“I need a plan,” he said. “A Willow plan.”
Cassius clapped him on the back, and then his hand lowered to his side. Ezra’s chest had opened all the way.
“Go get her,” Cassius said. “As strategically as you want, brother.”
Three
“Ofcourseit’sadate.” Saffron draped herself across the stuffed chair in one corner of Willow’s room. “Only in your head could it be anything else.”
“It’s not that I’m worried I offended him,” Willow said, “asking him out. If that’s what I did.”
“It’s what you did.”
“Which is fine, because we’re not living in Austen times anymore. I don’t have to be all, ‘must not betray my depth of regard to Mr. Bingley until after he proposes to me.’”
“This is true.” A smile twitched at the corners of Saffron’s mouth. “Anyway he said yes, so he’s not old-fashioned about it either.”
“But…” Willow shoved her fingers through her hair and tried to find the words to explain her worry. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Definitely not.” Saffron was full-on grinning now.
“What if he likes assertive? And what if he said yes because he thinksI’massertive? And then he’s so disappointed when he realizes I’m just awkward introvert me?”
“Well, then you’ll be sad for a minute, and I’ll remind you he’s an idiot to be disappointed with the awesomeness that is my sister, and we’ll watchPride and Prejudiceand list all the ways Ezra Sterling is inferior to Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
Willow gave a sigh and fell back, mock-swooning, onto her bed. Then she sat up. This was serious. This was potentially life-nudging—not life-altering, not permanently, but at least nudging her toward some path or other she might not have found if she’d never asked Ezra…for a favor.
“Before we go further with this, time for cookies,” she said.
Saffron bounced to her feet. “Cookies!”
For a few minutes they worked quietly in the kitchen, preparing a cookie sheet, gathering ingredients, utensils, the mixing bowl. Then Willow measured and mixed while Saffron sat on the counter as though she were still a kid in grade school. Not unfair, of course; mixing dough was a one-woman job.
“If nothing else,” Willow said, “I can enjoy the fair and not worry about Keith following me around.”
“There you go.”
“But really, I…I do kind of like Ezra. I kind of like him a lot.”
“I know. And I hope someday we’re reminiscing about the unexpected first step of your romance.” Saffron leaned across the counter to swipe one finger through the dough. “I have a request though.”
“Okay.”
Whatever it was, Willow would try to do it. Cautions weren’t needed; she was already outlining safeguards just in case Ezra’s harmlessness turned out to be an act. Of course Saffron knew this; for years her sister had been her safety check-in after every date.
Saffron licked the dough from her finger, then nodded approval. “Okay, don’t judge this, but you know some of the folks in town really think they’re…kind of a cult out there.”
“Oh, come on, Saf—”
“No, hear me out, okay? You said you would.”
She nodded Saffron on as she pulled out both cookie sheets, which just fit beside each other on the middle oven rack. She took one, Saffron took the other, and together they began forming small circles of dough and dropping them onto their respective sheets.
Saffron said, “I think you should ask him about it, just to see how he reacts. If he gets ultra-defensive and weird, that’s a red flag.”
Fair.
“And then there’s the lupine thing.”
