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“How did you know you were in love with your husband?” Millie was bored. She was always bored. She was leaning on her desk, fingers folded in front of her face as she stared at Sharon, uncharacteristically focused.
“Don’t bother her with stupid questions,” Camilla said. She was working for once, long slender fingers clacking away at the keys in front of her.
“C’mon, it’s not stupid!” Millie cried. “It’s love!” She was whining now, leaning across the table, and tugging on Sharon’s sleeve.
“I just knew,” Sharon replied flatly. Yor studied her quietly.
“You just knew?” Millie laughed. “What kind of lame answer is that?” Sharon shrugged.
“I don’t know what you wanted me to say. He’s a good man with a good head on his shoulders.” A soft smile played at her lips. “That’s all I need him to be.”
“But there’s no romance in that!” Millie cried. “’He’s a good man with a good head on his shoulders’,” she parroted. “What are you, a robot?” Sharon laughed softly. “What are you laughing about?” Millie cried, indignant.
“You’ll understand what I mean one day,” Sharon replied, returning her attention to the papers in front of her.
“Whatever,” Millie pouted. “Camilla, I know you have a better romance story! You have to! That’s the only – ” she cut herself off. Camilla’s keys stopped clacking.
“That’s the only what?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Millie shot a sheepish look over at Yor, who stayed silent. “I just – c’mon, how did you know you loved Dominic?” Camilla let out a long sigh and reclined in her chair.
“You really want to know?”
“Of course!”
“When we had been dating for about six months, he brought me flowers.”
Millie stared at her.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“That’s ridiculous! Men bring me flowers all the time! That doesn’t mean I’m in love with them.”
Yor couldn’t help but agree. She may not know much about romance, but she’d read enough books and seen enough movies to know that most men did that sort of thing. Her brother bought her flowers all the time. Loid brought her flowers regularly. That didn’t mean they were in love. Did it?
“They weren’t just any flowers, idiot,” Camilla snapped. “It was a bouquet. The ugliest one I’ve ever seen.”
Millie stared at her, mouth half open.
“He made it himself,” she continued, a smile on her face. “It was terrible. The ribbon was an awful color that didn’t go with a single one of the flowers and none of the flowers went with each other either. Half of them looked like they were dead.”
Yor wasn’t used to this side of Camilla. It was strange to see her looking so soft.
“We went to so many restaurants when we first started dating. At first, I thought he must be trying to impress me with his diverse palette, but eventually I realized he just liked to eat. I was honestly starting to think he just wanted a reason to go out to dinner all the time,” she said with a laugh. “But that stupid bouquet had every flower from every table at every restaurant he had taken me to in the past six months.” She grinned. “That idiot was saving every one of them. I could tell with a few of them he’d tried to preserve them somehow, but he was no good at it.” There was a sort of far away look in her eyes. “Still, I think I knew then. Maybe I knew before that, but that day, I was sure.”
Millie was grinning from ear to ear.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” she cried. “That’s romance!” She clapped her hands to her now flushed cheeks before turning to Yor. “What about you?”
“Me?” she replied. “What about me?”
“Weren’t you listening? How did you know you were in love?” Millie cooed. Yor had been so captivated by Camilla’s story she had forgotten to come up with one of her own.
“I – I don’t have anything as grand as that.” Yor waved her hands in front of her, as if that could shoo away Millie’s relentless curiosity.
“But you must have something, right?”
“I –” She glanced at Sharon.
“And don’t say you just knew,” Millie warned.
How did she know she was in love with Loid? She didn’t know. She didn’t know that she was. But that would be awfully suspicious to tell the others. She certainly liked Loid. She cared about him. She knew that. Maybe she could just be honest.
“One day, we were sitting on the couch together and he was telling me about a book he’d been reading.”
It wasn’t nearly as long ago as she was trying to let them believe.
“He likes to read. He’s always trying to learn about new things. It’s like he’s always studying for some test only he knows about.”
He’d been wearing soft gray pants and a shirt that hung loosely from his figure. His sleeves were rolled up to just below his elbow. His hair was unstyled, falling in soft blonde waves against his forehead. He was wearing a pair of reading glasses that balanced just above the tip of his nose. She’d been worried they might slide off. Why did she remember that? Well, she’d always had an eye for details.
“We’d been listening to music together. I was sewing a button back on one of my brother’s sweaters. It was nice. I made us tea. It wasn’t very good, but he drank the whole cup.”
The light had filtered through the blinds in a way that made his eyes shine. He always looked tired, but that day, something was different. When they were around other people, he always looked so focused, so composed. It must be exhausting.
He didn’t look composed that day. His eyes were warm and soft. That alertness, the kind that only came with years of training – the kind that must have come from his time as a soldier – was gone, replaced with a gentle calm that only served to accentuate his loveliness.
He really was lovely. Of course, everyone who set eyes on him knew that he was handsome, but she wondered if they could see that he was lovely too. If they could see the plush of his lips, the soft curve of his eyelashes, the gentle slope of his nose.
“He scooted closer to me on the couch and held the book so I could see,” she continued. “He was telling me all about what he was reading. He was running his fingers along the words as he read different passages for me. It was really interesting, the subject he was studying that day, but I can’t remember any of it.” A blush crept up her neck and flushed her cheeks. “It’s kind of embarrassing.” She scratched her cheek. “He was showing me all these passages and diagrams, but I didn’t see any of them. I was looking at his hands.”