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Nathalie laughed.
She rarely did that, Gabriel mused, and seldom if ever had he seen her laugh this hard. Doubled over in silent convulsions of pure glee, and he grumbled, because she was laughing at him .
They had taken a weekend retreat to escape the city, but the city still seemed to find them even on this late-evening walk through some sleepy neighborhood bedecked with smatterings of Halloween festivity. A car came screaming around the corner at way over the residential speed limit and Nathalie had yelped and shoved him into someone’s front yard to avoid being hit.
Except Gabriel had put his foot in the ditch, and Nathalie had not. Which was why she was standing, and he was on his rear in the crunchy itchiness of a leaf pile, dirt on his slacks and papery crumbles in his hair.
She was laughing, and he was annoyed. He sat up and patted his head, trying to find all the errant leaves. To be fair, he looked unusually silly. Perhaps it was this uncommon state of vulnerability that caused him to start noticing new things when he looked back into her face.
She was wearing a scarf. Made of warm red wool, it had been a gift he had given her last Christmas without much thought, and he had never before considered the fact that it was the only one she ever wore. It echoed the dyed streak in her hair and the flaming crowns of the trees, intent as they were in putting on one last show before winter stripped them bare. Red and red and red. Her smile was as bright as the crisp, cool air flooding his nostrils, tasting of the sweet scent of dying leaves.
He thought she looked…oh.
Oh.
She wiped her eyes and extended a hand to him, lips twitching with the effort of trying to force her face neutral, though the damage had already been done. His pride smarted, but it was soothed with a newfound peace.
“I’m sorry. Are you, ha, quite all right?”
He took it. “Better than I was before, I think.”