Page 54
“You tell me things. I decide if I agree.”
The simplicity of it shuts me up. He pushes away from the counter but doesn’t come closer. “I did not kiss you because you bought me things.”
“I know you didn’t do it consciously because of that.”
“I did not kiss you because you made the wish either.”
I uncross my arms. Kell looks at me more steadily.
“You made the wish. You did not choose who answered it.”
My breath stops. The distinction is so simple I almost miss it. I made the wish. I created the impossible circumstances that put him in this kitchen. But I didn’t stand beside a fire and specify this man.
No. I didn’t.
If I’d been ordering an exact replica of Dave, I’d have never gotten Kell. He’s too bold, too messy, too curious, too willing to tell me when he thinks I’m being ridiculous. He hates black coffee. He likes leather. He takes a picture somebody else designed and paints over the entire thing because he doesn’t want to be told what belongs where.
None of those choices came from me. He is the least obedient wish fulfillment imaginable.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he says. “You said yes.”
“Yes.”
“You stopped.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I stopped.”
Kell takes one step closer, then stops there. “If you do not want me to touch you, I will not.”
“That isn’t the only thing I’m worried about.”
Kell is quiet. “You are worried I might want what you want because I live here. Because you buy things for me. Because you made the wish.”
“Yes. And because you’ve only been here four days. You don’t have a job yet. You don’t have your own money or your own place. Almost everything in your life still connects back to me somehow.”
He thinks about that. “But this does not.” He reaches toward me, then stops. The pads of two fingers stroke his bottom lip.
“You can’t possibly be certain of that yet.”
“I am very certain I wanted to kiss you.”
That stops me. I think about the clothes he chose yesterday, the leather jacket I never would have picked for him, and Janet’s numbered picture that lasted less than a day before he painted over it. Kell has been making choices I didn’t make for him almost from the moment he could make them.
Maybe that is enough for tonight. Not enough to settle everything. Not enough for me to decide that four days of independence erase the fact that nearly every practical part of his life still depends on me. I’ll have to keep asking myself where help ends and influence begins, and sooner or later Kell and I will have to talk about it again.
But I don’t have to solve the rest of his life before I believe the answer he’s giving me about this moment. The oven timer goes off, and my shoulders jerk before my brain catches up with the noise. Kell laughs.
“Not funny.”
“A little funny.”
“Keep it up and you’re not getting a peach.”
His expression turns serious at once. “That seems extreme.”
I laugh despite myself as I grab oven mitts and pull the baking dish from the oven. The marshmallows have puffed and browned at the tops. Syrup bubbles lightly around the peaches, and the kitchen smells like sugar and fruit. Kell comes closer.
