“I’ll walk you to the fire station,” I finally manage to say. It’s the halfway point between here and Half Moon Mill. AlthoughI need to get back to work, I don’t want to send Alex off on his lonesome just yet.
I check his hands furtively, every so often, wondering if he’ll try to hold mine. But he doesn’t. I can’t blame him. My emotions are an unpredictable seesaw between the desire to run for the hills or to drag him to my bed. Finally, when I can’t stand the silence anymore, I stop walking and burst, “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“The greenhouse!” It’s all I can think about. Whodoesthat? Who just sneaks into a woman’s yard and fixes broken things? I can’t wrap my mind around it.
He shrugs. “You needed it done.”
“Yeah, but you don’t even believe in flora fortunes, in what I do for a living.”
Alex takes a step closer to me. Tilts his head down so that our noses are close to touching. “What you do for a living is one of the surprises about you that I like the best. Me not understanding it only makes it better.”
I just stare at him. “What.” That does not compute. Alex isall aboutunderstanding things. It’s what drives him.
“It’s like a puzzle,” he goes on. “I love puzzles. The harder, the better. Nothing about magic makes any sense to me, but you seem to have it all figured out, and I admire that. I admire your passion when you talk about what you do, the ambitions you have. Frankly, passion and ambition are downright gorgeous on you. I’ll be your biggest customer and I don’t even know what the hell all this shit is—I’ll be here all the time buying things I don’t understand, just to see you in all your hot witchy businesswoman glory.”
Once again, he’s rendered me speechless. When we continue walking, I tentatively reach for his hand. “I like your passion,too,” I admit. “Just throwing it out there—I wouldn’t mind seeing you in a hard hat. I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“Noted.” He clears his throat. “To be honest, I compulsively fix things. Those missing windowpanes have been bugging the hell out of me. I have a dent puller tool in my truck so that I can offer to pull dents out of people’s cars. And it isn’t to be nice. It’s actually selfish. I just really fucking love pulling dents out of cars.”
Alex’s arm becomes a beam of support to hold on to while I laugh. It’s one of those laughs that makes your whole body go slack, that fiddles with your vision and makes it seem like all the lights around you flare brighter. “Ofcourseyou do.”
“Hey, we’ve all got our weird things.”
“Yeah. You’ve got that, and I’ve got you.”
He nudges me, smiling. Then, a minute later:
“Romina?”
I peer up at him, but his eyes are fixed straight ahead. “Yeah?”
“I need you to know that I’m coming for you. Okay? Making my intentions unmistakably clear. I’m not going to play games. I know what I want and I’m not stupid enough to let you go twice.”
I nearly walk into a lamppost.
“That okay with you?”
It’s the strangest phenomenon, when my tears haven’t even dried yet but my mouth can’t help but trip into a cautiously optimistic smile.
We reach the fire station.
“Yes. A slow, careful, looking-both-ways-before-we-cross yes.”
“Good. Get ready.”
I’m not sure if a relationship between us can work at thisstage of our lives, or if we’ll end up hurting each other again. I guess there’s no way of predicting which way we’ll go. “Thank you. Not just for the greenhouse, but for being understanding, for comforting me,” I say, voice thick. “For letting me cry on your shirt. Which is super soft, by the way, and smells amazing. What kind of detergent do you use?”
“Not telling.”
“Why?”
He squints. “If you co-opt it, my smell will lose its special appeal.”
He begins to head home. Revolves to face me while continuing to walk backward. “You’ll be seeing me around, Romina Romina.”
It’s the first spell cast in his determined pursuit. I feel it take immediate effect, as if a fizzy tablet’s dissolved into my limbic system.
