(A/N): I'm sorry if there are parts of this chapter that don't flow smoothly enough; I wrote and edited the last half of this when I was really tired, so I think I may have lost my powers of judgement a bit. I apologize if that's the case. :P
. . .
. . .
When they reached Crumbs, Skye threw her shoulders back, marched heroically up to the door, and pulled it open with a solid yank. Her sisters filed in after her and they stood blinking on the threshold, adjusting to the sudden dimness. She looked around at the empty café tables, thinking worriedly that Jeffrey hadn't come, that he had forgotten, when a tall figure rose from the farthest table and began to laugh.
"This must be a tradition," said Jeffrey, wading through the small sea of iron-wrought tables and chairs. "You're always two minutes late."
And then the sisters were laughing and surging forward to hug him in an enthusiastic tangle of limbs. Rosalind kissed Jeffrey on the cheek, Jane seized him in a hug that must surely have left bruises, Batty said something happily garbled about grand pianos and how glad she was to see him, and Skye—well. She looked straight into Jeffrey's eyes and said, "I suggest you invest in a better timepiece. Yours is running fast."
"Lovely to see you, as well," said Jeffrey, concealing a grin with some difficulty. He hugged Skye, and she reciprocated a bit stiffly.
Rosalind rescued Skye from an awkward silence. "We got here as quickly as we could, but the traffic was atrocious."
"It was," added Jane. "How do you manage living here?"
"By walking a lot." Jeffrey smiled. "I'm glad I decided not to live in the residence hall. I don't have much tolerance for college students and I am one of them. It's an only child thing, I think."
"Indeed," said Jane, who sometimes fantasized about being an only child, but always abandoned these fancies out of guilt.
"It really has been too long," said Jeffrey, beaming widely at down at them from his impressive height of six feet and one inches.
"Every day without you feels like a year, Jeffrey," bemoaned Jane. Skye administered a light punch to her sister's shoulder.
"I swear you've gotten even taller," said Rosy, looking up at Jeffrey in amused wonder.
"The extra inch makes all the difference," he laughed. "And you all look quite gorgeous, as well."
He wasn't looking at Skye when he said this, but heat flooded her cheeks all the same and she clenched her fist, fingernails biting her palm.
The flow of conversation pushed on around her, as if she was a stone in a river current. She returned to the present to hear Jeffrey offering to catch them all a cab back to his apartment.
"So you can repose for a while," he added. "It's a long drive down, you deserve the rest." And he winked at Rosalind.
"I'll take our Sedan and follow the taxi," said Rosalind. "All the important things are in that car. Like toothbrushes and Skye's graphing calculator."
Everyone, excepting Skye, chuckled.
"I'll go hail a cab, then." Jeffrey strode back out onto the street and Jane followed him, no doubt hoping to take copious notes on the process of cab hailing.
Rosalind met Skye's eyes and granted her a strange, significant smile. And before Skye could ask why, Rosalind and Batty had walked into the blinding sunshine of the afternoon and she was alone.
. . .
. . .
Jeffrey's apartment was really more of a glorified flat. It was minuscule with a narrow corridor spanning from living room, to kitchen, to bathroom, to bedroom in a tight rectangle. Here and there stacks of sheet music were propped on random horizontal surfaces, such as the top of the refrigerator and, most inconveniently, the toilet seat. Yet despite the inevitable overload of exercise books and battery operated metronomes (one for each room in the apartment), all was well-kept and remarkably neat. Jeffrey was especially proud of his baby grand piano. It crouched impressively in the corner of the sitting room and drew longing looks from Batty, who eyed the piano as though she was starved and it was the last morsel of food on the planet.
"By all means," said Jeffrey, noticing Batty's expression. "You can never play a piano too often."
Rosalind flashed Jeffrey a grateful smile as Batty dropped her suitcase and flew to the piano, pulling the bench out with vigor. "It isn't her only pursuit," she explained. "But it is an enthusiastic obsession." She picked up her bag and swung it over her shoulder. "Do you mind if I put this in the bedroom?"
"Not at all. I was actually planning to sleep on the floor for the duration of your stay, anyway." He waved off Rosalind's horrified look. "It's completely voluntary. Go unpack."
Rosalind gave in with obvious reluctance and exited the room.
"And Batty's lucky, by the way," Jeffrey yelled after her. "There's really no better obsession to have." Then he looked over at Skye—she was fiddling with a high tech recording device—and raised his brows. "And then there's the physics major."
Skye pursed her lips. "You always say that."
"Because I'm horrible at physics and can't even entertain the thought of having a career in it."
"I feel the same about music. Not that I don't appreciate it," she added, turning away to study the volume knobs.
"Skye, you literally can't name one song on the radio."
"False."
Jeffrey folded his arms over his chest and fixed her with an impudent gaze. His eye contact was palpable; Skye could feel his eyes on her, melting her iron resolve. She reluctantly gave up her examination of the speakers and returned the look. He was still staring at her, and she noted with some satisfaction that he was unable to keep a small smile from working its way onto his face.
"I'll prove it to you," she said. "The next time I hear a song on the radio I'll give you the title, artist, and year it was released."
"That's ambitious."
"I give you my word."
"I have a feeling you 're going to be up all night researching popular songs," said Jeffrey, laughing. "And I suspect there might be a few pie-charts and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets involved."
"Shut up," Skye said good-naturedly, rising to her feet. "I have faith in my song-naming abilities."
Inwardly, she wasn't sure she could distinguish a Bach concerto from a Rihanna number, but she would certainly die trying.
"This is completely off topic," said Jeffrey, "but I bought tickets to Phantom of the Opera for tonight."
"Oh," said Skye who had absolutely, completely, utterly despised musicals since her fiasco with Sisters and Sacrifice. "That's...good."
"I was able to swing it because of a lovely little thing called a student discount." Jeffrey grinned.
Skye, who still had nothing very encouraging to say, gave a polite smile. "That's really generous of you."
Perhaps she seemed a bit too happy, because Jeffrey suddenly looked guilty. "Well, here's the thing," he added. "There are only three tickets."
Skye frowned. "They were sold out?"
"No, I only bought three."
"Why?"
"Because I thought I remembered you saying that you hated musicals."
Deeply relieved, Skye sat down on Jeffrey's minute sofa. "I can't believe you remember that!"
"Of course I remember! That's why I was so confused a moment ago—you really looked genuinely excited at the prospect of seeing Phantom!"
He looked so bewildered that Skye began laughing. "Apparently I'm a better actor than I thought."
"You're normally so honest," said Jeffrey, sitting down beside her. "What happened?"
"I didn't want to be rude."
"I'd like you to think about what you just said."
Skye punched his arm. "It might have escaped your attention, but I'm not a complete monster. I do have manners."
"Said Spock."
Skye punched Jeffrey's arm again.
They didn't speak for a moment, and a question pushed to the forefront of Skye's mind. "So why didn't you get a ticket for yourself? I don't mind doing my own thing tonight."
He shook his head. "I didn't want to see it a second time."
And then it dawned on Skye that she and Jeffrey would most likely be spending the evening together. Oh. Oh no.
"I thought we'd do something," said Jeffrey.
"What, exactly?"
"I don't know. Something artful and adventurous."
"We could play soccer in a hallway somewhere, then hide from security." Skye feigned total sobriety.
Jeffrey laughed. "That was perfection, wasn't it?"
"Those were the days," said Skye. "And so are these."
They smiled at each other. A beat passed and something passed between them; a spark of understanding, a recognition. And then, inexplicably, Jeffrey's gaze was leaving Skye's face and traveling down to her horribly exposed left forearm. He looked at the bare stretch of skin for a split second, then back at Skye, his expression unfathomable. If he was puzzled, disappointed, or simply uninterested, she couldn't tell. The moment hung between them like a silk thread, fragile and thrumming. Batty was still playing the piano; the song tumbled around them like falling hailstones, mixing with the persistent wailing of police sirens from somewhere far away. It was the strangest duet Skye had ever heard and it filled her with roaring emptiness.
She stood up. The thread snapped and she was glad. It was better that way. "So. Tonight we do something artful and adventurous?"
Jeffrey looked up at her, blinking. "Yes," he said, his face still unreadable. "Something eventful and enormous."
"Jeffrey—why are we speaking like this?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know, either. I feel like a human thesaurus."
Jeffrey broke into a smile. "And I always thought I was the only one who felt like that."