Chapter Twenty-Four - An Emmental of Emotion

INSTEAD OF LEADING me to their favorite park, Roq stops at a bench across from a bar and sits. He doesn't even look back at me, just keeps watching the people huddled outside the dark bar smoking. One raises his head in my direction, reminding me I'm only wearing my dress and lasagna. I fall to the bench next to Roq and do my best to hide in the shadows.

"So…" His usually commanding voice is soft and scratchy like he sucked down all the smoke across the street. He's gripping the bench's edge so tightly veins throb on the back of his hands. I try to slide farther away from him without looking like I am.

"Cam explained everything," I say to try to escape.

Roq pivots in his seat, an eyebrow lifted. "Did he now?" The question is so deadpan I can't tell if he wants an answer, so I give him one anyway.

"Yes. He explained that you can, um, bottle up your, uh, you know. Stuff."

"My stuff?"

"The…" I gesture to his crotch stained with dried semen without thinking. "No. Not that. Stress. You bottle up stress and have to release it. Or else."

He drops his elbows to his thighs and bends over, hiding his face. "Bear, I swear to high heaven…" Silence falls, the kind that makes me want to unzip my skin and run fleeing into the night. My ass is half off of the bench by the time he speaks again. "Last call."

Lights flicker across the street and the bar door swings open. People wander out blinking into the darkness with either happy or annoyed confusion. "Dude, where do we go now?" one asks.

"Anywhere but here," the bouncer instructs before guiding the drunks down the street.

"I came here nearly every night," Roq says solemnly. "While the curds formed, I'd sit on this bench watching them. Drunks—happy, or sad, or just alive. All of them stumbling into the dark like a newborn colt."

One of them crosses the street toward us, eyes me up, then turns to piss against the wall. Shielding my face with my hand, I try to stare at only Roq. "Why?"

He leans back but keeps running his palms up and down his thighs. "I suppose to be near the most human experience I can when the rest of the world is asleep. To not feel like I'm up there floating in the stars, adrift and alone." Roq curls his fingers towards the mostly black sky, the stars blotted out by light pollution. "There used to be more."

Dropping his hand, he shifts in his seat. "I've never told the others about this. We all have our little oases in the city night desert."

"Cheddy's park," I say.

"A wide open field perfect for jousting. There used to be a little gallery right there on the corner. Brie would carry a torch and stare at the paintings for a few hours."

Now it was a check into cash place. How depressing. "What about Cam?"

"Who do you think I'd be watching for in that bar?" Roq says. "It is a wonder that man has survived this long."

"You care for him. Oh, shit." I slam my hand over my mouth like that will suck back in the words that were supposed to stay in my head. Roq doesn't explode on me, but his lips tighten and he clenches his nails into his thighs.

"I care for all of them. We're all we have in this world, which can be a hard fact to accept. Is it love or a simple case of familiarity?" Roq stares at me, his face softened from his usual granite. "About Brie's paintings…?"

"I just thought he might like it. I know you need him for cheese making. If it's a distraction I could not get so many canvases next—"

Roq lifts a hand to halt my verbal explosion. "They're wonderful. It was a kindness you did for him."

"Well, I…I wanted to be…helpful. If I could bring Cheddy a horse or Cam a bawdy inn, I would. I said that out loud again. Damn it."

The strangest thing happens. Roq, the terrifying, stoic man-fridge, laughs.

"What about you?" My question kills his laughter dead. "What would you want?"

He lifts his head to stare past the horizon. "The sun."

"That's, um, not going to fit in my tote bag." I wince as my dumbstruck words fall out.

Roq extends his arms. "I can't remember what it's like. For its heat to bake my skin and warm my cheeks as I lay by the stream. For the light to sparkle on the tumbling waters like brilliant gems. To count the clouds passing overhead on a blue sky wider than the world itself. To stand in gold instead of black."

"You're like vampires," I say the second it hits me. Roq raises his eyebrow at me. "Cheese vampires. Which isn't vampires who eat cheese, just that you can't go in the sun. Would cheese vampires eat pizza? I guess the garlic might be a problem."

He laughs and shakes his head. "You can't control it, can you?"

"I…I talk when I'm nervous. But I'm not saying I'm nervous. Okay, maybe a bit. I'll stop. Right now. No more. Eek."

"Your uncle was like that. The first time we shifted in front of his eyes, he spoke nonstop for a half hour."

There's still anger in his voice while talking about my great uncle, but also sadness. All of my memories of Mateo are tinged with pink sprinkles and glitter glue. I'm sure he was a complicated man, but at five all I got to see was a jolly old elf who made me happier than I had any right to be.

"You didn't need to bring me out here." I stare at my feet pointed to face each other. "I know you hate me."

"I—"

"It's okay. It won't hurt the deal we made. Three months, I'll get you all you need, sell the cheese, and try to stay out of your way. All their ways."

Did I really think I'd be spending three months in a sex and cheese-filled paradise? I'm an idiot. Things like that don't happen to me. Three hot, very different men, all laser-focused on giving me sneezing orgasms? Yeah right, Violette. Wake up.

"Miss Reely."

I wince at him using my last name.

Roq's voice cracks like a burning log, "I don't hate you."

What?

He's being polite. Polite people don't say they hate you while they go on hating everything about you.

He tosses his head back and sighs so deeply his Adam's apple bobs under his coat collar. Hey, where'd he get that coat from? "I've been less than kind to you, I see."

"No, it's…it's okay."

"It's no wonder you took to those three and gave me a wide berth."

"I thought that you wanted your space. You had your work to do. And I didn't want to interfere."

Roq drops his hand to the bench right beside mine. He funnels air in like he's about to breathe fire, then closes his eyes. "And I kept waiting for you to betray us."

Why?

"Just as your uncle had."

My brain does a brake screech and slams into a wall. "Uncle Mateo? What did he…? How could he betray you?"

Roq's demeanor shifts. He looks about to leap to his feet and storm back into the cellar. Then the dark streetlamp flickers and a yellow beam descends on us. "We've had many patrons over the years."

"Patrons? Oh, you mean Cam's mistresses."

Roq stares dead ahead with an exhausted look. "Yes. People with whom we made the same deal as we did with Mateo. In exchange for supplies, room and board, protection, we would create cheese for them. Each one in time learned of our weakness and would exploit it. Mateo was the first one I told of my own volition."

"Your weakness? It's not garlic, is it? Oh no, I put some in the lasagna!"

He chuckles at my panic and shakes his head. "No. It's not a food." Roq glances over to me and his voice softens. "Brie mentioned that you were under the impression we'd been trapped in that cellar for three months."

"I assume you found some way out or else you'd starve," I say.

"What if I told you it was twenty years?"

"That's not possible," I say to the man who turns into cheese.

"We can enter a dormant state, a hibernation if you will, where we remain in cheese form. Un-aging and unaware of the world around us."

"How?" I sputter. His open eyes narrow to slits and he glares at me. "Sorry, you don't have to tell me. Unless it involves garlic, then I'll… You know what, I'll just throw the whole head away to be sure."

Roq's death stare lightens and he smiles ever so slightly. "Mateo was good on his word. Every sunset we'd rise to greet another night of work. And every day we'd slumber soundly knowing no one would eat us. For thirty-odd years we worked in tangent with the other, making his store a coveted cheese destination."

"What happened?" falls from my lips. "I mean, if you want to tell me."

"I do," Roq assures me. A flutter dances against my hand. I glance down in shock to find he's brushing his pinkie finger over my skin. "Your uncle came to me with a problem. A request. He said that he'd have a visitor soon. Someone staying in the shop, someone who he didn't want to stumble upon our nightly antics by mistake. He asked if we would slumber for three months and awaken once she left."

Three months? Does he mean…? "Me?" I squeak out.

Roq bobs his head. Two more fingers swoop over the back of my hand. "I trusted him to honor his deal. That early May morning we returned to our…usual spot. Dawn came, trapping us in our cheese form. When we woke it was to find you in a broken down, dusty shop."

"That's….quite the mind fuck," I whisper.

"I don't know what happened that summer…?" He takes my hand in his and stares into my eyes with a question.

"I'm sorry. I don't know. I was so young."

He nods as if he didn't expect me to answer. "My trust is hard-earned and easily broken. But I never thought Mateo would shatter it like this."

"I can't believe he would either. We…we lost touch years ago. My mother, she said it wasn't proper for a young lady to spend her time in a cheese shop with an old man. I stopped going when I turned nine."

Roq snorts and closes his eyes. "It's not your fault. If anything, you freed us when he could not, he would not. I am sorry for being so standoffish. I will work on that."

"I mean don't lose all of that cold, stoic stuff. It's scary but also hot." I smirk at the thought, then Roq stares at me with a look that drops my heart into my panties. "Did I say that too?"

He answers with a chortle and stands. "We should return. Dawn will be here soon, and the whole place needs cleaning."

I follow him. Without the fear that he might go nuclear on me, I grow sickeningly aware of the eggplant congealing on my tits. "I should probably wash up. This is gonna smell."

"I forgot to try it," Roq says. He picks a piece of eggplant right up off of my cleavage and bites down. "Mmm, you're a much better cook than your uncle."

I can't stop the stupid burn riding up my arms and across my eggplant-smeared breasts. Roq licks off his fingers, then he dangles his hand in front of me. Holding my breath, I take it.

"Would you mind not sharing any of this with the others? I never told them about the deal I made with Mateo, thinking it'd be easier to explain after we woke."

You're asking the world's worst liar to hide something from three men. "Sure." I nod. Don't fuck this up, Vi.

"If I may escort you to your apartment." Roq leads with his head, and I follow until we're both trailing down the sidewalk toward the shop. In the distance, I spot two of the drunks with their faces plastered to the glass ogling the cheese.

"Tomorrow night." Roq raises his head and smiles. Yeah, okay, warm and cuddly works for him too. "Why don't you join us in the cellar?"

"Really?"

"The curd requires cutting, molding, and pressing."

"Yes! I'll…I'd love to."

Roq releases my hand and bows dramatically. "Until the morrow, Miss Violette," he says before slipping back into the store. Burning so hot I've got to be recooking the lasagna, I rush up the ladder and lock the apartment door.

"Holy shit, holy shit. Oh my god, I can't believe—!"

My phone rings, deflating me in an instant. "Hi, Mom," I mumble and twist the lock four more times.