16
Rue
Dryas moves his chair closer to mine, bringing his crackling persona to rest inches away from me. It’s easy to be sucked into the collapsed star that is his aura; I experience him the way people experience gravity, an inexorable and unavoidable pull toward his presence. He sucks all of the air and energy out of whatever room he is in so that when he’s this close I can’t possibly pay attention to anything else.
He looks down at me, a kind of calculation happening within his chartreuse gaze. Feeling trapped in his gaze, I look down at my hands in my lap. I wonder what he’s trying to quantify, and how I measure up to whatever it is. That’s a character flaw, I know, but I always need to know where I stand with other people.
I feel it, especially whenever I look at Dryas.
The waiter
