Page 92 of Pining for You

“We’d better get back down there,” Eve says against my lips after a moment more. I’m grinning, but what’s making me grin so hard isn’t even the fact that we just kissed, it’s how hard she’s grinning too. I want to hang out with her all day and probably all the days after that. I want to kiss her every one of those days. And the fact that it looks like she’s feeling the same way? That is blowing my mind.

“So, how can I reach you?” I ask, because I’m not leaving this up to Fate or luck or the divine intervention of my friends ever again.

She takes the book from my hands so I can fish my phone out of my backpack. When I pass it to her, she inputs her details.

“There you go,” she says, returning the phone to me, and her number is confirmation that she wants to see me again too. I feel like Rudolph when he realizes Clarice likes him back. I am ready to take flight.

This is the Christmas magic I knew was out there. This is the proof. It lingers on my tingling lips.

“Thank you,” I say. “Now I won’t have to go on any more crazy missions through Brooklyn just to find you.”

I am already imagining more time like this. Thinking about how I could kiss her again. In fact, I may just do it one more time right now, but then Eve takes a step back. She raises her hand and starts scratching behind her ear with her pinky, chewing her bottom lip.

“What do you mean?” she asks, avoiding my gaze.

Something has changed, so quickly that I’m dizzy.

And then it hits me, what I’ve done. What I’ve said.

“I thought you were here for Audra, and cookies for your mom, and…”

I scramble to explain.

“I mean, yes, but… well, the truth is that the whole thing did kind of start as a way to find you. I just… I felt like we had such a connection at the farm. I thought it had to be magic, right? My friends… they thought so too.” I reach for her hand and add, “And now we know for sure.”

But this time, she pulls her hand away.

“You almost had me believing, Strudel.” She shakes her head, like she’s mad at herself. “But this wasn’t Fate. It was just you forcing it.”

“Forcing is a pretty strong word,” I say. “We just kind of… helped things along. The magic put us together in the first place. You have to see that…,” I say. Those sparkles are not nothing. This all means something. It means everything.

I thought based on the way she just kissed me that she felt the same way.

But now Eve takes another step away from me like I’m radioactive. A spell has been broken. Her grin is gone, and she looks to the door.

“I don’t have to do anything, Strudel,” she says. “I don’t even know you.”

“Huh?” I stutter. “That’s not true. I have been more honest with you than anyone, ever.” Which is true. Somehow, even in our short time together, I’ve shared the most meaningful parts of me with her. And now she knows how I kiss, too, and what could be more intimate than that?

“None of it was real,” she says. Panic seizes my heart. “And honestly, even if it was, I can’t get caught up with someone right now. I have to focus on my plan for me and Hugo, not some magic whatever. We’re going in opposite directions.”

My life just went from a daydream to a nightmare so fast, I have whiplash.

Another buzz interrupts us. This time, it’s my phone—Izaac’s ring.

He wouldn’t interrupt if it wasn’t getting weird down there. I look at her, and realize I need to leave anyway, otherwise I’m going to lose it and start crying right here in the cold.

“Right,” I say. “Yeah. Well… I guess I’ll go, then.”

I wait for her to stop me, to ask me to stay or at least tell me she didn’t mean any of that. But she doesn’t. The moon is just about gone now, and so are all the sparkles in her eyes.

I head back to the door and the stairway. I take them as fast as I can without slipping in my wet sneakers. Then I’m running past her bedroom with her bookshelves and her bed and her mirror and her clanging, hissing radiator, toward the ground floor, and the exit. Leaving Eve and every trace of our magic behind me.

27

By the time I reach the front door, everyone is already waiting for me in the driveway, and I’m out of both breath and my mind.

“Bosley!” Seichi calls, grinning like a maniac.