Chapter 14: Apparently We're Both Into Women (A Perfect Match)
The hall had gone quiet in the way an audience goes quiet the instant someone drops a live porcupine onstage. Okay, that was unrealistic. It was more like the type of quietness that happens when someone farts on stage.
My father had just announced, in a voice that trembled like a broken harp string, that I was into females.
I turned to my father, trying to see where the other head he had suddenly grown was, then turned to the demon king — Zorathys. Then back to my father again... in that order, three more times.
"What did you just say?" Zorathys asked my father calmly.
My father blinked, like there was something in his eyes. He swallowed nervously. He spared me a gaze, then turned to Zorathys, his knees still on the floor.
"I said... my... you can't marry my daughter. She's gay," he said with a nod as if trying to convince himself of what he had just said. "Yes, she's into females."
A fresh chorus of gasps ensued. The attendees gasped loudly and I gasped in shock too. Someone's pastry fell from their hands.
Zorathys tilted his head; his eyes met mine, then moved from me to my father. In a calm voice that suggested this whole conversation was mildly boring, he said, "Repeat that."
My father looked like someone who was suffering from a disorder that caused him to sweat excessively. It seemed like his whole body was drenched in water.
"My... my daughter. You see... she..." He swallowed. "She's gay. She can't marry you."
I turned to my father. Did he really think Zorathys would believe what he had just said? And why the hell was he stammering? His stammering only gave him away. There was no way anyone would believe him, especially not the man sitting on his throne.
But then I saw the expression on Zorathys's face and paused. Was this actually working? It couldn't be right. There was no way my father had convinced this demon king that I was gay, right?
Seeing Zorathys's expression, I stood straighter, nodding along with my father's words. After all, I just had to convince this man that I wasn't into him.
Zorathys watched me with a curious, slow smile — the kind that suggested he liked both chaos and the person creating it. He rose from the throne with a deliberate slowness that made the floor sound like it was inhaling. He walked down the dais with the sort of graceful menace used by people who owned storms and had the patience to wait for tears to fall. The crown of conversation shifted entirely toward him; even the chandeliers seemed to lean closer.
He stopped at the base of the dais, directly in front of me. The air around him smelled faintly of brimstone and expensive cologne — if brimstone had a proper perfume label. He tilted his head to the side and looked at me with all the interest of someone cataloguing a new and excellent specimen.
"What good taste you have," he drawled. "It seems there's a reason why we are a perfect match after all. I'm into women too."
What the... what in my father's stomach was going on right now? This wasn't what I had expected. A few minutes earlier he had seemed ready to insist I never marry, and now this? What was he saying?
"What?" I asked.
He smiled. "I knew there was a reason why we belonged with each other. You have impeccable taste after all."
I blinked, trying to process both the sentence and the way his voice made the ground underfoot hum.
"I beg your pardon," I said, still rooted in shock.
"Hmm," he said with a tilt of his head. "It seems you have an issue comprehending words. I just praised you for having impeccable taste."
I chuckled. "This is a dream," I muttered to myself. "It's all a dream."
"It's not a dream. I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to it being a dream, but this is real life. I prefer the real thing more," Zorathys said, snapping me out of that little moment where I was trying to convince myself this whole situation wasn't real.
"This makes us highly compatible," he added.
The little bird in my chest that knew how to express alarm did a perfectly choreographed flip. My brain, however, attempted logic. If I — fictionally gay — liked women, how did him also liking women make us compatible? That would be like saying that just because we both liked coffee, even if we preferred it prepared differently, meant we had the same taste.
"I..." I began. "That doesn't... both of us being into women doesn't mean we have the same taste, neither does it make us compatible. It's rather the opposite. I'm into women, you are into women, which means we are not into each other."
Zorathys cocked his head, as if my logic were a particularly entertaining riddle. "Why not?" he asked.
"Because I'm into women." I turned and pointed at a woman nearby. "I'm into her gender and you are into her gender; that doesn't mean we are into each other."
"But we can share," he told me.
I had no idea if this—fucking—demon king was playing a joke on me or if he was serious.
"I don't like sharing," I told him.
He nodded. "Me neither."
I stared at him with my mouth agape. "Then why did you suggest it?"
He shrugged.
Argh!
"Do you have any more complaints or another reason to tell the world that we do not belong to each other even if we do?" he asked.
I released a sigh. "We are not even into the same gender."
"I thought we'd moved past that," he said in mock shock.
"How did we move past it? You keep pushing the fact that we belong with each other..."
"And that's because we do," he said with a lazy smile, then turned to my father. "Isn't that right, Glitterbelly?"
My father's eyes bulged in a way previously reserved for tax inspectors and very loud thunderstorms. He began to babble, because that is what small men do when faced with cosmic calamities—and probably a demon who's also an excellent matchmaker.
"Yes... yes, of course," he spluttered. "You suit each other very well. I mean, you both like the same gender after all. You like women; she likes women; it's a match made in the demon realm. I know she's my daughter and I said she could get married to you before, but now that you say it it's a good idea. She basically belongs with you..."
"Calm yourself, Glitterbelly," Zorathys said with a chuckle.
I could not believe my eyes or my ears. This was the same man who, moments before, had been sweating like a fountain and insisting I not be married. How was it that now he was spewing nonsense about how Zorathys and I were perfect together?
Zorathys stepped closer. So close that I could see the tiny flecks of color in his irises and wonder, again, if he was real or an elaborate figment of some very committed fantasy author. He reached out with one long, graceful hand and took mine as if it were the most natural thing in the world to hold.
The room paused, breath collectively held. My pulse decided to invent new patterns.
He lowered my hand and planted a kiss upon it — an old-fashioned, courtly kiss, the kind that makes you feel as though you have been gently categorized in a ledger of fate. "My bride," he said, voice dipping to a softer register that made everyone's spines tingle. "Even your father agrees we are a perfect match after all."
Oh, I'm going to kill my father with my bare hands when I get the opportunity. I swear it.