Slow, careful, she slips her touch up my chest, to my face, and cups my jaw. Half-dazed, she asks, “And…you?”
“Me?”
“I don’t have billionaire money, but you are paying me well. Do you like flowers? Chocolate? Do you have any rules about gifts? I’m specific about them because I grew up not understanding that I was supposed to pretend to be happy when I got something I didn’t like. I got in trouble for it a lot. Called ungrateful. Even when I said I was grateful for the thought, but they could return it and get their money back because I’d never use it.”
I laugh. “You said that, huh?”
Her cheeks flush. “Well, what else is a seven-year-old supposed to say when she’s given aBarbiedoll, instead of ababydoll?”
“Perfectly understandable, yes.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m basking in how kind you’ve always been. I would have asked that they return the gift andgive the money to me, so I could invest it in stocks.” I clear my throat. “Because I did. At least. Several times.”
Her lips part, perfectly round. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“So giftingisa matter of importance to you, too. I need guidelines.”
“I, genuinely, think that any efforts you make for me would be so profoundly wonderful, you could get me a bucket of dirt, and I’d love it for the memory of the thought alone. From someone I don’t know or care for, a gift I don’t want is a paperweight. But from you? Paperweights are precious because they are still proof that you thought of me.”
“So…no guidelines?”
“I am eager to learn what you gravitate toward and the reasoning behind the ways you might think of me.”
Her thumbs move across my cheeks, back and forth, worrying. “Without guidelines, I might gocrazy. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I long to learn.”
“It might be a terrible inconvenience for you. You might have many, many regrets.”
“That’s okay. I have a helpful flow chart to assist me in ascertaining my feelings.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“I think it is so dear I can barely form thoughts about it.” Letting my eyes close, I relish in her nearness. “You are so dear. I hope, should you learn more about me and decide I’m not what you’re looking for, that I might still be able to show you just how beautiful you are. Knowing you might leave me and face a world as a shadow of who you can be would only compound the agony of losing you.”
“You think I might be the one to reject you?” she asks.
“Our history might suggest that is an accurate fear, don’t you think?”
Her gaze lowers. “I don’t know. I don’t make decisions lightly. And I’m very forgiving. Fawn recently horrifically betrayed me, and you know what I did? I went home and made her an overnight breakfast yogurt parfait.”
“And you didn’t even poison it?”
“I put asingleblueberry. She doesn’t like blueberries.”
“You monster,” I murmur.
Her gaze slashes to mine. “Well, okay. I put the blueberry in abagbeside the parfait, just in case the flavor would have leeched into it all night. But I wrote on that bag,How dare you.” She mutters, “I’m not a monster… And she didn’t seem to understand that I was beingverymean to her, because she laughed in front of the fridge for a solid three minutes.” Mirabelle sniffs, adamant. “We’re good now, though. All forgiven.”
“I love you,” I say, again, because I so utterly do not know how else I am supposed to respond to the most adorable woman in the world telling me the most adorable revenge scheme I have ever heard.
She flinches. “Can you stop that?”
“Loving you? No, I don’t think so.”
