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“Yes?” I asked. I watched him lean forward and then, very carefully, he kissed me. It was only brief and then he put his forehead against mine. His eyes were closed.

He opened them and sat back. “It’s midnight. Happy New Year,” he told me.

“Oh, yes.” I tried to catch my breath, but I felt like I had just run way too fast. “Happy New Year.”

“Good night.” He stood and then I did, too. He walked to his bedroom on the first floor where you didn’t have to worry about heights, and I slowly climbed the stairs. I sat down on my bed, still experiencing…shock? Yes, that was what I was feeling. It had been only a peck for tradition, but it had still been shocking. I lay back like I’d done on the couch and closed my eyes again, because when I did, I could imagine how it had felt: the soft glance of his lips against mine, the warmth of his breath, the press of his forehead to my skin. Then, he’d opened his eyes before he’d pulled away and just for a moment, a split second, I could have sworn that I saw something there. Attraction? Love?

It was probably the low-lighting and a hopeless yen on my part that made me believe that I could read emotions in someone’s beautiful blue eyes (which did have a hit of purple, a periwinkle shade). It was just silliness.

I turned on my side, crinkling up this dress even more. It was nice to think about it, though, even if it wasn’t true.

I thought about it a lot until I fell asleep again and in the morning, I was a mess. I had probably woken because Vera’s necklace had twisted around and gotten tight enough to choke me, so my first step was to unclasp it and take a deep breath. My eyelids were practically glued shut due to the dried-out contact lenses I wore, so step two was to pluck out those. Then I went to the bathroom to wash off the makeup that I should have removed the night before and to brush my teeth, which felt filmy and gross.

So, I turned on the water. It took me a second to process it and then—

“Oliver!” I yelled. “Oliver!”

He didn’t answer so I ran down the stairs to the ground floor. I skidded in the hall that ended in his bedroom but he wasn’t there, so I ran into the kitchen.

He was standing at the sink with the water running, and he turned to look at me when I catapulted in. “You can hear it,” he stated flatly.

“Yes,” I admitted. I could hear it again, all the words crystal clear and maybe even louder than when it had been at its previous peak. And I could also see it. Silvery, golden, sparkling glitter rose up above his head and disappeared.

But there was something else, too.

“Are you seeing the shapes?” he asked. “This is what I had noticed before.”

“They’re hearts. They’re hearts!” We both looked at the little pastel clouds rising up and then dissolving into the ceiling.

“Holy Moses. I can’t believe it came here,” he sighed. Then he looked at me.

“Oh, no! Did I bring it with me? Is that what happened? Did I infect your house?” I clasped my hands at my chest, like a penitent.

“I don’t know. I thought that I heard something last night in my bathroom but I told myself that I was imagining it after I’d played it on the piano. I shouldn’t have played it.” He looked down at the counter. “Gramps has texted me at least six times and now he’s calling. Something might be wrong.”

He answered, “Hell—hold on, hold on. You have to talk more slowly because I can’t understand.” Then he listened and said, “Ok, we’ll come right now.”

“What’s wrong?” I demanded. Out of instinct, I looked at the cupboards, expecting to see the doors slamming open and shut as the ground started to roil beneath our feet. It couldn’t have been an earthquake. Could it?

“It’s your mom,” he said. “She’s back at the Milaflores Building and causing a scene. Mrs. McGlothen is about to call the police and they haven’t been able to reach you.”

“Where’s my phone?” I looked around on the ground, as if it might have been down there. “I have to get over there.”

We left pretty quickly, hurrying out to his car. Then I called Mrs. McGlothen on her landline, I texted Gramps, I tried the phone I’d gotten for my mom, and then finally, I contacted Vera. She told me that things were a little dicey but under control; apparently, my mom had shown up sometime the night before and tried to get into my apartment, but the locks had been changed so the key she had (which she must have copied from mine) no longer worked. She had slept in the hallway and been discovered by one of the neighbors, who summoned our building manager.

“She’s saying that she’s your mother and has a right to be here, but I don’t think that Penelope—Mrs. McGlothen is going to allow her to stay, not after what happened the last time she was in our building. We all have a lot of feelings about that and there’s a clause in the lease about limiting visitors.”

I remembered that clause and I also remembered what had gone on during her last visit. “We’re coming as fast as we can,” I told her.

When we got there, I saw that my mom wasn’t causing a scene as much as she was acting like herself. “I know that you don’t mean to be close-minded and cruel,” she was saying to Mrs. McGlothen. “You just don’t know any better because you’re so unenlightened.”

I stepped between them before the building manager took a swing. “Mom!”

“Oh, Hekate! I love this,” she told me, picking up some pieces of my uncombed, snarled hair. “You look almost feral!”

“Great. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve had some issues since I said goodbye to you before,” she said.