Luke’s dad rubbed his hands together. “That’ll do very nicely.”
“I’m pleased that you’re pleased,” Elliot informed him. “I’m glad to have cleared up your horrible misapprehension. I hope you will all be very happy together. Now you’re here, I assume Luke does not need moral support, and I wish very much to change my trousers.”
He got up. The sun was dazzling in his eyes, the carefree sound of Dale and the others playing made his head hurt, and there was still blood on his hands.
“That’d probably be best, lad,” said Luke’s dad. “The elves were talking.”
Elliot walked in through the door of his dormitory, then jumped a foot in the air.
“I couldn’t go back to my room,” said Serene, lurking behind his bunk bed. “My mother would know to look for me there.”
“You might’ve been safer hiding in Luke’s room,” said Elliot. “I don’t think any of the elves would be remotely surprised to find out that I was scandalously entertaining ladies in my boudoir.”
“Ah,” said Serene. “But I wanted to talk to you.” She did not smile, not even her secret smile most people did not notice was a smile: she did not look anywhere close to smiling. She gazed up at Elliot and though the rest of her was in shadow, her uptilted face and her grey eyes seemed picked out by a spotlight, pearl-pale and imploring.
Elliot came and sat at her feet, taking one of her hands in his: it was strange, because the last time he had touched her like this they’d been going out. It was also the only possible comfort for him. There was nobody else in this or any world who he knew would welcome his touch, would touch him back in reassurance or affection.
Serene linked her fingers with his. “How are you? You look sad, but . . . I have received the distinct impression you have not exactly been pining away for me.”
“Who says?” Elliot asked. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing other things as well.”
“So have I,” said Serene. “As you heard.”
She looked stony with shame even referring to the incident with Golden. Her pain made Elliot want to be vulnerable.
“I, uh,” said Elliot, and bit his lip. “Over the summer, I had a relationship with a man.”
Serene’s eyes went so wide Elliot was worried they were going to meet over her nose and form one giant elven mono-eye that would stare at him for all time.
“Well,” she said at last. “That makes no difference to my enduring affection for you! I thank you for sharing this confidence with me, and I will support you in all your relationships and varied endeavors.” She paused triumphantly after reciting that, and added: “I see how that might work better for you.”
“Sorry, what?” asked Elliot.
“Well, because you talk so much about the societal prejudices and differing expectations involved in relationships between the sexes. This way both parties can be equal!”
Elliot thought of Jase’s face, as he’d talked about his uncle: he thought of the way Jase had gone for someone young and then been upset to find that being young did not mean being malleable. He thought of how Jase had been worried about people seeing them on the street, and about how stricken Elliot had felt when his father had seen them.
“I think that’s total rubbish and a bit insulting, actually,” he said. “There isn’t any kind of relationship that’s all problem-free delightful unicorns. You can’t have a relationship without issues and prejudices. The way to be equals is if both people agree to be equals, and treat themselves and each other as equals, despite all that.”
Serene frowned thoughtfully. “I’m sorry to have insulted you and I will think on what you say. But I don’t see how unicorns come into it.”
“They were a metaphor,” said Elliot. “Which was a mistake, as they are bloodthirsty censorious beasts.”
“Have you told Luke?” asked Serene, and when Elliot was silent: “Are you going to?”
Elliot remembered exactly how eager Luke had been to share with him.
“Certainly I am.” Elliot smirked without really meaning it. “He’ll know just as soon as I feel the need to announce it to our whole class.”
“I have not . . . only been making a fool of myself over Golden,” said Serene. “My cousin saw that I was somewhat downcast after my—misreading and mistreatment of you, and she took me to a place where she assured me that my suffering would be eased.”
Elliot stared. “Serene,” he began. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about? Did you go to an elf brothel?”
“It—it may well have been somewhere that there were, ah, men of a persuadable nature—no, that is to say, men of the evening—”
“ELF BROTHEL,” said Elliot.
“Elliot, do not laugh,” Serene urged, and Elliot was just about to laugh at her for being a prude when he realized there was a genuine note of pain in her voice. “It was not . . . I did not realize how different the same act could be. I knew that it would be different with true love, but I had never thought that—affection and laughter can transform an act, as well. It came to me once I had left that dark place, and once Golden had scorned me, that I had been a child to devalue your honest affection and constant care for me. That I had been a fool.”
He thought he understood now, how Peter might have got Myra: waiting around until someone was at a weak point, low and humbled and hurt, worn down enough by the world to be amenable. And maybe it would turn out to be a good idea.
But Elliot didn’t want love to be like that. He loved Serene, and he did not want to catch her in his arms if she stumbled. He wanted to help her to her feet.
And he did not want to be loved as a second choice, as a surrender. He had spent his whole life not being loved at all, and he had thought being loved enough would satisfy him. It would not. He did not want to be loved enough. He wanted to be loved overwhelmingly. He did not wish it had been him who caught Myra, instead of Peter. He did not want to be Serene’s fallback, even though it was Serene. He had never been chosen, so he had never had a chance to know this about himself before now: he wanted to be chosen first.
Serene was looking down at him, as if she was thinking about kissing him. Elliot looked back at her, longing and amazed there was something stronger than that longing.
“Serene,” he whispered, and she leaned in a little closer at the sound of her name. “It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”
Serene looked surprised, but she only had a brief instant to be surprised: the door opened and Luke walked in. He stopped a step within the threshold, taking in their tableau, and Elliot decided that the entire universe had been set up purely to play cosmic jokes on him.
“Are you guys . . .” Luke hesitated and cleared his throat. “Are you getting back together?”
Serene and Elliot looked at each other, and the look meant more to Elliot, felt weightier, than the kiss good-bye he’d given Adara, or how he’d held Myra. This had so much more love in it, and was so much more final.