"Oh, ancient," Raff told her; one corner of his mouth twisted upward in a crooked smile. "And you aren't even married or hauling around a couple'a squallin' brats? Practically a spinster, aren't you?"
It was funny because it was true, or it would've been back when Raff was nearly twenty-one himself. Of course, when he was twenty-one and unmarried, no one had thought anything of it. There were those double standards for you. Hadn't seemed like there was anything wrong with them back then of course, but now it was all completely ridiculous, wasn't it? Thinking that someone was all used up at twenty-one when he barely even felt like an adult at a hundred and eight.
Actually, it was equally possible that Claire, at twenty, was more grown up than Raff would be no matter how many centuries he had on him. Sure, she was about to tip herself over a balcony, but he couldn't claim any better than her on that one. He'd actually fallen off one of the bloody things before.
He hadn't expected her to be funny, when he'd expected her to be anything at all. Maybe she wasn't trying to be funny; most drunk people weren't, as far as Raff's experience went. It was all awfully endearing though, wasn't it, the try at being something like composed when he'd come up on her mourning the cherry she'd lost to the street below.