“She could actually be sick. José looked sort of sick.”
“I don’t believe in statistical unlikelihoods.”
She glances around, then leans up and presses a quick kiss to my lips.
I stare down at her, frozen in shock, warmth coursing through me. Because that felt…affectionate.
She shrugs. “I like it when you talk nerdy to me.”
“I have to leave,” I say, because I’m an idiot.
Nora, of course, laughs. “Did I finally drive you away?”
“You couldn’t if you tried.” I glance at the street, taking in the strangers walking past. “I have a band performance this evening.” My throat is suddenly the dryest nadir of a thousand-mile desert, but I manage to say the words. “I’d like it if you came.”
“I’m supposed to work,” she says.
“Yeah, of course. I get it.”
She cocks her head, her hair tumbling over her cheek, her brown eyes bright with mirth. “But I’ll come. José is in the middle of an inflatable dick situation that I’d rather not get involved in.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. But all I care about is that you’re coming.”
“Won’t I just be one more NPC in the crowd?”
“You’ll never be an NPC to me. You’ve always been the main character.”
She looks surprised, but I don’t really understand why. Doesn’t she get it yet?
I’ve always taken notice of her, always, as any man would in the company of a mind-boggling chimera of a person. Nora is driven, but she’s also unpredictable. Noratakes things too far.She’s alive in a sparkling, kinetic way that captures me entirely.
I really would do anything for her, and that’s always been true.
Kenji used to tease me about it. That’s why I haven’t mentioned her in any of the business calls we’ve had over the last month. He knows we’ve been thrown back together, of course—he was invited to our parents’ wedding. It was actually somewhat of a relief when he couldn’t make it. The last thing I wanted was for him to observe us together. I was worried about what he might see. Because part of me knew, even then, that if Nora was present, my attention would always revert back to her, no matter what else was going on.
But not even Kenji knows the full extent of my high school crush on her. Here’s a truth I’ve never admitted to anyone, not even fully to myself. I had made that robot she accidentally destroyed forher.
It was meant to be an offering, a present, a grand gesture—and then it was accidentally broken by her.
I can hear Ann’s voice in my mind:Tell her, you idiot. Tell her everything.
But I know it’s not time. Not yet. I need to show her how much I care by continuing to show up for her. Because Nora has been through too much, and she’s been lied to too often, to believe anything she can’t see and feel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
NORA
We’re all in Tea of Fortune. It’s a party, kind of. Ann is here, of course, and Dottie, Sophie, Hannah, Briar, Liam, and me. Bear even ducked in from the bakery, having passed his duties along to one of his shift managers. We’re all gathered in the back, eating pastries and drinking tea at a couple of tables we pushed together.
The band’s performance starts in forty-five minutes. I won’t be the only one going, though. We all are. Bear claimed his hearing’s shot anyway—might as well damage it some more—Ann said she’d turn off her hearing aid and it would be a nice blur of sound, and Dottie announced that every other point was moot because she had a stock of earplugs in the back for everyone to use.
Funnily enough, my mother and Cormac’s father are babysitting Travis’s son. According to Hannah, he prefers Dottie, since there are lots of rules when he stays with my mom and Eugene, but desperate times and all that.
“Travis actually knows that actor guy,” Hannah says, her eyes dancing. “Their dads were in some shitty movie together.” She snaps her fingers. “Soviet Summer. That’s the one.”
Travis’s father, who passed away several years ago, had starred in an incredibly popular and universally panned series of movies about a maritime lawyer.
“Were they enemies in the movie?” I ask, vaguely interested.
