“The night with the ladies went well and all.”
“That doesn’t sound very confident. What’s theand all?”
I stared at her for a long moment. “You need to promise not to get weird.”
“Since when do I ever get weird?”
I looked around the sterile white walls she spent most of her waking hours in. They were enough to make anyone go a little nuts after a while. In my opinion and experience at least.
“Ryan went.”
“Ryan went where?” She furrowed her eyebrows, confused.
I rolled my eyes, knowing how stilted my voice sounded. “He attended the equinox celebration with me.”
“You took him to the lair?” Vadika asked, astonished.
“You said you weren’t going to be weird.”
“This isn’t weird. This is unprecedented,” said Vadika, setting aside everything so she wouldn’t accidentally knock something over. “How did this come about?”
“Faith invited him, and then he practically insisted when he heard we were making pie.”
She still had the most mind-blown look on her face. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.” I wished I were.
“He wanted to go? How did he meet Faith?”
I stared at her before I finally sighed. I had known I was going to talk to her about this. I just always underestimated her level of enthusiasm. “We ran into her the other night when we were in the library.”
“You were both in the library together—again?”
“Are you going to repeat everything I say back to me? I hear how this sounds,” I said.
“Those books have been seeing a lot of action recently.”
“Nothing is happening.”
“Right.” Vadika didn’t give me a hint of sincerity in that one. She marked one last thing in her notebook, erasing and rewriting with her red mechanical pencil. “Just checking because it sounds like someone likes you.”
“He doesn’t.”
“How can you—”
“He kissed me,” I finally blurted.
It was better not to let this whole thing get out of hand. Vadika might have been antilove for herself. For the rest of the world, however, she was just as bad as her aunts, setting things up and making nonexistent plans for nonexistent couples.
One of which I was not part of.
Vadika swung her head back up, leaving everything behind for sure now as she crossed the room toward me. “He kissed you?”
“Sort of?” I shrugged a shoulder, curling my leg up and into my body as I balanced on the rolling chair. “I mean, he kissed me, but it was more of a graze the first time. Then, the other night I kissed him. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think he wanted to kiss me. Either time.”
“Either time?” It looked like Vadika’s eyes were about to bug out of her head.
“There was another moment that first night in the library.”
