He obeys.
I shuck my clothing, wad up my bra and underwear inside my jacket, and jump in gracelessly, underestimating the depth of the spring when water shoots up my nose. “Bagh!”
Morgan whirls. “What’s wrong?”
“Turn around!” I repeat in a yell, even though from the neck down I’m concealed by water that, I hope, contains lots of beneficial mineral content and no deadly bacteria. But I’m not fully confident he won’t be able to see any skin, or the illusion of skin, or even a vaguely human shape.
“Sorry!” he yells back. “I didn’t see anything, I swear.”
“Okay, I’m fine now. Ready.” I keep watching him until he crosses his arms over his chest, waiting, and I remember myself. “Right. Turning. Shutting my eyes.”
Splash!
The spring has shrunk. With the two of us occupying limited space, it’s very much like a Jacuzzi. An intimate Jacuzzi in the forest, in the dark. I am suddenly overcome with the need to know whether he’s fully naked like I am, or if he’s got underwear on. I will not dip my gaze below the surface to see if I can tell. And he had better be keeping his eyes on my face. Above my face, even. He should be skygazing.
Morgan is not skygazing. His eyes rest on my face, so he knows when my attention roves over the tattooed constellations that grip his upper arms. His silky hair gleams at the crest of every wave and his skin glows like a pearl. Lips dark and full. The shapes of his eyebrows sharpen when wet. I reflect again on my romantic ideal; it is a very,verygood thing that this man is not a danger to me.
We’re at the edge of October, which means there are three months left in this calendar year for me to—according to prophecy—find my True Love.
When I imagine this person I have yet to meet, I think ofthe peace and serenity he’ll exude. He will be honest. He will be sincere. He’ll clearly communicate his feelings, he will always say what he means (and what he means will always be sensible). Eventually we’ll buy a duplex together. I’ll have my space, he’ll have his, and we can pop in for visits via a connecting doorway. (When I mentioned this vision to my sisters recently, Romina was unsurprisingly aghast. She would crawl under her boyfriend’s shirt and live there, if she could.)
My relationship with True Love will be poetry.
“Do you think animals ever get songs stuck in their heads?” Morgan asks.
“What?”
He grins, sliding a step closer. “Just trying to throw you off. You look like you’re thinking hard about something, andIthink it’d be a great idea if we didn’t think at all.”
“That is such ayouthing to say.”
I couldn’t possibly entangle myself with somebody like Morgan. I am a woman of evidence and reason, and all evidence points to him being the worst possible match for me.
He’s a boisterous, unpredictable extrovert who makes the wrong recommendations to customers at the shop, recommending theDesperate Measurescandle to anyone and everyone regardless of their needs, disturbing me while I’m trying to work, leaving his half-finished coffee on my stool, rearranging books in the Cavern by color, spinning his chair to hear it squeak, starting a sentence with “Guess what?” and ending it with some outlandish claim. And that isn’t even the half of it!
Sawing the violin badly on purpose. Pretending to like me just because he wanted magic powers. Taking notes oncoralotes and tabbing them, and the way he looks at me as if I hold all the answers to his questions in my mouth—he looks at my mouthentirelytoo much—and he doesn’t mind when I’m not on time because he understands how my brain works. He encourages me to experiment, to live a little, to mix theFor Wednesdayspotion with theFor Saturdaysone and find out what sort of disaster it might bring. He rolls my suitcase through the forest and, on Aisling’s birthday, helps her to feel like a fairy queen. Wears a monster in a baby sling. SaysI’m only good at this when it doesn’t mean anything.
It is confirmed, then. Morgan does not pose any danger to my heart at all.
He takes a step forward, and I take a step back, swallowing. Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump. My safe-as-houses heart beats in triple time.
“You’re staring at me,” I manage to say. He doesn’t laugh at the quiver in my voice.
He holds my stare until the act feels brutal, until my skin flames and his eyes go dark, dark, dark, and my vision can’t make out anything other than him. “I’m always staring at you,” he replies.
“It’s different now.” I can barely hear myself. “Normally, I’m wearing clothes.”
“Not in here.” He taps his temple, his mouth curving. “I like to imagine you and me making use of that armchair in the Cavern of Paperback Gems. And the only things that cover you are my hands.”
I become a dragon, heat lighting me up inside. The responseis involuntary; I think all he’d have to do is touch me in one particularly sensitive spot, and I’d lose myself here and now.
Morgan spreads his arms as he revolves in a half circle, head tipping all the way back until his Adam’s apple is a prominent lump in his throat. Air is scarce as I visually trace the sharp line of his jaw, the shape of his arms, his fingers, resting on the surface of the water like katydids.
Still turned in profile, he drops his gaze to my face and that smile becomes serpentine. “You look like you want something.”
I try to summon passages from books, but the door to my inner world has shut itself. A sign hangs from it that readsNot in Use. Come Back Later. I am trapped most wretchedly in the present.
“I want to kiss you,” I tell him. My pulse is now painful. “And more. I want everything.”
