Once their connection was severed, she looked into trusting hazel eyes as he snuggled into her.
" He wandered into our garden about a year ago and my mom has been feeding him. She agreed that Tom could use a stable home."
"Even one with the coven that the town is turning on?" Her question was filled with derision, a taste of anger on her tongue as she thought of the people who started treating her like a leper.
"This town is whack, you know that. Come on," he nodded behind her. "Let me walk you home."
She sighed as she followed his lead. She wasn't a tall person, having taken after her mother's height, stopping at five foot three. Jeremy towered next to her.
She wondered what he would look like in ten years when a young man would morph into a man.
"You're thinking about coming around, aren't you?"
His cockiness was somehow not annoying her as much as she would expect. It was probably the snuggly cat purring against her chest.
"You really don't believe you're hexed?"
He shook his head. "Nope."
"So you just, all of a sudden took an incredibly intense interest in me, a nobody who you've only had to talk to in required class activities."
"Is it incredibly intense?" She watched him tilt his head, feigning a look of thinking and she smiled.
"You started showing up to my locker between classes, leaving notes, hijacked my phone number, showed up at The Lost Souls House, got me a cat, and you somehow know my work schedule."
"Man, sounds like you have a stalker. You should probably do a protection spell when you get home."
He was joking but she gave him a very serious look and said, "Actually, yeah. I should grab a raven's feather and some wild violets. Keep a lookout."
A look of weighing her words crossed his face as he looked at her then they laughed and she nearly stopped in her tracks at the sound. Laughing with Jeremy Bracker was not something she could have imagined a few weeks ago. Walking beside him with an orange cat snuggled in her arms named Tom Hanks that he brought her, as they joked about magic and she tried to convince him that he didn't truly like her was a fever dream.
"So your parents," she hedged, knowing how difficult it could be to talk about the people who created and raised you. Or were supposed to.
She thought of her mother, in a rehab center again, probably blaming her addictions on everyone, even on her, instead of taking responsibility.
Her Uncle Jay was her miracle. She knew that. He took her in without an ounce of hesitation. He'd been there for her since she first found her mom asleep in her own vomit when Bess was only five years old and had learned how to speed dial his phone number because he taught her.
And then Ursula came along and in a way, she felt like she was always meant to be the mother figure or older sister she needed. They connected.
She never felt out of place around her or Eloise or the other women that had become her family.
Walking onto the grounds of The Lost Souls put her at ease.
"My parents are not bad parents but also not going to be who I hope to turn out to be."
"They're obviously successful."
He laughed but it was hollow. "Sure. My dad owns a law firm. But he comes from old money."
"Ah, an East Egg situation."
"Yes. I will never be Gatsby I'm afraid."
She smiled. "I mean, he did die."
"Yeah, but there's something about making your own fortune that feels weightier."
Her eyes watched him from the side as they walked. "You know that he absolutely made his fortune from seedy sources, right?"
