“What, not evenone kiss?”
Luna sat before the little oval mirror on the wall, brushing out her curls. They were a bit limp after a long day of festivities and all that dancing. She’d have to re-pin them before bed if she wanted any bounce in her hair by morning.
She caught Bryony’s shocked expression in the glass. “Oh, come on, Bryony. You know I’m not the sort of girl who goes around kissing strangers!”
“Strangers? That man spent the whole entire day squiring you around the festival! If he isn’t afriendby now, I don’t knowwhathe is.”
“I don’t go kissing friends either,” Luna added primly. “Anyway, John Ward is little more than an acquaintance.”
“Oooh,John Ward,is he?” Bryony tittered and shook her head. “First name basis, but not even friends? Honestly, Lunaloo, I quite despair of you. Here you were laying such solid groundwork all day and everything!”
Luna lowered her brush and turned to face Bryony, her brows puckered. “Groundwork for what exactly?”
But her roommate merely threw up her hands. “If I have to explainthatto you, you really are hopeless.” She sighed then anddraped herself over her bed. “Oh, I had such high hopes for how this evening would turn out! All that effort, and what do I have to show for it? Damned Bad Apple.”
Luna pinched her lips together and turned back to the mirror. Her stomach felt a little funny, and something in her throat had thickened. She swallowed it back and, after a moment, recovered her voice enough to say, “But you had a nice time today, didn’t you, Bryony?”
“Oh, sure. Saint Jollify’s always a lark.” Her roommate rolled over onto her pillow, draping one shapely arm over her forehead. “Back to real life in the morning, though. Holiday romances were never built to last.” So saying, she reached over, turned out the thaumatic light bulb beside her bed, and buried herself under her blankets.
Leaving Luna to study her own pale face in the mirror by light of nothing more than a humble candle.
Holiday romances . . .
Setting her chin, Luna got to work dampening her hair and rolling it up in sections, which she secured with little bobby-pin Xs. She liked the familiar, methodical nature of the task and tried to let it wholly occupy her brain. Only her brain wasn’t about to be so easily occupied.
It kept sneaking back to . . . moments.
Just little moments. Nothing big, nothing of any significance.
The way Mr. Grimm’s knees felt pressed on either side of hers, as the fete wheel turned and turned.
The warmth of his hand slipping around her waist when her foot wobbled and he stepped in to offer support.
The look he’d given her while seated beside her on the nurse’s cot . . .
But that wasn’t really alook, was it? All right, sure, it was a look, but notlooklook. His sad eyes always did have a haunted quality about them, as though he constantly held atbay simmering depths of feeling. One often got the impression something in him was on the verge of bursting, that he maintained his careful repression only with an effort. But that was just hisway.It didn’tmeananything.
Holiday romances . . .
“It wasn’t a romance,” Luna whispered firmly at her candlelit reflection. “It was barely even a . . . anything.”
Funnel cake on a waistcoat.
Thumbs pressed just under the line of her brassiere.
His palm against hers as she urged,“Quick, Mr. Grimm! Run for it!”
Her lips felt very dry, a little chapped. Luna pressed them together and rolled, making stupid faces in the glass. Holidays were such treacherous things. They took one outside of one’s day-to-day existence, made one see, think, andfeelthings one absolutely wouldn’t dream of seeing, thinking, orfeelingunder ordinary circumstances. And then what? Daylight dawned, real life reasserted itself, and one was left with nothing but uneasy embarrassment as the regular rhythms of necessity reclaimed their rightful place.
Did she have anything to be embarrassed over, though? Anything that would truly make it difficult to look Mr. Grimm in the eye tomorrow morning?
“No.” She whispered the word firmly to the glass. “No, it was just . . . it was all those little . . .touches.”
That was the truth of it. She and her employer didn’ttouchduring regular workdays. Why would they? Yes, of course, there was that time she’d literallyclimbed onto his shouldersbut . . . but . . . but that wasn’t the normal state of things. As a rule, certain boundaries were maintained, and though they were friendly, there was always a barrier of Appropriate Behavior giving shape to their every interaction.
That barrier was dropped today. In the fete wheel. In the Haunted House. On the dance floor. Tiny moments of contact, which deceived one into believing an intimacy existed that really didn’t belong at all. Once Appropriate Behavior was back in place, everything should revert to the way it was before. And all these squidgy littlefeelingscould be swept under the rug and firmly ignored until one forgot they ever existed in the first place.
Tomorrow. That’s all that was needed to set everything right: tomorrow. She’d return to the shop, perform her duties, make copious amounts of tea, interact with Mr. Grimm exactly as she’d done all these weeks. Friendly, easy, and, most of all,touchless. All the workplace boundaries back where they belonged. By the time closing came around, everything would be back to normal.
