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"Hard cider, bourbon cider, caramel vodka cider. We're running a respectable establishment here, ladies."

Bridget's face lights up. "See? A woman after my own heart. You know I'm taken, Mrs. J."

She winks, and I roll my eyes.

"How many of those has Billy had?" I ask as I watch him nearly stumble trying to grab his tuba from the bench without spilling half his drink.

Mrs. Joplin leans her full head of gray, shoulder length curls out of her tent and shakes the tight spirals. "Not enough to make the music any better, I'm afraid."

We all laugh, me stopping first as I watch Billy make his way toward the crosswalk. He passes a line of booths, all shapes and sizes with colored tents that don't match and everything from wooden counters to white plastic folding tables holding all the beverages. There are pumpkin towers outside of some and corn stalks tied to the posts of others—the perfect hodge podge of charm you'd expect from a Mage fest.

But that's not what draws my attention.

It's the string of lights zigzagging across the street—those same warm, slightly uneven bulbs the town drags out for every event from May through October.

Someone must've just flipped them on—maybe by accident, maybe on purpose even though it's still daytime. But they blink, their glow soft in the late afternoon light as it barely makes its way through the bare branches that hang from the square over the street.

And for a second, I'm not standing here with Bridget, waiting for a cup of cider I don't necessarily even want.

I'm seventeen again—

Leaning against a telephone pole with Jace standing in front of me, home for the first time from CMU for exactly three days over Thanksgiving break.

Mage Hollow High had somehow won their rivalry game against Millstone despite their typical losing record—it's tough to fill a fifty player roster when your school only has ninety-three students. But it's better when the flu rips through your opponent's school like it's 1919.

The whole town had spilled out onto the main street after the game. Someone cranked up a speaker, someone else filled a cooler and dragged it across the pavement. The lights had been strung up for months at that point, and time and weather had caused them to begin dipping low enough to touch. Jace reached up and tapped one with his fingertips.

He told me they made the square look like that movie set he always felt we were living on. Like one where people fall in love and always get their happily ever after.

I remember rolling my eyes at him for being cheesy. And for pretending the kiss he snuck onto my neck made me squirm rather than completely lighting me up.

I remember feeling like maybe the pressure that was building for me to stay in Mage was just as temporary as the hometown high the team was riding that would probably never come again.

But I also remember the way he looked under those lights—laughing, his hood perched on the back of his head, the tip of his nose pink from the cold. That stupid crooked smile he might still get when he thinks he's being profound.

And I remember thinking that maybe he was right. And we were those people who would get their happy ending no matter the distance.

No matter anything that came our way.

My chest tightens for a second before the feeling settles into something warmer than I expect after going back to that time.

Because for once, the memory doesn't end with goodbye—he's still here.

And that happily ever after feels within reach again.

At least for the next three weeks.

"Nora."

I look over to find Bridget and Mrs. Joplin both staring at me wide-eyed—Mrs. Joplin's bright blue eyeshadow staring too.

"What?"

"Spiked or not?" Bridget asks as if it isn't the first time.

I blink my way fully back to the moment. "Um, not. Please."

Bridget clicks her teeth in faux annoyance as Mrs. Joplin ladles my drink from the same oversized, black ceramic bowl she serves her Halloween candy from each year.