Break of Day

19) Peculiarities

Retying the elastic at the end of my braid, I sighed as I moved through the doorway, "If I have to read the word vampire one more time, I am going to set my head is going to spontaneously combust." The dull throbbing in behind my head and the front of my skull had been unceasing for the past few hours.

"Just tell me when and I'll get you away from anything flammable," he grinned, eyes much lighter than I'd seen them in the past few weeks. The back of his hand brushed against my arm as he moved around me, greeting the hostess in a soft, alluring voice.

Surprise flooded her features for only a moment before she relaxed, an easy smile blooming as she responded: "Do you have a reservation with us tonight?"

"Yes, ma'am." Despite the change in his voice and demeanour, only his hands resting on the counter. It was sort of unnerving, the friendly smile and alluring voice that would have normally indicated flirting, yet he was turned slightly away from her. Just enough to make it hard to believe he was flirting. "Two under Carlysle Coileán."

When the hostess glanced towards me, her warm smile didn't match the slight daze in her deep eyes, almost as though she wasn't fully aware. The glaze over her face was a weight in my stomach, a ghostly memory of one of my mother's boyfriends. If I hadn't come across his arrest record while doing some research on a paper for class, I never would have understood why he could afford such expensive things while getting high with my mother almost every night. "Alright, give me a moment to find you." I doubt this girl — in her early twenties most likely— was a drug dealer. I had begun to grow used to the effect Theodore had on other people.

Lowering my voice, I leaned towards him, "What does flammability have to do with this?"

Tilting his head slightly, he searched my face for a few moments. The intensity of his gaze made me question everything I thought I knew in that brief, unsettling pause. "So you don't start anything on fire when you combust." Uncertainty tainted his smile, dimmer than it would be if we were alone, but still more open and genuine than when he's around my other friends.

His mouth was parted, contemplating if he should continue when the hostess spoke up: "Okay, Mr. Coileán." Her pleasant smile didn't quite reach her glazed eyes as she looked up at us, stumbling slightly over his last name as she settled on - Colleen. "Right this way," she said, gesturing for us to follow as she led us to a table

Moving closer to Theodore, my hand ghost against the cool skin of his forearm, aiming to retrieve his attention. "I'm combusting, not starting on fire. My head is collapsing violently inwards not bursting into flames, Theodore," my voice dropped as we sat, leaving his name to be soundless, a mere movement of my lips.

"Your server will be with you in a moment to get your drinks," the hostess said with another polite smile before disappearing into the back.

Amusement seemed to ignite beneath Theodore's skin, leaving his smile warm and his chuckle smooth. "That's implosion, doll," he corrected me, the gentle lilt in his voice accentuating the endearment. His fair eyes gleamed with mirth as he leaned his arm on the table.

The term "doll" had initially felt odd, almost disorienting with its elongated, soft vowel sound, but as he used it more frequently, it simply became a notable change of tone. It was words like these that left me confused by the seeming lack of notable accent. Him being raised in New York and I being raised in Texas, I knew we pronounced things differently, used different words to mean a commonplace thing, but his was impossible to distinguish. It wasn't like my father's voice or Annie's or Ella's. It was as if there wasn't an accent.

Crossing my legs, I furrowed my brow and argued, "No, that's combustion."

Theodore's expression remained warm, hovering between confusion and amusement as he explained, "Spontaneous combustion is when something spontaneously bursts into flame. Implosion is when something collapses violently inward." Once I focused on the abnormality, I couldn't ignore it: the calculation of his words, the pause every so often as if he was figuring how to pronounce a word. It reminded me of Mel when she spoke French, her hesitation in the language.