Frankly Elliot thought the most surprising thing about this was that Luke managed to remember all those names.
“Oh.” Elliot squinted over at him. He thought about moving away from Luke, but that meant coming out from under the wing, and it was still raining. “I don’t think I mentioned Jase.”
“I may have asked Serene,” Luke muttered. “I wasn’t sure if you were—telling the truth or not.” Off Elliot’s unimpressed glare, he said: “You never told me!”
“Sure I did. I told you the same way you told me, by announcing the fact in front of a group of our peers.” Elliot would have left it at that, a week ago, but he was trying to make things better between them now. “It’s true that perhaps repeating the exact same thing you did was maybe not the most mature moment of my life.”
He thought this was a truly magnanimous and mature gesture, but Luke appeared to be lost in thought and to have missed it completely.
“About the class announcement. I wanted you to know, but I didn’t want to tell you. You always made fun of me,” said Luke. “I didn’t want you to make fun then.”
“I wouldn’t have!”
“I didn’t know that, Elliot,” said Luke. “Harpies can’t read minds.”
It was the first time Luke had referred to himself as a harpy, which Elliot thought was promising.
“Yeah, all right,” Elliot grumbled.
“I’m not like you,” said Luke.
“Obviously,” said Elliot. “No need to rub it in.”
Luke shook his head, puzzled but plunging ahead, the way Luke did, with fear pushed to one side in a way Elliot had never quite been able to master. “I mean, I don’t always know what to say to everyone, and I can’t go get anyone—apparently anyone—that I want, and I can’t—”
“Oh, right,” said Elliot. “Because Serene didn’t dump me and break my heart.”
There was a long pause.
Eventually, Luke asked: “She did?” in a tone that expressed not just disbelief that Serene would do that, but disbelief that Elliot’s heart did that.
“She did,” Elliot confirmed. He did not look at Luke, but at his own hands, knotted in fists as if he could defend himself, or keep hold of something. That had never worked. He let his hands open, and let go. “I wanted to stay friends with both of you, and I pretended it hurt less than it did. I wanted to be with her, and I couldn’t manage to make her want the same thing. I couldn’t manage it with Jase or Myra either. Look, I don’t think about bisexuality—”
“What’s bisexuality?” asked Luke.
“Dating people called Jason as well as people called Myra,” Elliot said. He thought of several other terms: he should probably write Luke a list. “Why is language in the Borderlands so weird? Some of it’s modern, and some of it’s medieval, and I guess that makes sense with the influx of a certain amount of new blood to the training camp every year, but how do some words and phrases transfer, while others don’t? Why do you know the word ‘jerk’ and not the word ‘bisexual’?”
“I guess people say the first word more,” said Luke.
Sometimes Luke said things as if they were very simple and obvious, and it adjusted Elliot’s worldview a crucial fraction. Elliot sat absorbing this latest.
“I think you were going to talk about your feelings,” Luke continued, stumbling over the word “feelings.” They had both been talking more slowly than usual, as if negotiating a forest full of traps. “Could you do that before you give me the lecture on linguistics?”
Elliot was proud that Luke accepted the lecture was coming.
“I don’t think about who I go out with in terms of persuading as many people as possible to have fun with me,” Elliot said. “It’s that way for some people, and that’s fine, but it’s not for me. I think about it in terms of—infinite possibilities. I think it’s beautiful the possibilities are infinite, but it also means you make a choice. Like choosing how to spend your life, where you’re going to live, what your life’s work is going to be. Except in this case, the possibilities are people, and they have to choose you back.”
“Oh,” said Luke. “I didn’t—know you thought about it that way.”
Elliot rolled his eyes. “Well, that much was obvious, Sunborn. I may also have made my announcement when I did because you are always insinuating that I throw myself at everyone within range, and I didn’t particularly want to tell you and hear that.”
“I wouldn’t have!” Luke exclaimed.
“I didn’t know that, Luke,” said Elliot. “Nobody can read minds.”
Because Elliot was a jerk, all the time and mostly on purpose, he mimicked the way Luke had said it. He was sorry the next instant, because of how sorry Luke looked.
“Yeah, well,” Elliot said. “We both know now.” He found all this sitting close sharing sunset confidences unsettling, so he got up and added, in a loudly reassuring voice: “Don’t worry about Dale. He’ll get over me being a jerk. You always did.”
“You’re not a jerk,” said Luke, and smiled up at him. “I mean, you’re not always a jerk.” He hesitated, then added: “And when you are a jerk, I usually like it.”
Ever since the march home, Dale had been complimenting Luke, and taking care to spend time with Luke, and ignoring Elliot with extreme prejudice. Elliot understood perfectly. It was going to be very awkward when Dale and Luke actually got together, but Elliot felt he was prepared.
The Borderlands were at peace, and the Border camp felt at peace, for a change. Peter and Myra seemed happy together, against all odds. Adara was in many ways terrible, but she was openly cutting a swathe through many gentlemen and several ladies in the Border camp, and Elliot was pleased for her. Podarge the harpy turned out to be an even better correspondent than Serene’s cousin Swift, and wrote Elliot regular interesting letters. Serene was happy with her missives from her beloved Golden, which sometimes contained pressed flowers and embroidery and sometimes contained very polite and gentlemanlike criticisms of Serene’s moral character. Luke was being treated well by the Border camp, he and Elliot were getting along, and he was going to be happy with Dale.
It was an enormous shock when Luke asked Elliot out on a date.
Elliot was trying to teach himself trollish via a two-hundred-year-old book by a man who’d had a traumatic break-up with a troll. This meant a lot of commentary along the lines of “This is how trolls say I love you. FOOTNOTE: BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT!”
“You realize you can’t have a quarrel with a book,” Myra observed. “Quarrels have to go two ways.”
Elliot stopped clutching his hair with despair and smiled at her across the library table. “I’ve always been able to hold up both ends of an argument all by myself.”
“I shouldn’t doubt you,” said Myra. “Nobody else has ever managed to fight with Dale Wavechaser.”
“What can I say,” said Elliot. “I have a talent.”
Myra was quiet for a moment. “He’s really going after Luke.” She paused. “I mean, I always figured they might end up together, but if he starts dating Luke and keeps hating you, won’t that be—an uncomfortable situation?”