahendra’s reaction to the hot chocolate threatened to put a grin on my face, but I was in boss mode and had to remain as such at least until my dinner break. “Professor Mahendra is not our entire clientele. And likely has exotic tastes to begin with.”

“Oooooh–“

“What,” I said, knowing exactly what he meant.

“Nothing at all, boss,” Kiv said, knowing that I knew exactly what he meant. “How about something spicy? People like spice. Like one of those spicy tea things.”

“Like…masala chai?”

“I guess.”

Loriev popped his head out from the backroom and said, “Doesn’t Starbucks already have one of those?”

“It is forbidden the speak the S word in here,” I told him severely.

When he just raised his eyebrows at me, I continued, “I thought you were quitting them. It was your New Year’s resolution.”

“I like their flat white,” he said sheepishly.

“I can make a flat white!” I chased him into the backroom as he scampered off in Starbucks-induced shame. “Just ask me to make one and I will do it! What’s theirs got over mine?!”

“Nothing!” Loriev shouted. He banged trays and things into the sudsy industrial-sized sink and started washing like his life depended on it.

The shop was pretty dead that afternoon, so I thought it safe to waste a few minutes hanging off my best friend’s shoulder like a pretty leech as he did dishes. As always, he let me do it. Good ol’ Loriev.

After a little while of watching him labour, I said, “I was just kidding, you know. You can keep going to Starbucks if you want. I’ll still support you no matter what.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. He blew out a breath to get his bangs out of his face. “Sometimes I just need the extra caffeine. It’s nothing personal.”

“I get it, bro. We all do what we have to do to survive.”

I paused to look at his face. Loriev is normally pale in that platinum-blonde, media-stereotyped elf way he has, but that day he was positively ghostly.

I said, “Speaking of which, how are you surviving? You look tired.”

He said, “I’m fine.”

His bangs slipped back down over his forehead into his face again. I untied and retied his ponytail for him so he wouldn’t have to take off his soaked yellow rubber gloves. I made sure to sweep his bangs back too, the way he does it for working.

“You know, Lor, if you’re tired, you can just go home. Me and Kiv can hold down the fort for the rest of the night.”

He shook his head. “It gets busy on weekend evenings. I’ll stay. I’m just tired because I was at the store this morning.”

I was, as they say, aghast. “I wouldn’t have scheduled you if I knew you were working weekends at the bourgeois homegoods emporium!”

“I’m not.” He washed another plate, carefully scrubbing every inch of it to get off the sticky crumbs before piling it in the clean dishes rack. “I was called in. And it sounded urgent, so I didn’t want to say no.”

“Yeah, well, you should have told me, then. I could have called someone to take your spot here.”

“Too short notice.”

“And getting called in isn’t?!”

Loriev just shook his head again, and I just said, “Jesus, dude” because I know how he gets.

I stood there and helped with the dishes for a bit, knowing Kiv would holler for us if he ever needed help up front. We washed in silence, trading scrubbing sponges and dishes back and forth. I’ve known Loriev for so long that I can almost sense how he’s going to move, so we were smooth as satyr clockwork. When the dishes were mostly done, I got Loriev to sit down at the desk in the back where I forget all about the tax forms and went to make him a flat white. Dusted with just the right amount of cinnamon, of course, just the way he likes it. Love is getting your buddies’ coffee right every time, if you ask me.

He took a big gulp and his smile was instantly more steady, which is all the proof I need that caffeine fixes everything.

“Better than Starbucks?” I asked.

Loriev laughed. “Definitely.”

He sipped the foamy milk top that I spent months of my life learning to perfect, while I knocked back half a triple short espresso in one go. Caffeine definitely fixes everything.

Then Loriev said, “So, how was your date with Professor Singh?”

I almost choked on my second gulp of espresso. “Who told you?! Mav?”

“Kiv.”

“That boy really doesn’t know how to shut up.”

“Uh…so was it bad?”

“No, it was…” I searched for the right word, the word that would encompass everything I thought about Dinner with Mahendra, 6PM. “…fine.”

Loriev just looked at me, his coffee cup pressed against his lip. I sighed.

“I mean, it was nice.” I continued as eloquently as ever. “He’s really nice. Like, ridiculously nice.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah, but I mean…really nice.”

“So,” Loriev said slowly, “does that mean you like him? Or does it mean you don’t?”

I sat on the edge of the desk and flopped my arms in a kind of full body shrug. Loriev nodded like this made perfect sense.

After a few minutes of quiet coffee sipping on Loriev’s part, I went: “If I’m being honest, I get the feeling he’s kind of…I don’t know…out of my league?”

Loriev looked up. “Really? How come?”

“I mean…he’s a educator. And he looks and talks and acts super high class. And he went to Oxford. Oxford, Loriev!”

“So?”

“So! He’s probably crazy smart, because you know they don’t let guys who look like him into ancient institutions like Oxford University, England on shit like family reputation. Even if he does wear friggin’ Emporio Armani shoes.”

Loriev smirked into his coffee. “You have Emporio Armani shoes.”

“They were on sale! We’re talking full price here and you know it.”

“Point taken. But you’re making it sound like a man being educated and well-dressed is a bad thing.”

“It isn’t!” I wailed. “But what’s a guy like me supposed to bring to the table for a guy like that?”

I grabbed Loriev’s empty cup from him and stomped to the sink to wash our dishes. As I was scrubbing hard enough to give myself a full traps workout, Loriev crept up to me and put a hand between my shoulder blades, where he knows I like to be rubbed.

“I’ve never heard you worry about this kind of thing before,” he said gently. “Are you okay?”

I said, after taking a big breath to cool myself down, “Yeah, I’m good. Look at me, makin’ you worry when you’re so tired you can barely stand.”

“It’s okay,” Loriev said, because that’s what he always says.

We stood there for a while, doing the no-verbal-communication-necessary thing while Loriev literally patted me on the back. Then he said, in a voice that was a little different, “Why didn’t you want to tell me? That you went on a date with Professor Singh.”

“Oh. That.” I wished he would just go on rubbing and patting me between the shoulders. That always makes me feel better about things, even awkward conversations about your quasi non-existent love life. “I dunno. I guess it’s a bro code thing?”

“I didn’t think we two were bound by anything like the bro code.”

“I guess it’s a modified version of the bro code? Seeing as we’ve, you know, made out.”

His laugh was a warm little puff of air against my neck. Just between you and me, that’s the kind of thing that made me lean over and kiss him that first time, all those years ago.

“So,” he said, being about as sarcastic as Loriev ever gets, which isn’t much. “You didn’t want to tell me you’re seeing someone because we used to be a thing?”

“Well, it’s kinda rude,” I whined. “If we’re talking ex-wise.”

“But it should be cool bro-wise, right?”

“I don’t know, man! I didn’t write the bro code! Besides, I’m not seeing him. We went on one date.”

“Are you going to go on another one?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “He seems to want to. He asked if he could see me again.”

Loriev was still behind me, but I swear I felt him roll his eyes. “Let me guess. You made some wisecrack and put him off the idea entirely.”

“No. Maybe. Shut up. I think it just made him like the idea even more.”

“Huh,” Loriev said softly.

No idea what he meant by that, but by that time I was willing to do anything to shorten what was looking to turn into an in-depth conversation about my feelings and stuff, so I took preventative action by saying: “Listen, I’ll send Kiv on break and then call Mav to see if she can come in to take your place. You need your rest ASAP.”

This time, he didn’t argue. I’m guessing he was finally too tired to. So I left him in the backroom to babysit my untouched tax forms while I went up front to do exactly what I had promised.

Saturday evenings are normally lots of fun at the shop. It gets pretty busy, even in the cold months where it’s hard to get enough of a grip on the sidewalks to go get a leisurely coffee, but it’s the good kind of busy, good for the body, good for the soul. But my soul, on that particular evening, did not seem to want to give me a rest. I kept replaying my conversation with Loriev over and over, mentally beating myself up for not seeing his exhaustion sooner and agonizing over how dumb and lukewarm my responses about my date with Professor Mahendra Singh had been.

I won’t pretend I really know much about dating. I was able to act cool and confident during the actual date because I am just naturally a cool cat, but don’t look at me if you want the logistics of how to progress after that first little get-to-know-you session. Most of my experiences with get-to-know-yous have usually ended in Really-get-to-know-yous, followed by no-longer-need-to-know-yous. So you can understand if the idea of going on a second date was a bit foreign to me.

I wasn’t exactly dreading it, though, because it had gone well, right? About as well as an outing with someone as shy and apparently straight-edge as Prof. Singh could have gone. I mean he was so nice he could probably coax a fully transmuted dragon over to his side, and being well-spoken and easy on the eyes didn’t hurt either. Even if he did have a habit of saying sorry when he didn’t actually have to.

Over the course of that particular shift, where I sent Kiv on his break and got Maveliv to come in for a few hours so Loriev could go home and cuddle with his cat, I wondered about what had gotten me so worked up about Professor Singh. Because let’s be real, I wasn’t exactly unused to people being attracted to me, and he obviously was. By which I mean he was obviously attracted to me, and also obviously unused to having people be attracted to him. Do you see where I’m trying to go with this? He wasn’t really the kind of guy I was used to hanging out with. If anything, he reminded me a bit of Loriev, which you should have figured out by now probably meant me and the good professor were headed down the fast track to the friendzone. I say that in the nicest way possible, because as you know Loriev is the best buddy I’ve ever had, but you get my point.

All that to say, I didn’t really know where I stood with Mister Designer Glasses and Bookbag Professor, or if I even stood anywhere at all. So on my dinner break that evening, I sent him a text message: hey Prof how was your week?

I was still admiring how sleek and efficient and not-weird my text was when he answered: Hello, Toriv. It was all right. Lots of papers to grade for next week so the students don’t bite my head off.

I said, work never ends huh? 😛

He said, As you well know.

I imagined to myself that he said it with that tiny smile he sometimes gets, like he’s afraid of smiling too hard. I guessed it was a good sign.

feel like taking a break? I asked him. free mocha if you come do your grading at the shop 😀

He waited for what felt like an age before sending, On my way. But decaf only, please 🙂

“Guys. The professor just sent me an emoji,” I announced.

Mav passed by with the broom and said, “Good to know he’s hip to your jive.”

“Why shouldn’t he be? He’s not that much older than me.”

“So you’re both old. It’s a perfect match.”

She went on sweeping and clearly ignored me as I made insulted choking noises in her direction. That’s all the thanks I get for foster brothering a teenage elven orphan, apparently.

“Forty isn’t that old,” I said when Mav failed to repent for her awful behaviour. “It’s respectable. Old enough to have life experience, but young enough to still learn new things.”

“He is a pretty nice forty,” Mav admitted.

“And sooo dreamy!” Kiv added. He draped himself over the cash counter like a lovestruck maiden, hand to the forehead and everything. “Oh, take me now, Professor!”

“You’d better put your heaving bosoms away by the time he gets here,” I said. “And need I remind you that I am still your boss and that is my counter you’re rubbing your pheromones all over.”

“My pheromones will go wherever they please.”

“Not if they want to get paid.”

Luckily, Kivariev’s passionate chest was safely censored by the time Mahendra walked in about thirty minutes later. It was still a bit windy outside even with the temperature steadily climbing, so he came in accompanied by a positively orchestral gust of wind that made the tails of his coat flutter like they were on a movie set.

“Tell them ‘free’ and they will come,” I said to him regally. Master of my domain, as it were.

He smiled a little under the collar of his herringbone greatcoat, looking a bit like the typical Hollywood oldies male lead coming to greet his ladylove on the train platform. Oh, take me now, Professor. Maybe I rearranged myself a little more favourably at the table I was having my dinner on. Out of habit, you know. No point in not looking your best at any given moment, is what I always say.

“I intend to pay for everything I buy tonight,” he said.

“And I don’t intend to charge you for a complimentary beverage while you’re working so hard. Don’t you ever take the weekend off?”

He came over and put a monstrously large folder stuffed full of papers on the table next to mine. “Do you?”

“I asked first.”

“I simply have too much to prepare for the following week to afford taking days off,” he said, like this was totally normal and not complete workaholic behaviour. “There. Now you.”

I grinned my winning grin. “Uh, I need work to have a purpose because without purpose I die?”

“So you see,” Mahendra said, though in some posh and mysterious way, he didn’t specify what I should be seeing.

He had a nice smile, I noticed. Not that I hadn’t noticed before, but it was easier to see when he wasn’t holding it back so much. I could already tell that holding things back was going to be a theme with him, but it didn’t bug me too much. Like I’d told him, I like a challenge.

“Well, since you’ve decided to show your fine face, I’ll go and make you that mocha.” I gave him the dashing wink I’ve been practicing in the mirror since I was fifteen. “And decaf, of course.”

His fine face flushed a little. I might have to go a bit easier on the flirting until he gets used to it, in case I accidentally break him or something.

As he finished arranging his stuff at his table (straightening his papers, setting down his phone, smoothing down the lapels of his greatcoat like it was a precious fur stole), I skipped over to the espresso machine, ignoring Kiv’s shoo-ing “you are on break” hand gestures, and made Mahendra his promised mocha. Extra care with the steaming wand for that awesome milk foam texture and just the right amount of chocolate. You’d think the joy of turning out the perfect  drink would fade after a few years, but for me the passion never dies.

“Do not charge the man,” I said across to Kiv as Mahendra approached the counter with his wallet.

“Please,” Mahendra said, holding out a ten.

“You please. I don’t lie when I say complimentary.”

“You heard the boss,” Kiv said loyally. The boy has his good qualities, as you can see.

Mahendra turned to me with a funny sort of pained look, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In response, I asked, “Whipped cream?”

He sighed and put his money away. “Yes, please.”

Sweet victory. I dressed up his beautiful steaming mocha in its festive handpainted mug, courtesy of my artistically-inclined mom, and handed it to him over the counter. He did that bashful blushing smile thing of his and then hid his face in the first sip. I have never in all my life seen a man who loves whipped cream like that one.

“Thank you very much,” he said. His eyes skittered away from my face, but his smile was sweet and real. “It’s just what I needed.”

“That’s what I love to hear.”

He went to work at his table while I finished my dinner. It was kind of amazing to me how he managed to sink into his state of work focus almost instantly. His hand would automatically bring his mug to his lips every so often, but it was mechanical and he didn’t stop reading and writing as he did it. The stack of unfinished papers seem to magically melt away into finished papers. I also noticed that he scribbled in the margins of every single one, offering what was sure to be wise and teacherly advice in emerald green pen. For some reason, I liked that he used green ink. Red ink all over your assignments just makes you feel bad, but green is okay in my books.

I guess there are just some people you have to hang around with for a while to start seeing how attractive they are. For him, it was the little things, like his choice of ink colour and the way the tip of his tongue would kind of dart out to lick the mocha foam from his lips, but I know me enough to know the little things are usually what get to me in the end. Like Chinese water torture. Or something much less painful and terrible than Chinese water torture. Sexy Chinese water torture? I’ll get back to you on that one.

I came back to reality with a snap and realized I was already five minutes overdue on the floor. Who would have thought you could lose yourself in just watching someone work? Kiv was bantering with customers at the counter and Mav was mopping, looking daydreamy, so I figured neither of them had noticed my tardiness yet.

There are a million things I could have said or done at that precise moment, but before I could do any of them the door of the shop whooshed open and a fine specimen of a different variety strutted in.

“Red!” I exclaimed.

You know when you have a few very good and specific memories about a person, and when you see them again after a while the emotions associated with those memories all come rushing back at the same time? That’s how I felt when I saw Red walk into my shop that evening. What can I say, I have a type and most of the time, Red is squarely it.

I hadn’t seen him in over six months but he was the same as always, except for the half-shave that made his dragon crest even more obvious. He’s always been proud of his crest, what with him and most of his family being untransmuted. I guess it’s a dragonkind thing.

I crossed the shop to grab his hand and shoulder hug him. Getting close to Red is always kind of electric, or magnetic, I guess, seeing as it’s hard to pull away. But I managed, because I am thirty-one years old and no longer think entirely with my dick.

“Good to see you, man,” Red said. His eyes looked kind of smokey, like literally smokey, the way they get when he’s gone through half a pack out in the cold and his fire gizzard’s working in overdrive. “Thought I’d come for that cup of coffee.”

“Well, we definitely have that here,” I said. “The dark roast, black?”

“You know me. It’s a dollar eighty-five, right?”

“Ah, it’s on me tonight. Haven’t seen you in yonks. How were the mountains?”

He sighed. “Shitty, as I said. But grandad’s still kicking, at least. Even if the other council members seem happy to leave him to rot up in his peak.”

I poured out his coffee in one of my mom’s other mugs and passed it over. “Grandpa De Carneus should be like great-great-great-great-great grandpa by now, huh? Isn’t he like six hundred years old or something?”

“Five hundred eighty nine and senile as shit. But Ma said I should go see him anyway, in case he needed someone to help him with all the council business.”

“Well,” I said slowly, “he is family.”

Red shrugged and took a deep pull of his coffee. As I watched him knock it back, my eyes slid past his shoulder to Mahendra at his little table. He had gotten distracted from his grading and was staring out the window with his chin in his hand, his eyes unfocused. It was getting close to nine thirty, so maybe he was getting sleepy.

“Hey, Mahendra,” I called.

He twitched and looked up, giving me that startled “moi?” look of his. I waved him over and after a second’s hesitation he stood and came to the counter.

“Let me introduce you to my friend,” I said, gracious hostess-like. “Mahendra, this is Red De Carneus, my longtime buddy. Red, this is Professor Mahendra Singh, most beloved regular.”

They shook hands. Red’s eyes flicked up and down. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed being on the receiving end of that look, but the professor didn’t seem to notice.

Red said, “Professor of what?”

“Anthropology,” Mahendra said. His voice was real quiet in a way I hadn’t really heard before. “Medical anthropology.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“And what do you do?”

“I tend bar at a place in the Village” Red said offhandedly. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen you around, though I feel like I should have.”

Pretty sure the meaning of that was clear combined with the obvious once-over he’d given, but Mahendra took his time answering, like he wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. I guess he wasn’t used to being asked if he frequents gay bars at night in the hopes of meeting other men. Red’s direct that way.

“I don’t go out much,” Mahendra said finally. “Too much work, I’m afraid.”

“Shame.” Red turned back to me. “Speaking of going out, me and Jamie are having a few drinks after he gets off work tonight. You down?”

“After I close up shop, sure. The usual spot?”

“Yeah. You want in too, Professor of Anthropology?”

“Me?” Cue baffled Mahendra. Even I was pretty surprised, seeing as everything about Red’s body language and talk had told me he wasn’t super keen on Prof. Singh, but what do I know, apparently.

“Yeah, you.” Red’s smirk was sharp behind the rim of his coffee mug. “Something tells me you could use some loosening up.”

Maybe I imagined it, but something in the tilt of Mahendra’s head at that exact moment made the light flash weirdly over the lenses of his glasses. “Thank you for the offer, Mister De Carneus, but I think I’m just loose enough.”

“Whatever floats your boat. So we’ll see you at eleven, Toriv?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Great.” He downed the last of his coffee and slid the mug back across the counter to me. “See you in a bit, then.”

And he left with a wave and a sideways look at Prof. Singh. Now anyone with sense would have seen that little exchange to be the first sign of trouble, but like I said, I’m biased when it comes to Red.

Now that I’m sitting here writing this after the fact, though, I kind of wish I hadn’t been so much.

// Mahendra

The Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that occurred after my first date with Toriv passed in a silly, almost bucolic haze. Now I am normally a hazy kind of person, but the levels of distracted cheer that I aspired to that week bordered on the legendary. My grad students teased me about getting about as little sleep as them, and to my embarrassment all I could do was smile in that self-conscious, half-guilty manner of the completely smitten.

It had always seemed strange to me that the world could just continue to turn while such emotional catastrophes were going on inside one’s own head. Perhaps that makes me a self-centered person. It’s certainly a habit I’ve been trying to rid myself of for most of my life, but I suppose people can’t change all that much.

It seems ridiculous in retrospect, but I found myself completely unable to do so much as send a little text message to Toriv after that evening we spent together. Every time I tried, I ended up backspacing anything I had written and in a fit of despair, putting it off for later. It wasn’t that I had no desire to see him or talk to him — very much the opposite, in fact — but now that the initial ice-breaking session had been done, I found myself quite unable to figure out how to proceed. I supposed normally one would text or call to emphasize how much of a good time one had had, and perhaps to request another meeting of the same kind? But every time I tried to make the thought become reality, some part of me shied away, and I found myself mired in inaction.

This happens to me a lot when it comes to interpersonal relationships, as you can probably imagine by now. I do far too much daydreaming and not enough real-world interaction, and then wonder vaguely why things never seem to turn out quite in the manner I’d hoped. I’m well aware it’s a  wholly inefficient process for meeting people, but I’ve never learned to do otherwise. It seems going out of my way to visit a new coffee shop near my flat was the farthest I was willing to go in changing my habits.

So you can guess how shocked and pleased I was when Toriv messaged me out of the blue on Saturday evening, asking after my week and generally being the same cheerful, generous person I’d met back in in the beginning of the year. I dropped my pen and ignored it as it rolled off the kitchen table, such was my haste to snatch up my mobile phone and craft a response. This took a few moments, and when I had finished my heart was racing like it had been as I was waiting for Toriv in his shop on the night of our date.

His response was light, silly, inviting. I often wonder what it is about other people that makes it so easy for them to talk and tease, when it takes so much effort and courage for someone like me to merely start a conversation. I find I tend to gravitate towards these people, as though in the hopes that some of their openness will rub off on me. In any case, I accepted Toriv’s kind invitation and prepared myself and my precious trove of freshly minted papers for departure at once.

I’m a little embarrassed to confess that it felt strange for me to be heading outside after nightfall. I rarely had reason to go out at night and had gotten used to wrapping myself up in the warmth of my flat during the winter months, so stepping out into the purple darkness of the Montréal evening felt a bit thrilling and illicit. Poor, dull Maddy. Perhaps I really was letting myself grow too old, too fast.

After the brief stroll down the cheerfully lit streets of the Elven Quarter, I arrived at the Café Vanellas. Light was spilling from the bay window, reflecting off the last of the receding snow banks in a warm golden glow. I pushed in through the door, hauling my stack of papers and probably looking more than a little windswept, and was immediately greeted by Toriv at one of his little café tables.

“Tell them ‘free’ and they will come,” he said, looking very much like the cat that had gotten the cream.

Despite the evening hour, he still looked fresh and handsome and sparkling with energy. His crooked eyetooth gave his smile the same mischievous cast I remembered from Tuesday night. Magnetic was the word, if I’m being fanciful. Every time I was around him I seemed drawn to him as though by gravity, or by the inexorable tidal pull of attraction I thought I had learned to resist years ago. It was a good feeling, even with the underlying uncertainty. There was something nostalgic about it, like a song I’d once loved and forgotten all about until this precise moment.

“I intend to pay for everything I buy tonight,” I said, rather bravely, I think.

I had already told myself on the walk over that it would not do for me to get used to receiving mochas free of charge, even from damnably alluring elven baristas, but it seemed the house was intent on complimenting me, and I walked away with a lovely little decaf mocha in my hands. There’s something about the gift of food or drink that makes it all the more delicious, don’t you think? I know I wasted a few blissful moments savouring the chocolate and whipped cream confection, while Toriv sat at the table next to mine to finish his supper.

Even as I sunk into the comfortable stupor of paper grading, I was hyper aware of him as he sat there an arm’s length away, chewing on the last of his salad and scrolling through things on his phone. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I was choosing my fortieth year of all years to begin going gaga over men again, when for the last decade or so I had been perfectly content with a few passing glances and ambiguous coffee dates. Was this was what they called a midlife crisis? As soon as the thought hit me, I reflected that it would probably be safer if I went out and bought myself an Aston Martin than if I dabbled in–well, whatever it was that had begun between Toriv Vanellas and myself.

I could have asked him, I suppose, about whether he could see our first dinner date blossoming into something more, but before the thought could really coalesce in my mind, the chime above the door jingled and Toriv immediately shot to his feet, shouting “Red!” in an overjoyed voice. The person who walked in was a man with a tail of red hair down his back and with a scarlet-scaled dragon crest on his brow. He walked, if you’ll forgive the reference, like he was walking onto a yacht. I’ll be the first to admit it can be charming in a certain context, but something about the man’s brazen good looks and attitude only set me on edge. I suppose if I had the opposite of a type, he would be it.

The new arrival and Toriv spoke for a while, so I turned my attention back to my work. Surely it wasn’t unusual for friends of the boss to come visit, so I tried to think nothing of it. I forced myself to close the sound of their conversation out and to slip back into the quiet, muffled state of being to which I am accustomed. Papers to grade, marks to enter. Best to return to my work in times like these.

It was all ruined, of course, the moment Toriv called my name. It was almost embarrassing how quickly my attention snapped back to him, almost like it had never left him. Smitten, terribly and awfully, I think we can all agree.

Toriv called me over, so I went to be introduced to the dragonkind man with the shockingly red hair. The look he gave me, as we shook hands by the counter of the café, was like that of a cat surveying its prey. Before our hands had even parted, I decided that I did not like this Red De Carneus. I try not to judge people on appearances, but I’ve learned there’s something to be said about one’s gut feelings as well.

I was more than a little surprised when he invited me along to his outing with Toriv. Was it a game? In any case, he didn’t seem terribly disappointed when I refused, and left the shop with about as much irritating flair as he had entered.

There was a beat of silence by the counter, then Toriv said, “You sure you don’t want to come?”

His expression was strangely earnest, like he actually wanted me to join them on their drinks outing, though surely he already knew enough about my lifestyle to guess that I wasn’t exactly the going-out type. Still, it was enough to make me hesitate, which he took as an opportunity to insist: “Me and the guys have been going to this place for years. It’s always a good time.”

“I don’t know–your friend didn’t seem to like me all that much.”

“Red?” He was incredulous. “Aw, that’s just him being him. He’s a bit hard to get to know, but once you do…”

He trailed off meaningfully. I suppose what I was meant to take away from that was that Red wasn’t really as bad as my instincts were trying to tell me.

“Besides,” Toriv continued. “You’ll like Jamie. He’s mad smart too. I think he’s finishing his thesis right now? Something about elven youth and the disconnect with ancient elven culture. Mass exodus, generational gaps, the impact of the Great Silence on city elves today, that sort of thing. It’s totally your cup of tea.”

“I don’t know–“

“What’s to know? You can always bail early if it’s not your thing. Please,” he added, completely unnecessarily, I should add. The earnest, pleading expression on his face had already won me over.

The café was due to close in a little under an hour, so I headed home to change. I doubted that I possessed many clothes appropriate for a casual bar outing, but I was determined to improvise if it meant getting to spend a little time with Toriv in a non-workplace setting. And I had to admit to myself that I was a little curious about the bar scene in Montréal, how much it had changed since I was of bar-going age and how it differed from Oxford bar culture of the nineties. It was a rather roundabout way of convincing myself I could find a way to have fun tonight, but it was all I could come up with in the time it took to scurry back to my flat in the dark.

It isn’t often that I ignore my gut feelings. I’ve learned that to ignore my sense of impending doom is usually to walk straight into it. And seeing as I am no longer a young man, one would think I would be more cautious about heading into strange situations, but that night I found, after overcoming my initial reservations, that I didn’t much care. Infatuation has a way of addling the mind like that.

So I returned home, dropped my pile of half-graded papers onto the kitchen table, and got out a pair of jeans and an often-worn but still presentable buttondown shirt in navy blue. I loosened the top button and rolled the sleeves up to my elbows and peered at myself in the mirror. The result was simply a slightly more dressed-down version of myself, and no amount of tweaking could make the outfit anything less than business casual. I decided I would look nothing but professorial no matter what I did, then headed out again into the deepening night.

The address Toriv had texted me during my preparations was in a neighbourhood I had not often had reason to visit, even in nearly ten years of living in this city. The metro car and surrounding tunnel walls felt like a foreign landscape at that time, the topography of the place somehow changed with the falling of night. I huddled in my coat and ignored it all, trying to blend into the cityscape like I belonged.

Emerging from the underground was a bit of a shock. It was not quite eleven but the metro doors and surrounding streets were teeming with people taking advantage of the first mild nights of spring. There were young people with the air of students about them, sporting their wild haircuts and daring expressions, and a few people in their thirties and maybe-forties, looking seasoned and easy and free. I moved self-consciously among them, following the tiny blinking cursor on my smartphone screen that was pointing me towards my destination.

The Gay Village was all lit up like a dream, in bright pinks and blues and golds. Because it wasn’t yet summer, the wide pedestrian walkway and characteristic overhead Pink Balls exhibit were conspicuously absent, but the crowded sidewalks still gave off the same sense of life and adventure and unbridled joy. It was contagious; I found my step growing lighter the farther I walked, as I trailed the maps cursor like a beacon of hope.

In the interim, I received another text message from Toriv: hey Prof we’re already inside, just look for the table with the 3 handsome devils 😉

Their bar of choice was the kind of place one heard before seeing. In the summer, I’m sure it was lovely and airy, with the terrasse tables spilling into the street and the pink lights shimmering overhead, but in early spring it seemed a sealed box, full to bursting now that prime drinking hours were fast approaching. The noise came through the walls like a deep, dark pulse, and when I opened the door it was nearly deafening, so much that I blinked and almost backed away. But I pushed on and in, sliding my mobile away and casting my eyes about for Toriv.

He saw me before I saw him and stood from a table at the far end to wave and shout. His voice was lost in the din, of course, but it was enough to get me to come over, slipping between tables and chair backs as well as I could in my long coat. Toriv grabbed my arm as I arrived and moved his face very close to say in my ear, “Glad you made it!” And he seemed to really mean it, which made me feel warm all over, as if I needed any help.

He nudged me into one of the two remaining chairs and shouted, “Take off your coat, dude! You’ve met Red, and Jamie will be back in a second. He lost the coin toss so he’s getting the first round.”

Red was sitting right across the small table from me, one arm casually slung over the back of his rickety chair. He didn’t seem to have a coat, but red dragons are generally like that. I’ve never known a single one who needed a coat even in the dead of the winter. He motioned to me with one hand, a vague acknowledgement that I’m not sure was completely friendly, but it was better than the look he’d given me earlier in the shop, so I returned the gesture in kind.

There was a kind of lapse then, a moment where none of us knew what to say and the noise of the bar pressed in to fill the silence. Thankfully, the awkwardness was soon broken by the return of the fourth member of the party, another elf who called in a lilting, ringing voice, “Make way for the social lubricant, boys!” as he placed four brimming beer glasses down on the table.

This last member of the gathering was strikingly blond, tall and slender as a model. He was dressed, quite dramatically, all in white, and in a very short fringed skirt which must have left his legs smarting with the cold outside, but I suppose people who dress this way quickly learn the trick of not caring. He wiped his fingers on a napkin to get off the condensation from the beer glasses and shook my hand in a surprisingly strong grip.

I said, “Mahendra Singh. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m James Me’Aranas, Jamie to my friends.” He fluttered his eyelashes and tossed his waist-length hair over his shoulder. “And you can definitely be my friend.”

Red snorted into his beer like he’d heard that one before, and Toriv said cheerfully, “He says that to all the boys.”

“I do not,” Jamie replied, his eyes still on me. “Just the good-looking ones.”

“Or the rich ones,” Red added.

Jamie sighed extravagantly. “Well, I’m not gettin’ any younger. And with all the shifts I have to pick up, my thesis isn’t gettin’ any doner, either.”

Relieved that the conversation was going in a direction I was actually familiar with, I said, “That’s right, Toriv did say you were writing one. Elven culture and the estrangement of youth, was it? How is it going?”

“Nooo,” Red groaned from across the table. “Don’t get him started, man. I was trying to have fun tonight.”

“Ignore him, he’s never read a book in his life,” Jamie said sweetly. “Are you an academic, Mahendra?”

“I am. I’m a professor of anthropology and a grad advisor.”

“Oooh! Toriv, where did you find this one?”

“He just walked in one day, I swear,” Toriv said. He looked incredibly pleased.

Jamie and I talked shop for a while, or about as much as we could with the din of the crowd and the steady thump of music in the background. Toriv and Red chatted on their end, leaning their heads in very close to hear each other. I don’t know why this detail stood out to me so, even as I was discussing the ins and outs of Jamie’s thesis with him; he seemed happy to have someone to talk about it with at last, and I should have been paying more attention than I was, but it was difficult to stop myself from watching Toriv out of the corner of my eye.

He looked completely in his element here, drinking leisurely and talking away like he didn’t already spend most of his day doing just that. His conversation with his friend Red seemed to have absorbed him entirely, though he did raise his eyes a few times to greet some acquaintance passing by the table. It seemed that even in a rowdy place like this, Toriv knew plenty of people well enough to say hello and how are you. I don’t suppose I should have been surprised, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that Toriv was in the habit of spending a lot of time in this area, and what the implications of that were. All I knew was that although he had insisted on my coming, Toriv had barely said two words to me the whole evening, even with me sitting not two feet away.

The realization was a miserable one, shocking in its intensity. The more I tried to ignore it, the more persistent the feeling became, until I found myself quite unable to continue making ordinary conversation, even given its academic nature. If Jamie noticed my discomfort, he gave no sign, but instead made some side comment to Red and Toriv which made them laugh and rope him into the discussion across the table.

The mess of voices and clink of glasses and boom of music seemed only to grow louder as the night wore on. I’m not sure how long I sat there, mired in sound and shared body heat and something like thwarted desire. It was a familiar feeling, a chest-deep ache so profound you could mistake it for your own heartbeat. A sense of anticipation with nowhere to end up, as it were.  I found myself growing more and more agitated under its influence, even as the three-sided conversation continued to flow around me, helped along by the second, third, and fourth rounds bought by each of us in turn.

Minutes, hours, or days later, I knew I needed to step away for a moment or risk going out of my head, so I stood awkwardly for the washroom. Toriv raised his head to point it out to me, but his voice was distant, like he had quite forgotten who I was. Red had moved his chair right next to his on Toriv’s side of the table, his elbow propped on the back of Toriv’s chair. His eyes flicked up to me as I went but I ignored him and wove my way around to the back of the room where people were queueing for the loo, leaning against the time-stained walls and flicking across their phone screens.

As it turns out, a bar washroom is of little relief during peak hours of the night, but I barricaded myself into one of the two stalls and tried to breathe normally. I was certain this kind of place hadn’t changed much since I was a young man; it was only I who had aged, who had lagged until I was left behind, no longer able to cope with the sheer amount of sound and scent and feeling that bled from such places. Not that I had ever really enjoyed going to bars or clubs, but when one is young that is one does, and now that I was no longer, it proved to be a monumental task. Being practically ignored by Toriv was making that task even more impossible. It was juvenile, I knew it was, but it’s difficult to put such emotions away once they’ve been let out into the open.

I went out again after a time. The push of the atmosphere was no better even after the brief respite, so I decided to go, though it was still early by bar-going standards. I struggled back to the table to fetch my coat. Jamie looked sorry and tried to get me to stay, but when I refused he snapped his manicured fingers in Toriv’s and Red’s faces to get them to look up and bid me goodbye.

“You’re going already?” Toriv said. He half stood from his chair. “I’ll walk you to the metro.”

“No, no, it’s all right, I couldn’t interrupt.”

“Seriously–“

“Let him go, Toriv,” Red broke in. He was still sitting with his arm laid easily across the back of Toriv’s chair, and was looking at me with a mix of amusement and disdain on his handsome face. “It’s past his bedtime.”

“You’re an ass,” Toriv told him, but the little bit of eyetooth was poking into his smile. He turned to me and reached out to give me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Okay, well, be careful on your way back.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore. I said, “I will, goodnight,” and left as hurriedly as I could, the tails of my coat catching in chair legs as I went.

The outside air felt frighteningly open and cold after the closeness of the bar, but at least I could breathe. The lights and windows of the Village were as bright as ever but I turned away from them all and headed slowly for home, feeling tipsy and foolish the whole way back.

The warmth and dark of my flat was the balm I knew it would be, however, and as soon as I had stepped in and hung up my coat I began to feel a little bit better. I was still drunk but not ferociously so, and in a way I was grateful. The buzz of alcohol has a way of dulling feelings you’d really rather wait for morning to face.

I showered and put myself to bed. My mobile vibrated and lit up just as I was setting it down on the bedside table, but I took my glasses off so I couldn’t read the sender’s name. Then I turned the thing off, rolled away from it, and slept a deep and heavy sleep.