This time when his eyes meet mine, there’s so much intensity there that my mouth goes desert dry. “It means I guess I saw what I wanted to see this afternoon.”
I don’t have a response to that, so I just stand there, watching him, even as a small frisson of…something works its way down my spine. I can’t identify it—and if I’m honest, I don’t want to—but it scares me a little. Even as it makes me more determined than ever to regain my memory of what happened in those three and a half missing months.
Because for a moment, during the whole magic-channeling portion of the afternoon, I realized that it didn’t feel absolutely awful having Hudson stand right behind me. In fact, it almost felt kind of…nice.
I shook the feeling off because just the idea is absurd, but now that he’s standing here in front of me, a vulnerable look in his eyes for the first time ever, I can’t help but wonder if this afternoon was an anomaly or a memory of a friendship so unimaginable that I’ve somehow managed to forget it.
“Hudson…”
“Don’t worry about it,” he tells me, and the softness that’s been here since he showed up this morning is effectively gone. As I watch the Hudson I’ve come to know and despise over the last few days come to the fore, I can’t decide if I’m relieved or sad. Or maybe a little of both…
“So why’d you decide to do laundry tonight, anyway? I thought you and Lover Boy would be cuddled up in his tower.”
“Is that why you stayed away?” I ask as I open up the dryer to check my clothes. Sadly, they’re still very much wet, but I grab a few things I don’t want to overdry and shrink and throw them in my basket before I close the door and flip the timer on again. “Because you wanted to give me some privacy?”
“I stayed away because I had some things I needed to do. But you dodged the question, which makes me wonder if there’s an actual reason you’re here doing laundry.” He narrows his eyes at me. “So spill.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You hate doing laundry, so I don’t believe for a minute that it’s nothing.” He snatches my favorite sweatshirt out of the dryer and dangles it just out of my reach. “Spill or you’ll never see this hoodie alive again.”
“It’s nothing,” I tell him a second time. Then screech a little as he balls my damp hoodie up and prepares to make a three-pointer into the trash can.
“Last chance, Grace.”
“Okay, fine. I’m nervous.”
“Nervous?” He looks confused as he lowers the hoodie. “About what?”
“We’re all supposed to meet tomorrow morning on the practice field and start preparing for Ludares. I’m supposed to try to fly for the first time, and I have no idea how that’s going to work. Or even if I’ll be able to turn into a gargoyle. Everyone else will be doing their thing, and I’m either going to be a useless human or an even more useless statue.”
Hudson laughs. He actually laughs, and I have the sudden urge to punch him.
“Thanks,” I tell him with the nastiest glare I can muster. “You pushed me to tell you, and now you’re laughing at me. You suck.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Grace,” he manages to say between laughs. “I’m… Yeah, I can’t even lie with a straight face. I’m totally laughing at you.”
“You know, this may be funny to you, but if we don’t do well as a team, we don’t get the bloodstone. If we don’t get the bloodstone, we don’t find a way to free you and you’re stuck inside me forever until, you know, we both die. So I have no clue why you’re so amused.”
“I’m amused,” he answers with a shake of his head, “because you’re going to do fine.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do know it, and you would, too, if you would just get out of your head for a minute and let yourself breathe.”
“I’m trying to get out of my damn head!” I fire back. “So sorry that I’m struggling with it, but it’s kind of hard to do with you in here demanding my attention all the time! It’s even harder to do when I can’t remember anything. I don’t know what I can do, so how can I have any faith in myself? How can I ‘breathe’？”
“Yeah, well, I know what you can do. I’m the one who was trapped with Gargoyle Grace for more than a hundred days, and I’m the one who remembers every damn minute of it. So listen to me, stop worrying, and just trust your instincts. You’re going to do great.”