I couldn’t help the heat that pooled in my cheeks. Luckily, it was dark enough out here as we stood in front of each other, not much distance between as we took deep breaths. The light flickered on the front porch, wavering to the hum of mosquitoes.
“Being in that house, everything felt like a dream,” Ryan admitted after another moment.
“That’s part of the magic.” It created a home that you didn’t want to leave, and where it didn’t want you to leave so soon.
“I can’t believe that I’m twenty-two and only now starting to believe in that.”
His eyes turned down from where they’d held on to my eyes, looking over my lips for a split second, and once more, I couldn’t help but be transported back to the library, in the dark with his head angled over my shoulder.
“Magic?”
“Yeah.”
I huffed a laugh. “Magic might be the only real thing. How else would you explain you and me?”
“What do you mean?” His brow wrinkled.
“The boy next door all the school fawns over. The freak he teases.” I meandered around the subject. “Have you never seen an ’80s movie?”
“Lu, when are you going to accept that I—” He took a deep breath. “I always thought you were stunning. In every way. Your independence. Your confidence.”
I was none of those things. Not really. I was constantly leaning on Vadika when I got lonely, hanging around the lab for hours at a time, even when I knew she would be busy.
“You have a control and pride over your life that you worked for, and that … that seems pretty extraordinary to me. It’s me who has been the stupid one up until the other day when I felt like my life was falling apart, and then there was you. Like you were meant to stitch me back together. I’ve admired you, even when I was some asshole first-year who didn’t care about anything other than being liked.”
Ryan, I started to see now, he was a people pleaser. Akeep quiet, hold tight, share a little more of yourself, afraid to make a decision if it affected others—affected his team—people pleaser.
At some point, we had stepped closer to one another as we talked. I could feel each word that he spoke toward me. He was so determined to make others in the world happy with him. Since when had anyone last pleased him?
Tilting my head upward and on my toes, I brushed my lips over his, just like before, only this time, it was me who was starting this. The world held its breath. Ryan returned a gentle kiss. His mouth softly pressed against mine, a whisper of something more to come, yet that tiny spark lingered like a tingle.
Excitement flooded my chest as I waited for more, waited for him to lift his hands up to cup my face so that I could grip the extra fabric of his forest-green T-shirt and hold on tight as we tilted and kissed under the equinox moon, hearing our prayers from earlier.
Indecision be gone.
Loneliness be gone.
Ryan pulled away, as if he’d startled himself.
He blinked and took a step back away from me. My hands were so prepared to hold on. Quickly, I dropped them to my sides. I stared into his eyes, wide and dilated.
“I’m sorry. I mean, I—” he cut himself off.
My heart hitched at his unsteady words. The tingle that had ignited something within me fizzled and withered. Trying not to show the range of emotions crossing my face, I took a step back.
Right. He hadn’t meant to do that. Of course he hadn’t meant to almost kiss me back.
The moon was wide, and the air was catching the sort of chill that made you want to curl up against someone, and yet we stood farther apart than ever tonight, hands awkward and mouths hesitating for the first time.
I shook my head, feeling whatever softness that had calmed my body turn back to heavy stone. I swallowed it down, rejection clogging my throat. “That can be a dream too, if you want.”
Ryan still didn’t say anything, unable to find his words as he licked his lips, still stained from pomegranate juice. From the sugar and spices lacing apples of promise and prosperity. From me. “I …”
I tried to smile, as if that alone would prove to the ever-smiling boy that it was all right. Still, I couldn’t quite get it right, my mouth blustered and bruised with the utmost dismissal I’d never thought I would receive. Me and Ryan.
How could I have been so blind? How could I have had hope for the world to give me more? The universe had led me to Barnett. It gave me my coven and magic. It’d even given me Gertie. Gertie, a woman who had become my dearest family and who was ready to offer the last thing my younger self ever wished on the stars for.
Purpose.
