After morning regret wasn’t quite the right word... after morning anxiety maybe? After morning concerns?

He’d been a bit overwhelmed, which was understandable. She had been too. But he’d also been very quiet, just holding tightly onto her and letting her stroke his hair without talking for close to an hour before she’d finally made them get up so they could both get some sleep. Olivia had asked him a few questions, but mostly he’d seemed to just want to cuddle up to her and think. So she’d let him. She did kind of wonder if he was going to show up to class tomorrow.

This morning he’d been thoughtful but subdued. He’d taken her to the shop and then to the car rental place, but he hadn’t tried to press for more from her like he often did. Although he’d wanted to, she could tell, but this time there had been no need to quell him. He’d held himself back.

“Morning Olivia,” said Michael as she stepped into Marquis’ dining room. He was sitting at one of the booths on his laptop. Olivia raised her eyebrows at him.

“Don’t you have an office?” she asked, somewhat amused.

“Yeah, but the light is better out here.”

Well that was true enough. The large windows at the front of Marquis were one way glass, which meant as long as both the restaurant and the outside were bright, they let in a lot more light than the rather small windows in the offices upstairs. Especially in the morning, since their offices faced the west.

She still preferred to be in her office though. She needed quiet and her own space to think. Michael seemed to thrive on having noise all around him that he had to tune out.

“Anything going on I should know about?” she asked.

“Just looking over Lexie’s plans for the New Year’s Eve decorations,” he said with a grin. Glancing up at her, he cocked his head to the side. “Want to come look?”

“I looked at them yesterday,” she said, smiling, although truthfully she hadn’t looked very hard. Lexie liked to decorate and she was good at it. She wasn’t going to do anything crazy or that didn’t fit in with the club’s general feel. Olivia trusted her.

This week Lexie was going to be working on getting the Christmas decorations for Stronghold up, something Olivia was happy to be excused from helping with this year since she’d be spending most of her time at Marquis. She liked looking at decorations, but she didn’t particularly enjoy being the one to do the decorating. Plus, there were plenty of subbies willing to help; even more than there had been last year with all the membership growth the club had gone through.

“They look good,” he said almost absentmindedly, his attention back on his computer screen.