Flirt

by Laurell K. Hamilton

hair was almost black, straight and tucked into a short ponytail, with a long wisp of hair escaping to trace the edge of a triangular face. His eyes were dark, and sparkling with his desire to catch Nathaniel's attention. He was cute, and that was the problem with this kind of flirting. I couldn't figure out how to let someone know I "saw" them without really seeing them. I couldn't pretend to notice someone. I either noticed them, or I didn't. He smiled flashed that brilliant white smile in his tan and left me to my menu.

  "I'm glad we didn't bet on this one," Jason said, "I'd have lost. "

  Nathaniel looked at him. "You thought he was gay. "

  "The way he reacted to you-yes. "

  I was studying my menu, trying to remember what I'd wanted. Some kind of salad, I think. Or had it been the pulled pork sandwich? That was always good.

  "But he smiled at both of you, so I'm betting bi. "

  "Pulled pork sandwich. I'm going to back to work, so I don't have to eat light. But the waiter wasn't smiling at me, he'd noticed he had only looked at Nathaniel and I was the only one close enough to let him look at me and still see Nathaniel. "

  "You made him see you when you looked up and smiled," Nathaniel said.

  "Not on purpose," I said.

  "We've all started adopting some of Nathaniel's charms," Micah said.

  I looked at him. "You, too?"

  He nodded, smiled, and looked down, as if he were a little embarrassed. "I've found that a little charm helps a lot in politics, and you want people to like you; no one is better at getting people to like them than these two. " He ended with a wry tone and a look halfway between amused and disgusted, but ended with a smile.

  Jason batted blue eyes at him. "Aw, that's so sweet; you've been taking lessons in luuvv from us. "

  Micah scowled at him, and I realized it was a look more reminiscent of me. Did all couples begin to pick up mannerisms from each other? I knew I'd picked up things from Jean-Claude, but I was his human servant, which meant that personality and psychic gifts literally mingled, or were contagious. But then I was Micah's Nimir-Ra, leopard queen, and Nathaniel was my animal to call, so maybe it was the metaphysics still. I'd learned that my initial attraction to Micah had been vampire powers-mine, not Jean-Claude's. The powers of Belle Morte's line were lust and love, with the caveat for most of them that you could only control someone to the degree you were willing to be controlled. For me it truly was a double-edged sword, and with Nathaniel and Micah I'd been willing to be cut to the heart. By the time I'd made Jason my wolf to call, I'd had more control so we were still just friends. Though I'd bound him to me during a crisis, by accident, just reaching out for the metaphysical help that was closest, I hadn't made us fall In Love with each other. I was relieved and I think so was he.

  "Do you really not understand that he was flirting with both of us?" Nathaniel asked.

  I gave him a look. "He could smile in your direction looking at me, without staring at you. I think he'd noticed he was only staring at you and it finally embarrassed him. "

  Nathaniel looked across me to Micah. "You saw it. What do you think?"

  He took my hand and kissed it, gently. "I think she doesn't see herself the way we do. "

  I tried to pull my hand back. "I see myself first thing in the morning, and trust me, I don't roll out of bed looking that good. "

  He held my hand tighter. "Haven't we proved by now that we find you fabulous in the morning?"

  I scowled at him, but stopped pulling on my hand. "I was told all my childhood that I wasn't pretty, and you guys love me because of vampire powers. You may not be able to help it. "

  Nathaniel's arms encircled me from behind, as Micah came in from the front for a kiss. "You are beautiful, Anita, I swear it's true," he whispered. I was tense in their arms, almost panicked; why? My father's second wife had been blond and blue-eyed, tall and Nordic, as had her daughter from her first marriage, and the son they had together later. I loved my brother Josh, but I'd always looked like the dark secret in the family pictures, and Judith had been very quick to explain to friends that I wasn't hers; that my mother had been Hispanic. I'd always blamed my lack of self-esteem on that, but now I realized that wasn't all of it. It wasn't like a buried memory, just one I hadn't looked at before.

  "My Grandmother Blake took care of me while my father worked for about a year. I'd just lost my mom, and she told me that I was ugly, that I better not count on finding a husband, but get an education and a job and take care of myself. "

  "What?" Micah said. Nathaniel's arms tightened around me.

  "Don't make me say it again; it's such a shitty thing to do to a little kid. "

  "You know it's not true," Micah said, studying my face.

  I nodded, and then shook my head. "I guess, not really. I mean, I see how people react to me so I know I clean up well, but I can't really see why you guys react to me. I just see what my grandmother and then my stepmother told me wasn't tall enough, white enough, pretty enough. " The tightness in my chest eased the panic flowing away on the realization that even if I'd been an ugly little girl, a grandmother who loved you wouldn't have said it. She might have encouraged you to study hard and get a career, but she wouldn't have told you it was because you were ugly and no man would have you.

  Nathaniel kissed the side of my face as Micah kissed my lips. I stayed motionless in their arms, letting the knowledge of that childhood memory wash over me. "Why did I remember that now?" I asked, softly.

  "You were ready to remember," Nathaniel whispered. "We bring up the pain in pieces so we can look at it in small bites. "

  Jason spoke softly from just behind Nathaniel. "First, you are beautiful and desirable, and that was evil of her. Second, one thing I've learned in therapy is that when you feel your most safe, most happy, is when the really painful stuff rears its head. "

  "I remember Nathaniel's therapist saying that when you started having bad dreams. Why does it have to work that way?" I asked, still held between the other two men.

  "You feel safe enough and you believe you have enough of a support network to look at the really bad stuff, so when your life is going its best, we all have a tendency to dredge up the worst of our pain. "

  I turned in their arms so I could see Jason's face. "That sucks," I said.

  He smiled, eyes gentle. "Big-time suck, yes. " He studied my face. "You aren't going to cry, are you?"

  I thought about it, figuring out how I felt. "No. "

  "It's okay to cry," he said.

  I shook my head. "I don't want to cry. "

  "You never want to cry," Nathaniel said.

  I couldn't argue that, so instead I let myself soften in their arms, and kissed first Micah, and then turned so I could lay my cheek against Nathaniel's face and whisper, "I'll cry later, at home. "

  "You'll cry when it finally hits you," he said.

  "I don't feel like crying now. "

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "You could read my feelings. "

  "You've taught me better psychic manners than that," he said.

  "I came with better manners than that," Micah said.

  I nodded, and then started to sit back on the bench. They moved back to let me. "I feel sort of hollow, like there's this empty space inside me that I didn't know was there. Fragile-which I hate. "

  Jason reached past Nathaniel to pat my thigh, just a friendly touch. "It's okay, we're here. "

  I nodded. That was the problem with loving people: it made you weak. It made you need them. It made the thought of not having them the worst thing in the world. I heard Bennington 's words in my head: It's a terrible thing to lose someone you love. I knew it for truth, because I'd lost my mother to death when I was eight, and my fiance in college to his mother's pressure. Come to think of it, that had been because I wasn't blond and Caucasian enough for his family. They hadn't wanted their family tree darkened quite that much. Was it any wonder I had a complex about it
? It would have been a miracle if I hadn't.

  For a long time after that first love, I'd protected my heart from all takers; now here I sat in a restaurant with two men I loved, and a third who was one of my best friends. How had I been willing to let so many people get so damn close?

  The waiter was back at the table. He smiled that brilliant smile at me, and I could see that he was looking at me, not Nathaniel. I started to do what I'd done for years when men reacted to me-scowl and give him The Look-and then I realized that I