“So,” Austin said, and his voice was softer than it had been all night. If his voice was usually like whiskey, sharp and lingering on your tongue, right now it was sweet iced tea on a summer day. Easy. Gentle. “Did it work?”
“Did what work?” I asked, still caught in the haze that had settled over me. A haze he’d started, but one my heart was now happily sustaining, beating far too fast to be useful.
“My plan,” he chuckled, swiping his thumb across the bridge of his nose. He glanced down at the pastel floor of the bakery, his mouth breaking into a wide, almost boyish smile. When he looked back up at me, it only deepened the daze instead of pulling me out of it.
“What plan?” I said, and the words felt as foolish aloud as they had in my head. His smile grew even wider, somehow. Like he’d just heard the best possible answer, even though all I’d done was echo his words back to him in the form of a question.
“My plan to impress you,” he said, tilting his head slightly as he studied me. Like he thought the answer might be written plainly across my face. I wasn’t sure if it was.
“It was some plan,” I said, unable to keep the giddiness from slipping into my voice. “I can’t believe you went through all that effort just to hang out with me.”
“Just to hang out with you?” Austin repeated, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Yellow, this isn’t just me hanging out with you. This is a date. Our first date.”
Heat rushed to my face, the familiar betrayal of pink blooming across my cheeks. But embarrassment barely touched it. Awe drowned everything else, spilling through my chest like a sudden waterfall.
“Who said it was a date?” I asked, trying to mask that feeling. The last thing I wanted was for Austin to think I was already falling for him.
Because that couldn’t be possible. I’d just met him. I barely knew him. He was still, technically, a stranger. I knew his name. A handful of details. I knew he was kind. I knew he was thoughtful. I knew he had a way of looking at me that made my pulse forget its rhythm. But I didn’t know him. Right? So why did it feel like this? Why did it feel like there was something invisible pulling at me, a thread stretched between us, tightening every time we stood this close? I wanted to shake it off, to remind myself to be sensible. To loosen my grip on whatever this was becoming. But the truth settled in quietly. I didn’t really want to let it go.
“I did, Yellow,” Austin replied simply.
“What’s next?” I asked quickly, mostly to stop myself from saying something that would absolutely embarrass me.
“Next, we eat,” Austin said, glancing down at the cupcakes I’d nudged aside so I could read the notes beneath them.
He reached forward, and for half a second my breath caught. I wondered if his hand would find mine. If his fingers would lace through mine so completely that we wouldn’t be able to tell where one ended and the other began. Or maybe I hoped they would. But he didn’t touch me. Instead, he pulled one cupcake toward himself, then slid another across the table toward me. I wasn’t surprised by his choices. If anything, I would’ve been shocked if he’d picked differently.
“Pink for you,” he said, winking as the cupcake came to a stop in front of me.
“Yellow for you,” I replied quietly, my eyes drifting to the bright cupcake now in his hand.
“Like I said,” he murmured, already lifting it. “Yellow’s my favorite.” He took a bite, still smiling, and I couldn’t help wondering how he managed to eat without smearing frostingacross the corners of his mouth. The smile never faltered, and somehow, that made my own widen without my permission.
I let out a small laugh, my eyes drifting to the pink cupcake in front of me. Even though it looked impossibly sweet, there was a quiet, nagging part of me that didn’t want to eat it. I wasn’t sure what that feeling was, or where it came from. I didn’t know what it was trying to tell me, or why it had chosen now to make itself known. I only knew that it lingered a second longer than it should have. So I pushed it down. I took a bite. It was delicious. Of course it was. The frosting tasted like cotton candy and strawberries, soft and airy, melting against my tongue. I immediately regretted almost listening to that nagging voice in the first place.
“How’s your friend?” Austin asked, pulling me from the sweetness. “How’s Cherry?”
“She’s fine,” I said, watching him now instead of the cupcake. He was still smiling, but not as brightly. It was like someone had drawn a sheer curtain over his light. “Why?”
“Just checking in,” he replied, taking another bite before swallowing. “I know it can be hard to deal with something like that. Even if that son of a bitch didn’t get to her, she’s probably still carrying a lot.”
I paused, letting his words settle. I could see the shift in him as he spoke. The way his eyes dulled just slightly, the way his jaw tightened. He wasn’t just talking about Cherry. He was somewhere else now, somewhere heavier. I didn’t know exactly what memories he’d slipped into, but I had a feeling I knew who was there with him. And whatever it was, it wasn’t gentle. I chewed on my tongue, debating whether I should bring up what Cherry had mentioned about his friend, Seren.
“She seems okay for now,” I said instead, deciding to hold onto that information. I didn’t want to intrude on Cherry’s privacy, or Austin’s. Some things felt like they weren’t mine to name yet.
“Just make sure you keep an eye on her,” he nodded. “The mind can be tricky sometimes. It can hide its pain so completely that even the person it belongs to can’t see it.”
“At least you were there,” I sighed, finally voicing the thought that had been sitting heavy in my chest since that night. “And Levi, too.”
“Shouldn’t you be thanking fate?” Austin smirked, the word rolling off his tongue almost exactly the way Cherry always said it whenever I mentioned it.
I laughed, shaking my head as I finished the last bite of my pink cupcake. “I knew you thought I was crazy. It’s not crazy to trust in fate.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Yellow,” he said, softer now. But I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t fully convinced. “I just wonder if your theory has been tested enough. Are you done?” His gaze flicked to my empty hands. “Eat another one. I bought them for you.”
“It was so sweet I couldn’t possibly,” I shook my head, before his earlier words caught up to me. I let them settle, let them breathe. “You know… it was actually at my lowest that I started believing in fate. Not at my highest.”
Austin’s brows furrowed, his smirk disappearing completely. “Your brother?”
