Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

Her fault, he told himself as he sat across from her in her lawyer’s
conference room, watching as he pulled the chair out for her. She thanked
him. Her dress was blue. It wasn’t the same dress, of course, but it could’ve
been. It wasn’t the same dress, and they weren’t the same people they’d been
on that second or third date when he spilled wine on his shirt and fed her bits
of pricey crab cake with his fork.
And now, in a tea shop so far from everything he’d known, he felt a great
wave of sadness for all that he’d had, and all that he’d lost. A chair. It was
just a chair, and yet he couldn’t even do that right. It was no surprise he’d
failed Naomi.
“Would you look at that,” he heard Nelson say quietly.
He opened his eyes.
He was holding the chair in his hands. He could feel the grain of the wood
against his fingers. He was so surprised, he dropped it. It clattered against
the floor but didn’t fall over. He looked at Nelson with wide eyes. “I did it!”
Nelson grinned, flashing his remaining teeth. “See? Just needed a little
patience. Try again.”
He did.
Only this time, when he reached for the chair, there was a strange
crackling the moment before he could grab onto it. The sconces on the walls
flared briefly, and the chair rocketed across the room, smashing into the far
wall. It fell on its side on the floor, one of the legs broken.
Wallace gaped after it. “I … didn’t mean to do that?”
Even Nelson seemed shocked. “What the hell?”
Apollo started barking as the ceiling above them creaked. A moment later,
Hugo and Mei came rushing down the stairs, both of them looking around
wildly. Mei was in shorts and an old shirt, the collar stretched out over her
shoulder, her hair a mess around her face.
Hugo was in a pair of sleep shorts and nothing else. There were miles of
deep brown skin on display, and Wallace found something very interesting to
stare at in the opposite direction that was not a thin chest and thick stomach.
“What happened?” Mei demanded. “Are we under attack? Is someone
trying to break in? I am going to kick so much ass, you don’t even know.”
“Wallace threw a chair,” Nelson said mildly.
Mei and Hugo stared at Wallace.