Page 40 of Meet Cute Magic

“Well, you’d never know any better, so what would it matter?” She’s quiet for a moment, contemplative, before she sighs.

“I guess you have a good point.” Earlier, she was in here organizing and whatnot; now she’s just sitting on the floor a few feet from me, a book in her lap. She’s tried to pick it up a few times, but each time she got distracted, asking me a question of some kind or another. I wonder if she feels it, too, that urge to be near me because of the bond, or if it’s just because I’m the nonmagical one in this strange mess.

“What’s your favorite one?” I ask, and she looks at me with wide, panicked eyes.

“My favorite one?”

“Favorite book.”

“That’s like asking a mother who her favorite child is.”

“I’m an only child,” I say with a smile she returns.

“Well, for reference, your mother isn’t supposed to pick favorites, and I can’t either.”

“Favorite in each genre? Or trope?” Her eyes go wide and entertained, a smile lighting up her face.

“Oh, look at you knowing the lingo.”

I roll my eyes at her. “I’ve lived across from a romance bookstore for three years. I’m bound to pick up on some things.”

“So you’ve been watching me, huh?” I don’t want to admit how much of that is truth, so instead I just shrug and stay quiet. After a while, she starts speaking again, filling in the silence and telling me her favorite genres, as well as her favorite books within each one.

Over the next hour, I find out her favorite trope is grumpy sunshine, which makes me feel a bit warm, though I ignore it. She likes paranormal stories occasionally, but they’re usually too far from the truth she knows, so she finds it hard to dive into them without judging. That feels fair to me, and I find myself wondering if she would feel the same way playing one of my games.

“What do you like about them? Romances?” I ask after a while, and Rosie sighs.

“Besides the fact that my magic calls to it?” I nod. “The… happily ever after of it all. The idea that there’s one person out there for you, even if they’re totally your opposite, who is meant to be with you. I love it when they dislike each other at first and then warm up to each other. I love it when one has some baggage and the other doesn’t just handle it, but helps them unpack it. I love caretaking scenes, where one person takes care of the other—”

“Ironic for someone who has refused to accept my help,” I say without meaning to, and then I look over my shoulder at her; there’s a pretty blush on her cheeks.

“Yeah, I…” She takes in a deep breath. “I’m not good at that.” I shrug, trying to brush it off.

“We all have our strengths.” Silence takes over once more, but it’s not the comfortable kind that was there before, and I regret calling her out like that, so I continue my line of questioning. “What else? What else do you like?” She smiles then, like she’s remembering something sweet.

“The grand gestures. I love a grand gesture.”

“A grand gesture?”

“You know, some moment where he does something to show how much she means to him. When he shows up at her event when she thought he wouldn’t come, or when a billionaire buys an entire company for her, or something like that.”

“Buying a company is romantic?” I ask, reaching for a wrench to tighten a screw.

“Typically, the company means something to her.” I shake my head with a laugh.

“I guess anything can sound romantic if it has a big enough price tag.”

“No, no. The best ones are the small ones; those were just the easy ones to explain.”

“So what are your favorites?”

She genuinely ponders it before answering. “I mean, I think every little girl who likes to read loves the moment where the Beast shows Belle the library. That’s kind of iconic. But I like the smaller moments, the tiny things he notices and makes happen. In this one book I read, he kept bumping into her, and they never hit it off. So, when they finally got together, he began to recreate all the dates they missed, from college to the present. It was sweet. Or in this single-dad-nanny book, she ghosted him after a one-night stand, only to find out he’d been keeping her coffee flavors for a while, just in case she came back into his life. It’s just little things that scream I’ve been listening to you and I’m yours.” She shrugs before another light blush burns on her cheeks.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s silly. Maybe the curse doesn’t even exist and I’m just single because I’m picky,” she says with a laugh, but there’s a glimmer of self-deprecation in her words. I pause what I’m doing then, turning to face her, seeing it written on her face as well.

“Don’t say that.”

“That the curse isn’t real?” I shake my head.