AllFreeNovel
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- Fernweh: a feeling of homesickness for a place you’ve never been (German)
- Fremdschamen: the feeling of shame on someone else’s behalf; secondhand embarrassment (German)
- davka: the opposite of what is expected (Hebrew)
10:09 p.m.
“THANK YOU SO much,” Colleen says as she unties her apron. “I would have closed up early, but we had a last-minute rush.” She lists the remaining tasks: wiping tables, washing dishes, and wrapping up any remaining pastries for tomorrow’s day-old bin.
“It’s no problem. You know I love this place.”
Neil leans against the pastry case, scoping out the goods. If Colleen wonders why he’s here, she blessedly doesn’t ask.
Colleen grabs her purse. “We’ll miss you next year.”
“I’ll be back on breaks,” I insist. “You know I can’t resist those cinnamon rolls.”
“That’s what all the college kids say. But then they get busy, or they want to spend time with their friends, or they move away for good. It happens. Whether you come back to work or not, there will always be a cinnamon roll with your name on it.”
I want to tell her I won’t be one of those people, but the truth is, there’s no way to know.
Colleen leaves us alone in this small café. During the car ride, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dance. I was so wrapped up in it that I relinquished music privileges, letting him play a Free Puppies! song he claimed was their best. But I could barely hear it.
Being that close to him in the library muddied my feelings. I tried to rationalize it: I’m exhausted, and the game has turned me delirious. My mind is playing tricks on me, convincing me I feel something for him I’m positive I didn’t feel yesterday. Or my body was craving closeness to another person’s. I’m a writer—I can make up a hundred different reasons.
The things I said, though, about wishing he were someone else—they hurt his ego. They must have. But I don’t like us like this. I didn’t like it after the assembly this morning, when I refused to sign his yearbook, and I don’t like it now. Or maybe it’s that I like this too much, and that’s even scarier. Neil is softer than I realized, and I’m a barbed-wire fence. Every time he gets too close, I make myself sharper.
“What should we do first?” he asks.
I reach into the pastry case. “Well, I am having a cinnamon roll. And you should too.”
It’s not a perfect spiral, because as Colleen is fond of telling us, imperfect-looking food tastes the best. I hold the plate near Neil’s face, letting him inhale the sweet cinnamon sugar. Before he can take a bite, I snatch it away.
“Icing first,” I say, heading back into the kitchen.
All I want is for us to be normal after what happened in the library, and my brilliant plan is to ignore it. I cannot like him this way. It’s the opposite of destroying him, and even if that’s no longer my goal, until about seven hours ago, he was my enemy. He’s Neil McNair, and I’m Rowan Roth, and that used to mean something.
I open the refrigerator, the cold a welcome blast against my face, but it doesn’t slow my wild heart.
“Cream cheese icing?” he asks, a teasing lilt to his voice.
“I’m never go
ing to forgive my parents.”
“I for one appreciated the Rowan Roth Fun Facts.” He leans against the counter, and it looks so casual. Maybe the dance loosened him up, which is ironic because it only tied me into knots. I haven’t felt this tense since my AP Calculus test, and maybe not even then. “Like Kevin fever. That was gold.”
I groan. After I rejoined the dinner table, my parents told him all he could ever hope to know about the Riley books and their lives as writers, including how they used to complain they had cabin fever when they holed up in the house on deadline. When I was younger, I thought they were saying “Kevin fever,” and one day I asked, thoroughly worried, if Kevin was okay.
“I’m not afraid to use this as a weapon,” I say, holding up the tub of icing. “And hey. If you want to talk embarrassing parents, we should talk about how your mom knew exactly where I’m going to school.”
“The school sent out a list. My mom is very invested in my education.” He nods toward the icing. “And I think you’re bluffing.”
Only because I’ll rinse out this tub afterward, I dip my index finger inside, and before I can overthink it, I dab icing onto his freckled cheek.
For a moment, he’s frozen. And then: “I can’t believe you just did that,” he says, but he’s laughing. He reaches into the container and swipes an icing-coated finger across my eyebrow. It’s cold but not unpleasant. “There. We’re even.”
Our gazes lock for a few seconds, a staring contest. His eyes are still bright with laughter. I’m not about to turn this into an all-out food fight, not when the library dance is still so fresh in my mind. That just sounds dangerous.
