“And you don’t have to do anything more for me. Honestly, I don’t even know why you would think you need to, considering I looked likethat. And now I look like me.”
He leaned forward at that.
Put his elbow on the table, chin in one hand.
“Why don’t you explain to me what you mean by that,” he said.
But of course now she didn’t really want to. She tried to pick up a book, instead. Then watched, as he used his wand to turn it into butterflies. They fluttered up to the rafters, while she fought the blush rising over her face. “Well that was better than spiders, at least.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Come on. Tell me what you meant.”
“You know what I meant. I was very beautiful, then.”
“And you think you’re not now.”
“Of course I’m not. You even said—” she started to say, frustrated.
While he stayed calm and collected, as he cut her off.
“I don’t remember ever saying anything about the way you look. Mainly because the more you lie, the harder it gets to keep track. Not to mention how shaky I know it would have sounded, if I’d tried.”
“So what would have been the truth, then?”
“When I first saw you my heart stopped.”
Her own did the same when he said it.
Though she tried not to let it show.
“Probably because you had just seen a ghost,” she said, half-laughing. Then she took in his expression, and even that poor attempt died. It didn’t waver, it didn’t shift. He gave her no quarter at all, nowhere to hide. He was going to make her believe this, no matter how hard she tried to not.
“Yes, that’s what I told myself at the time. It was the shock that made me stare when I first saw you, like someone hypnotized.But then you must know it happened again, for the second. I looked so long I knew I was making it too obvious—and yet I simply could not stop. Like every facet of your face made me drunk, dragged me down, undid every bit of my resolve. All I wanted to do was drink more deeply, and not just then. In the corridor afterward, in the lecture hall. I used to force myself to face forward, and still I stole glances whenever I could. In the end I skipped lectures, made myself wait outside. And I didn’t do anything because I was a fool, lost to something that wasn’t there. I did it because in every single way, you are as lovely to me as the day we met. Whether by the beauty of your soul shining through, or the sweetness of it that just is anyway—I don’t know. Or care. I only understand that this is the case,” he said, so clear and direct and unembarrassed about it that she didn’t know how to cope. She wanted to look away, midway through. To escape that impossible surety.
Though she knew why she didn’t.
Because she didn’t want to break the spell. The one not made by magic, but by a thousand feelings, falling over them both.If we keep going then we might, we might, she found herself thinking. Hardly able to imagine whatmightcould be, and yet knowing so well, at the same time.
It made her move her hand close to his, on the table.
Not quite touching. But close to it. Their fingertips brushed; she felt his legs shift under the table, until it was barely a hair’s breadth from hers. And just as she thought that was enough, he parted his lips. He let his tongue curl up, over the top one. While she tried to stay calm enough to ask what she needed to know.
“But she was more than that, though.”
“What more is there to be but kind, funny, intelligent, beautiful?”
“The way she seemed in that picture. The way I can feel sometimes but don’t know how to be in the same way. It’s the thing I least understand but know that you liked. I know youlovedit,” she said, more breathless than she intended.
But she just couldn’t help it. The flood of memories simply poured through her, the moment she started speaking about it. Kissing him so passionately he sprawled back, onto some old couch in a house she couldn’t quite remember. Then the lust-stunned look on his face, when she pulled away.
Her hand underneath one of the desks, in a lecture hall. Sliding up his thigh, as he squirmed. As he passed her a scribbled note:Stop it, before I stop being able to control myself.But of course he hadn’t been able to at all, anyway. She had undone him completely, in a thousand different ways. Persuaded him to make love to her in the sky, made him come using just a spell. Said his name, in such a manner that even that had made him lose it.
And he quite obviously saw all this, all over her face.
“So you mean she knew how to seduce me,” he said, half-amused.
Even though it wasn’t amusing at all. “Yes.Exactly. She could just do it. I canfeelthat she could. I can see the way it affected you, all the time. Constantly, god, just constantly, I swear sometimes I don’t even know where to look now, in my own head. When I saw that picture, I didn’t just thinkbeautiful. I thought of you in that stairwell, that exact stairwell,beggingher for more. One hand in your jeans, because you simply couldn’t wait.”
“You’re right, I couldn’t. But it wasn’t because she had some secret skill.”
