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Jester found Caleb sat at the bar, nose in a tankard. He lowered it immediately, however, upon seeing her.
“Oh, Jester,” he said, smiling without hesitation. “We did it.”
In that moment, Jester didn’t mind drink.
“We did it!” she said, excitement uncontainable. “We totally did it! And look at your face! I’ve never seen you like this, it’s crazy.”
“It is crazy.”
His smile relaxed. The twinkle in his eye did not fade, but his lips were pursed in what appeared to be thought.
“Good crazy,” she said quickly. “Like the best kind of crazy.”
No features budged. He was stone again, with only the eyes to serve as a reminder of his brief foray into happiness. Drink slowed Caleb, she knew from experience.
“Jester,” he said again, slow, as though he’d drunk another ten tankards in the past ten seconds. “I did not like you much when we first met.”
“But you like me now?”
“Oh, ja. I like you a lot. You are my favourite.”
“Your favourite what?”
He fixed her with that same tired gaze he so often wore when she teased him at the wrong time. She wasn’t teasing, though.
“Caleb, what?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
“You. I am talking about you.”
“And how I’m your favourite?”
“Ja.”
“Except for Nott, though? And Beau. And-” she trailed off as his stare intensified. “Do you have me confused with someone else?”
“You are Jester Lavorre.”
“I am.”
“You are blue. You are, uh, what was it? Oh! You are very sweet. You like pastries and dicks. You like to tease me. You like to help people. You like milk.” She laughed. “You are funny. You are loud. You are from Nicodranas.”
She stuck her tongue between her teeth and said, “Wow, Caleb, you really know every inch of my soul huh?”
“You like to tease me.”
“You said that one already.”
“It’s doubly as true as the others. And sometimes I think you tease me double the amount you tease anyone else.”
“I do?”
“Ja.”
Her cheeks burned, but she forced the confession, “Maybe that’s because you’re my favourite too.”
“Oh, that’s not true,” he scoffed, turning back to his tankard.
He sang a little tune beneath his breath, something in Zemnian, and Jester had to wonder if he had forgotten her. The last time he’d been this out of it, he’d let her take him onto the dance floor. It was a memory that squeezed her heart. A kind of sublime pain that she refused to analyse for fear of getting results.
“I don’t mind though,” he said. It startled her a little. She’d thought him lost to her for the remainder of the evening. “You can feel whatever you feel, you know? It doesn’t change what I feel.”
Sublime.
“Caleb,” she said softly, “Let’s get you to bed okay?”
His face fell.
“You’re right,” he said. “But I can find it myself. You deserve to enjoy the party!”
He gestured wildly to the room at large, so crammed with celebration and strangers that his drunken state went largely unnoticed. Looking unsteady on his feet, he got up.
“Promise me you won’t pass out in a gutter?” she asked.
He met her eye directly and a chill shot through her. She didn’t usually feel the cold.
Voice low and dripping with something intangible, he said, “I promise.”
For a stupid, swaying moment she thought he might kiss her. But then he stumbled past and through and up. Until he was out of sight, but undoubtedly on his way to the bedrooms rather than the stables.
“Hey,” she called out to the bartender, hating how affected she sounded, “Do you have anything with, like, a shit load of chocolate in it?”