Page 35 of The Diamond in the Rough

Raj took another sip of his water. “What kind?” he asked. “Old-school, Asimov andDune, or like Le Guin and Okorafor?”

I grinned at him. “All of those,” I replied, realizing that he had to be familiar with the genre to have dropped that particular set of names. “N.K. Jemisin, andEnder’s Game, and Butler, andIQ84.”

“IQ84?” he asked, which led me to launch into anexplanation of Murikami’s novel, its alternate timelines and realities, and how important the moon was to the whole thing.

“Sounds interesting,” came the response. “I’ll have to pick up a copy.”

“I could lend you mine,” I offered, feeling my cheeks heat. “If you want.” That particular book I actually owned in hard copy.

He smiled at me, not his professional smile, but one that made his gold-brown eyes seem to glimmer. “I’d like that,” he replied, the timbre of his voice shifting a little. “Thanks.”

It wasn’t until after I’d made the offer that I realized it would come back to me with someone else’s thoughts on it—but for some reason that bothered me a lot less than I’d have expected. Maybe because I was starting to feel comfortable with Raj. A little bit, anyway.

Feeling my cheeks flush again, I smiled back, then studied my menu. I was hungry, and the prospect of something complicated—especially fried chicken—was appealing. That meant I had two options, and had to decide whether I wanted ham and blue cheese or honey butter and pickles with it.

“Do you eat bacon?” Raj asked, and I looked up.

“Yes. Why?”

“Because I want loaded cheese fries, and that way you’ll share them with me.”

“You don’t have to share fries with me,” I said, although now my mouth was watering. “You can just get them with your sandwich.”

“Yeah, but I like their chips, too,” he replied. “And I want more fries than that.”

I frowned at him. “Then why would you want me to eat them?” I asked.

That same smile, warm and mysterious, played around his lips. I found myself staring at it, then flushed again, looking back down at the blocky text of the menu.

“I’ll just get a second order if we eat them all and I want more,” he replied. “But I feel better about getting them if you share with me.”

I looked back up at him. “Why?”

Dark eyebrows rose. “Because American society has conditioned us to feel like slovenly gluttons for eating more than what is deemed normal or appropriate.”

I felt my mouth drop open a little.

He grinned at me, showing very white teeth that looked sharper than they were supposed to be—or, at least, sharper than mine. I supposed that if you were a shifter, you were probably supposed to have sharp teeth. “Meals are for sharing,” he said, sounding amused.

I thought about this for a moment. “But we don’t do that,” I protested. “Everybody gets their own sandwich.”

He shrugged. “We shared pizza yesterday,” he pointed out. “And when you eat with your family at home, everyone shares the same dishes.”

I thought about this. We had shared pizza yesterday, but it had clearly been delineated by who could eat what. I had no idea how families ate. “I—don’t really have a family,” I admitted.

Raj tilted his head to one side. “You must have, growing up though?” It was clearly a question.

Did he not remember where I’d come from? “I ‘grew up,’ if you can call it that, at Tranquil Brook,” I reminded him.

His brow furrowed. “How old were you, when… when you were admitted?”

“Six.”

His dark skin shaded a little toward grey. “Shit,” he breathed.

I fiddled with the corner of the napkin-wrapped silverware. “Hart didn’t tell you?” I asked, not sure what else to say.

“No,” came the response. “He didn’t tell me much of anything other than the fact that you were a psychic who had been through hell.” He grimaced. “I suppose that qualifies.”