Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Have they bothered you since?” he asked.

Donal laughed. “No. Now they think we’re grand pals—always have a nod or a smile for me when they pass by.”

There was a brief pause in the music and Miki turned in her chair to have a drink from her pint. She shot Hunter a happy smile.

“You doing all right?” she asked.

He nodded. “Donal was just telling me all about the hard men.”

Miki’s gaze flicked to the booth, returned.

“Oh, them,” she said. “He tell you how they beat him up?”

“Mmhmm. But now they’re friends.”

Miki shook her head. “You can’t be friends with their kind. You have to be one of them.” She smiled at her brother. “But there are those they’ll tolerate more than others.”

“If you’re willing to go through the initiation,” Donal added.

“I think I’ll pass,” Hunter said.

“Good idea.” She had another swallow of her beer. “I’m just going to sit in on a few more tunes. But let me know if Donal goes all morose on you.”

“And you’ll do what?” Donal asked.

“Cheer you up, ever so sweetly.”

She turned her back and joined in as the tune the musicians were playing shifted into a high-energy version of “The Earl’s Chair.”

“Is she like that at work?” Donal asked.

Hunter nodded. “Relentlessly upbeat.”

“You’d think she’d been taking lessons from Jilly,” Donal said. He raised his glass. “God save us from the excessively cheerful.”

They clinked their glasses together, finishing the beer in them. Hunter got up and bought the next round.

“She fancies you, you know,” Donal said when Hunter returned to the table.

Hunter blinked. “Who? Miki?”

“Who else? The Queen of bloody Sheba?”

“Oh.”

Hunter didn’t know what to say. He’d never thought of her along those lines. But then he’d been comfortably in what he’d thought was a long-term relationship when he’d first really gotten to know her. Before that she was just this amazing little accordion wizard who’d sneak into the sessions when she was still too young to legally have a drink.

“Don’t worry,” Donal told him with a smile. “I’m not going to turn into some mad hard man to protect the honor of my little sister.”

“Well, she’s a bit young for me…” Hunter began.

“Ah, but she’s an old soul.”

Hunter shook his head. “So now what? Are you turning matchmaker?”

“ ’Course not. I’m just looking out for the best for both of you. Don’t tell her I’ve said a word or she’ll have my bloody head.”

“I won’t,” Hunter told him.

“Good man.”

So far as Hunter was concerned, just the idea of it made everything feel far too complicated to think about, never mind talk about. But of course, now he couldn’t not think about it.

“How’s work going?” he asked to change the subject.

Donal sighed. “You know that new gallery down the street from your store?”

“Le Grand Corbeau Bleu,” Hunter said with a nod. “I’ve seen they’re hanging some of your work.”

“And that’s just lovely, except they’ve sold three pieces and I’ve yet to see a check from them. Now I’m as patient as the next man, their being a new business and all, but Jaysus, a man has to pay his own bills—do you know what I’m saying? It wouldn’t be so bad if I thought they were trying to put me off because then I could go in and shout and carry on and all. But they’re so bloody earnest and broke…”

Donal left before either Hunter and Miki were ready to go. By twelve-thirty, the crowd had thinned considerably, though Hunter noted that the hard men were still in their booth. The music had changed now—not quite so frantic and showy. There were fewer musicians, the ones remaining being the better players. The music they drew from their instruments was as likely to be tender and heart-wrenchingly melancholy as up-tempo, the tunes all much more intricate and twisty than what they’d been playing earlier. Miki would have had no trouble keeping up, but she’d put her box back in its case and the two of them had moved to a bench near the fireplace, close to where the musicians were playing. It still left them out of the circle of players, but they were now near enough to be able to listen to the music without the distracting noise of the pub’s remaining patrons.

They’d been sitting there for a while when Miki slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and gave him a contented smile. It seemed an entirely innocent gesture, but Hunter remembered what Donal had told him and an immediate awkwardness came over him. He could feel himself tense up and Miki was quick to pick up on the change.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. She leaned closer to him, keeping her voice low.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, right.” She squeezed his arm. “The muscles of your arm feel so tight it’s like you think you might catch a disease from me or something. So ’fess up already. What’s the problem?”

“It’s nothing, really. It’s just…” Never mind what he’d promised Donal, Hunter decided. “Only Donal was saying…”

His voice trailed off but Miki shook her head and finished for him.

“That I have a crush on you.”

Hunter nodded.

“Bloody hell. He’s doing that all the time. It’s his way at getting back at me for making his life miserable with what he calls my incessant practicing.”

Hunter knew an immediate relief. It wasn’t that he disliked Miki. Far from it. He simply wasn’t ready for any more complications in his life at the moment. Not when the ache Ria had left in his heart was still so raw.

“So you don’t…” Hunter began.

“I didn’t say that.”

He looked the question at her, but she only smiled.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said.

“But…”

“Shh. Listen. Isn’t that a beautiful air?”

It took a moment for Hunter to switch gears and pay attention to what the musicians were playing. He didn’t recognize the piece, but he loved the way one of the flute players interwove the sound of his instrument with that of Amy’s pipes.

When the musicians began another piece, a complicated jig, Miki gave Hunter’s arm another squeeze.

“About this business of who fancies who,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Donal was only teasing you because he can be such a git and he wanted to get back at me.”

“Sure…”

“And if I was teasing you, it’s only because you can get way too serious.”

She leaned back against the bench to listen to the music then, leaving Hunter to realize that she still hadn’t really answered anything. To confuse matters even more, he found that, as though the whole conversation had been a catalyst to make him focus on her and see her in another light, now he was feeling an interest in her. The borderland between friendship and something more had suddenly gotten all hazy and undefined, and he wasn’t quite sure where he stood in it anymore—or even where he wanted to stand.

The idea of being with Miki seemed to ease some of the hurt that Ria had left lodged inside him when she walked out of his life, but he couldn’t tell if this new attraction to Miki was real, or had come about because he was feeling lost and on the rebound. Perhaps it was part of both because right now he was in a place where anybody, the first person he happened to meet, no doubt, could hold the road map he needed to lead him back to a place where it was possible to feel good again. And that wasn’t exactly the most positive thing upon which to base a relationship.

Hunter stifled a sigh. Donal owed him big time for starting up this whole complication in the first place.