“I like her, too,” I say. “And yeah, I am.”
“I’m not goingto be surprised that it’s the skeleton,” she says. “I know where we are.”
“I wasn’t trying to surprise you with Bart,” I lie, because I was. I didn’t realize she knew her way around that well already. It makes a bubble of something light and stupid swell inside me that she does. “I’m trying to surprise you with Bart’sappearance.”
It’s late, and it rained a little while we were at Silas’s place. The sidewalk is damp, and all the streetlights reflect back at us. It’s quiet here, even though we’re in town. There’s no highway nearby, no naval yard, no airport. Just the occasional car a few streets over, someone’s late-night television, the breeze through the leafless trees. I can even see stars.
“Okay, close your eyes,” I tell her and get a skeptical look in return. I parked on the block behind Wells’s house, so we haven’t seen Bart yet—we came up from the back—but I want her to have the full, very romantic experience.
“You showed me a picture from last year,” she points out. “With the negligee and the heart boxers.”
“C’mon, trust me.”
Madeline takes a deep breath, and then she does.
I take her hand and lace our fingers together. She’s uncertain at first, hesitant, but after a few steps she relaxes a little and starts moving normally. I hold on to her tightly, quietly narrating everything (four more steps to the corner, okay, turn left, there’s a crack in front of your right foot so watch out), and she trusts me.
She always did, I realize, from the night we met. She trusted me more than I trusted myself, spectacularly vulnerable in a wayI had to learn to be with her. A way I’m still learning to be. I stare at her now. She’s stopped on the sidewalk with her eyes still closed, and I think: I can’t believe she thought I was worthy.
“Turn to the left, then open your eyes.”
She obeys, her eyelashes flutter open, and then her face lights up.
“What isthat?” she whisper-shouts, clutching my hand even harder. She’s giggling. “Is that—is he Cupid?”
“I think so,” I murmur.
“Wow,” she says in a tone I choose to believe isawestruck. “Javi, are those…wings? And a halo? Why does Cupid have a halo?”
“I wasn’t consulted and couldn’t begin to guess,” I tell her. “Wells and Josie did this one all by themselves.” I help out with about half of Bart’s costumes, and did the initial setup, but Valentine’s Day is special to the two of them. It’s very cute.
“This is incredible,” she murmurs. “It looks like one of the stop-motion skeletons fromThe Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Only it wandered through Renaissance Faire first and grabbed some wings.”
“I’m not sure it’s exactly what they were going for,” I admit.
“What were they going for?”
Bart does, technically, look like Cupid: he’s got an enormous bow and arrow, a heart for an arrowhead, and a toga wrapped around his bony frame. He has wings that are too small for him and a fake rose gripped in his teeth.
The thing is weaponry, sheets as clothing, and tiny wings have a certain vibe when they’re on a picture of a cute, chubby baby. Bart is a twelve-foot-tall skeleton. On him, it’s morenightmarishthancute.
“Less terror, maybe?”
“I feel like he’s threatening me with romance.”
“Happy Valentine’s Dayor else.”
She bumps against me and then leans into my side, our hands still linked. I rest one cheek against her hair.
“Too bad there’s no mistletoe,” she teases. “How come there’s a make-out plant for Christmas but not Valentine’s? Seems backward.”
It’s a great question that I don’t have a good answer to. “Maybe on Valentine’s, every plant is a make-out plant?”
“Hm.”
“I’d forgotten about the mistletoe when I brought you here on Christmas,” I admit. “And I was so nervous you’d see it and think I was trying to be romantic.”
“I was too busy looking at the mistletoe and worrying that you didn’t realize it was there and I was overthinking your motives.”
