I blinked at him. “Um.”
“Forget it! I don’t know why I asked that.” His voice was muffled. “I don’t care about stuff like that—”
“It’s pretty great, if I’m being honest.”
“It is?” he asked, unfurling himself, eyes wide. He moved closer until I could feel his breath on my arms. “Like, okay. Just… what’s great about it? You should tell me. Not that I care about that at all. Or anything.”
I tried to keep the smile from my face. I didn’t know how well I succeeded. It would be just my luck that my fourteen-year-old emo snake dragon was also a closet romantic. It seemed par for the course. Yeah, he fit. Somehow, he fit. “Well. I guess it’s… it’s the moment, you know, when you wake up first in the morning. You open your eyes and your thoughts are muddled. You’re still partly asleep and you’re warm and don’t want to move, but you know you have to get up anyway. So you stretch and it feels good, but your arm hits something next to you and you look over and… there he is. Still asleep. And it’s the first clear thought you have, and you think, Hello. Hello there. Hi. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re next to me. And then for some reason, he must feel you watching him, because he wakes up too, you know? And he’s blinking and looks all soft and beautiful and then he sees you and he smiles. Like all it takes for him to be the happiest he’s ever been is to see you there. Next to him. That’s… that’s what’s so great about it. That’s what it feels like.”
Zero was quiet for a long time. I let us sit there, next to his trees, lost in our thoughts. Me thinking that that’s something Vadoma could never understand. The love I had for Ryan. She could never know what it meant to me. What he meant to me. I felt sorry for Ruv, sure. But I would never give up something I’d worked so hard for. Vadoma wouldn’t win. Not in that respect.
Then Zero sighed and sounded just like any other fourteen-year-old I’d ever known. It was really rather startling. “That’s so cute,” he squealed. “Oh my gods, I want that. That’s what I want. Like, forever.”
I laughed. “What about your plants? The trees?”
“I can do both! I could. I know I could. You gotta believe me!” But then, amazingly, his eyes began to fill with tears. “But—but….”
“Oh no,” I groaned. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I am absolutely terrible when other people cry. I get so damn awkward that—”
“But no one will ever love me!” he wailed, throwing his head back and twisting his massive body until he lay on his back. “I’m going to be alone forever!”
“Oh,” I said. “Noooo. Noooo, of course not.” I leaned forward and patted the side of his head clumsily. “There, there. Oh, you. You’re just… swell.”
“Swell? I’m swell? I don’t want to be swell! I want to be in love!”
“O… kay. Uh. It’ll happen. When it happens? To you. It’s like, um. Your plants here. They. Grow. Like love does?”
“Wow! Thank you so much for the sound advice! Gosh, what would I have done without you!”
“Oh my gods.”
“Not that it matters, anyway,” he grumbled. “S’not like anything is gonna happen.”
“Oh. Come on, you. You got this. Why would you say that?”
“Have you seen me? I scare everyone.”
“Oh,” I said. “Noooo. Of course not. That’s not—noooo.”
He hissed at me, hood unfurling partially, spikes rattling.
I squeaked, “Kill it with fire!” Then, “I mean, wow. You’re—if only I was, like, seven years younger. And single. And a dragon. And into that.”
“See! I scare everyone!”
I tried to be as stern as possible. “You’re a little young for that, don’t you think?”
“No! No, I am fourteen years old. I know what I want!”
“I don’t think so, Zero. I’m pretty sure you’re not thinking very clearly about this.”
“I am thinking clearly! You just don’t understand what it’s like to be my age!”
“Uh, I was your age once.”
“Yeah, when the giant yaks roamed the earth. That was like, forever ago. You don’t get what it’s like to be a young person. My feelings are real and valid and everything I say comes from my life experience.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Life experience. Okay. Because you have so much of that.”