Choking On Sapphires

11 These Stones Will Shout

You had thankfully taken up camp at the far end of the dining room table before dinner to organize some of your loose sketches. You were having Aggie take them back to your studio when he walks in the room. Your eyes that had been on her as she left in the direction he was entering, shift to him immediately and follow him, wide at the sight, as he sits at his usual seat at the far end of the table. You blink slowly at him, taking in this boyishly handsome man that sat down to have dinner with you.

"Alfie?" you call out with enthusiasm, you back straightening as he puts his glasses on. "What did you do?" you inquire, shaking your head, your brows high, eyes not hiding their underlying enthusiasm at the sight of him.

"What? It's almost summer, yeah? I like to go into the season with a good cut and shave." he doesn't pay you much mind as he looks at the papers his second is laying on the corner of the table before he leaves for the day.

Claire walks in to find you, lip bitten in thought, staring at him and wondering how he'd hidden lips so full. His face does the same mannerisms as it always has, but your eyes see every tiny nuance now. Every fold around his mouth, wrinkle in the corner of his eye. He'd bared his face and therefore to a small extent his thoughts with this clean-shaven face.

(In French) "Did you know about this?" you ask, snapping your stare back to the table.

"I did not." she says with amusement in her voice.

"Look at him," you say, holding your hands in front of your face as your arms rest on the tabletop. "To have the beautiful young man underneath the handsome older one." you roll your eyes, sitting back in your chair in contemplation of him. You never look at him directly, speaking to Claire over a sheet of jotted thoughts you'd had while drawing today as if it held any real importance. "How is an unsexed woman supposed to go without wanting to smash a face so pretty to pieces with her pelvis?" you shake your head and shake the piece of paper as if you're angry at it. You look over to him, he's watching you with interest in his eyes, you shrug and make a face to signify you weren't mad over anything important.

"Tell us how you really feel." Claire says sarcastically, managing to even chew smugly. You sit and look at his reflection in the mirror on the wall, avoid him directly.

"You remember that young lord that lived north of Paris?" you ask, chewing.

"The one with the zoo?" you say, looking back over to Claire who nods. "He reminds me of him in this form." you shake your fork in her direction.

"How could I forget? The noises you two made rivaled that of the ones in the cages." she rolls her eyes again, this time accompanied by her head as she rolled her head about her shoulders, stretching out the tension building there.

"A face like that makes me miss the days when I would take those angel face's and be the woman who made them men." you sigh and shrug remembering fondly of your escapades for a fleeting moment. You see Claire subtly looking at Alfie her lips pursed together, she overlooks your inappropriate dinner table conversation as she's become to expect it.

"I would have never guessed that lay beneath all that hair. You don't even notice the spots with a set of lips like that do you?" she looks over at you and you raise your eyebrows in agreement, nodding your head. You smile at her speaking loosely instead of professionally. "The irony is not lost on me that a man like him would have such an angelic face as it helps to deceive you from the devil within." she states matter of factly. You roll your eyes and now you try to ignore her words, trying to give no power to whatever negativity she was projecting outwardly tonight.

"I think my brother Michael had the same spots when he was little. Grandmother gave him one of her tonics and it cleared up..." you chew slowly, your brow furrowed in thought. "I wonder if it's in any of her old books." you trail off, looking in the direction of your bedroom.