The Liar
Chapter Eleven

Sprawled in his chair like a hunting cat who’d already caught the canary, he raised his mug of tea to her in a half-toast that served in the place of an extravagant bow. Bright green eyes followed her all the way to the chair next to his, and he smiled, flashing white teeth, as she sat down.

“I see you’re wearing my coat.” He seemed inordinately pleased by this. “But you’ve still got my hat,” he reproved her resentfully, pulling a total one-eighty on the subject of her wearing his clothes as abruptly as he pulled his eyebrows down.

“I’ve got your hat and I love it.” She stuck out her tongue at him, pulling his hat down over her eyes, temporarily hiding their blue. Pushing it back up, she asked, “Why are we meeting here, anyway?”

“Because you like the place and I’m infatuated with cafés.” He shrugged one shoulder, which seemed even bonier now that it was deprived of the shelter of a jacket or vest. A smile played lightly at the corner of his mouth as observed all the people around them. “They’re very writerly.”

“If you say so,” she said noncommittally, brushing strands of red hair back from her face after placing the fedora on her jean-clad knee.

“Oh, but I do.” Glancing sideways at her, he wondered, careful to keep his tone merely politely interested, “Have you been doing any writing since Monday morning?”

“No, not really.” She frowned, reaching across the small space between them to steal his tea. Raising one eyebrow above a glare, she said, sickly-sweet, “I’ve been rather distracted since then.” She scowled at him above his own tea.

“I hope you’re not referring to me.” Proudly, he tossed his head back. “I am nothing if not an excuse to write. Not to take advantage of the presence of your muse is criminal.”

“…my muse.”

“Yes.” He blinked at her, dropping his chin into one palm, face contrived innocence.

“Excuse me while I go laugh myself to death in the corner,” she drawled, one eyebrow arched to the heavens.

“You know, your face is going to become horrible misshaped if you keep doing that,” he told her airily. “All that exercise your one eyebrow is getting, well, don’t come crying to me when you wake up one morning with a Neanderthal brow on one side of your face.”

Nodding with his conviction, he tapped a barista on the arm politely. “Would you mind bringing me a cup of Earl Grey?” The Liar smiled winsomely up at the young woman, and Michele half-expected him to start batting his long lashes.

“Not at all,” the barista assured him, finding herself smiling back down at the thin, attractively disheveled man as she took his money—exact change, as she was surprised to find. “Give me a minute and I’ll get it to you.”

“Thank you. Take your time, love.” He winked, putting a bit of British into his normally mostly-neutral accent.

As the woman moved away, still smiling like the sun always shone in her world, Michele asked, “Hey, Gaius, what’s your accent?”

Shrugging, he slid deeper into the chair, so that he was only half sitting up and his legs were taking up much more space than anything as skinny as them should have been able to. “It really depends. I’ve lived in a lot of places, and I speak a lot of languages, so I can pretty much have any accent I choose.”

Michele rolled her eyes at his typically oblique answer. “I mean, right now, at this instant, what accent do you have?”

“British Columbian. Their accent is pretty neutral, although they tend to speak a little fast, a little clipped, but that suits me just fine.” Glancing her way briefly, his eyes flicked back over to follow the waitress. “Why?”

“The British accent made me wonder, and your pronunciation is just a little different. Why British Columbian? Why not just adapt to this area?”

“I was in Vancouver before I came here. Beautiful city.” He paused. “Plus, Canadians have pretty money.”

“…so, you pretty much make all of your decisions based on the most absurd thing you can think of?” she finally asked.

“Pff, yeah. Why wouldn’t I? Makes things interesting.” Grinning, he laughed suddenly and just a little too loudly. “And what’s anything worth if it’s not interesting?”

“Not much, I guess,” she agreed, a little dubiously.

The barista came back bearing the awaited tea, still smiling. Weaving her way over to them, she didn’t pay any attention to Michele, gaze locked on the Liar. “Hey, here’s your tea.” She presented it to him as if she were his slave, and suddenly Michele had the mental image of the woman in a French maid outfit with Gaius dressed up like a feudal lord.

She shook her head. She was still a little spaced from her too-long sleep.

“And here’s my number, too,” she heard the barista say, slipping the Liar a scrap of paper with seven digits scrawled on it.

“I’m a bit into men at the moment, but we’ll see,” he replied, smiling and lifting his tea in her direction. “You’re pretty cute.”

“Something wrong?” he inquired after the woman had left and it was just them within the crowd, having noticed her trying to crawl back into full consciousness and apparent lack of indignation at his blithe comments.

“Kind of—not really. No. Just…” She pointed to his shirt, sighing. “Just a little out of it today.”

“The best things are usually started when the mind’s not quite at its sanest,” he noted, taking a sip of his tea. Now sitting up, one foot on the opposite knee, he reminded her of nothing so much as a psychiatrist.

Albeit a psychiatrist who would never, ever get hired by anyone, ever. Because that would be a catastrophic idea. She shuddered at the thought of him chasing patients around a mental facility with a plastic duck attached to the end of a fishing pole.

“You probably just need to write,” he continued, oblivious to the strange cavorting of her mind. “Get it out of your system in a productive way. I guess you never did finish that short story I was reading when we first met.” He sounded really disappointed. “I was serious, you know; I wanted to know how it ended.”

“Well, you can’t,” she shot back immediately, as protective as any writer of the endings to her work.

“Yes, you’re right, of course.” Whereas another person might muss their hair by shaking their head, his only seemed to get neater, as if it had reached the farthest reaches of messiness and it could now only back away from the precipice. “That was rather silly of me.” He seemed to really understand her position, and she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, he’d been around writers for a long time—much longer than she’d even been alive. Of course he would understand that instinctive protectiveness of unfinished work.

“But you know, you really should finish it sometime soon.” His face was serious again, as it had been this morning when he’d talked about Marcus and his deep-seated hatred of prejudice. But then a smile cut a swath across his face. “Readers can get quite annoying if you leave something too long, and I am a champion reader, my writer.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she conceded him, resigned. “But I don’t know if I can finish that story. It just seems too early to end it. It’s like…there’s just too much left to be said and done for it to fit within a handful of pages. The ending I want just doesn’t seem to fit just yet. I guess it’s just one I’ll never finish,” she concluded sadly.

“No!” His palm slapped down hard on the small table between them. “I won’t allow it!” he shouted.

A few of the people in the store turned to look at him, but he said nothing and did nothing more until their curiosity had died down and they returned to their own business, and the chatter that filled the room once again increased.

“I will not allow it,” he continued in a tightly controlled voice. “That story is too good to give up just because you don’t think it will fit within the short story format. You are a writer. Writers are supposed to experiment in different fields and try their hand at more than one thing. If it won’t fit in a short story, well, then, don’t write a short story.

“Write a novel.”