Page 35 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“Lucky. We’re setting off soon, I want to eat as much weird breakfast as possible before we do.”

Breakfast was indeed quite weird. Parsnip pottage, painfully tart damson jam, bread dotted with apricots (nice, but verysticky) and huge stacks of cold cuts with the mold conspicuously cut off. Luckily there was no formal table, and Bridget was able to load a plate with various shapes and then eat in her room, listening to Neil review each item of food as he encountered it.

Then they launched right into the hubbub of packing up, the fast flow of a household in motion. Bridget had barely had time to unpack her trunk, and now they were on the move again. She didn’t mind. They’d spent such long weeks on the road traveling between tourneys, it was second nature to her now to have her boots ready by her bed and one foot already out of the door.

Bridget pulled on her cloak as she walked down toward the courtyard, and her fingers brushed against a letter tucked into the inner pocket. It had arrived just before her departure from Camelot, and she’d glanced at it once before shoving it hurriedly out of sight. She took it out again now, with inexplicable trepidation.

My dear Bridget,

Your mother and I are so glad to hear from you—and to learn that you are a knight of the round table has brought us immense joy. This is what you have worked for all your life, ??. We never doubted for a second that you would be great. From where I write I can see the practice yard, and I cannot help but think of all the hours you spent there when you were small, the way you woke up each day determined to be better. It was all leading to this.

Be safe, work hard. ?????????????????????????????????????????.*

With love,

Your mother and father

*Where there is effort, there is success.

It was a nice letter. Good, even. She was lucky to have parents who weren’t ashamed that their only daughter spent her life parading around the countryside in armor, hitting men with sticks. That they wereproud,and often told her so. Even if it hadn’t been the life they had once imagined for her. Even if her mother had looked at her with such unbearable sadness when she’d returned home last summer—mere weeks after the uprising, when Bridget could still feel the bloodied sword Excalibur gripped tight in her hand—that it had nearly broken her.

No part of what they’d written should have made Bridget’s heart feel like it was being squeezed to jam between two millstones.

She hadn’t told them about all the tourneys that had ended in quiet disaster, the missteps and withdrawals—the sudden lack of certainty that had come from nowhere, made no rational sense, and therefore seemed to have no obvious cure. What were you supposed to do when all the things that had been second nature to you before suddenly felt like a language you didn’t speak?

Her parents couldn’t know. If they were willing to be proud of her, it was her job to make them proud. If not at the tilting grounds, then here, as part of this new order. Anything less would be a disservice to all involved.

In the courtyard, there was a miasma of hangover in the air. Bridget had been far too shaken and on guard to drink more than a cup or so of wine, and had gone to bed as soon as Gwen had, although they had parted chastely in the hallway.

“You look very fresh of face,” Adah said, squinting in the thin morning sunlight. “Stop it.”

“I wasn’t singing drinking songs with Sidney Fitzgilbert long into the night.”

“Yeah. Wise. He’s good fun, until he gets too drunk and starts talking about his fiancée. I get it, she’s got perfect bosoms, she speaks three languages, whatever. I found a girl anyway.”

Bridget just looked at her.

“Highborn, discreet, I’m not stupid. One of the Fentman… cousins, I think. She asked if I could pick her up and carry her.”

“How could she have possibly guessed,” Bridget said dryly. “Your signature move.”

“I mean, I did sort of imply that I could do it. A lot.” Adah smiled at the memory, then winced. “I don’t know if I’m in the best frame of mind to hunt the Questing Beast today. You think it’s real? Head of a snake? Body of a leopard?”

“Legs of a snail,” Bridget added. “Face of an angel.”

Adah put one foot in her horse’s stirrup and then changed her mind and swung it back down, needing another moment to gather herself. “You are such a boring little nonbeliever.”

Bridget had beliefs. They were just based on this earthly plane. Her mother traded in blessings and offerings, amulets and talismans; her father mostly in practicality and common sense, things he could see with his eyes. She’d always been more her father’s daughter.

“Thought you were too. You give Elaine enough stick.”

“Yeah, but this isfun. I need you to lock in, because I drank a magic lake’s worth of wine last night, and the idea of hunting down a weird fucking collage animal is the only thing getting me on this horse.”

“You’re still not on the horse.”

Adah put her foot back up, then swayed slightly. “I’m working on it.”

They rode side by side once the party finally set off, in a companiable silence interrupted by brief observations. Adahpointed out some cows, a crumbling ruin of a manor house, and a weird-shaped tree. Bridget pointed out that Adah hadn’t secured her bags and was about to lose half her road supplies. One of the things Bridget liked about Adah was that she never expected more from Bridget than Bridget wanted to give.