I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was probably pointless to argue with her, but my hurt feelings leaked through anyway. “So you have no idea what I do as a job, but youimmediatelythought I would be the perfect fit to joinyourbusiness… selling weight loss shakes?”
“I runmy ownbusiness sellingSkinny Slurp: The most delicious weight loss shakes!And you would be runningyourown business, as my mentee! It doesn’t really matter specifically what you’re doing right now. It’s about your personality, andhow you’re such a go-getter!” The false bravado was back in full force.
“Do you not hear yourself?” I asked her, completely baffled and unhappy. We’d been friends once, but it didn’t seem like we were even compatible anymore. “Forget about dinner, Merri. I am absolutely not interested in any of that, so I’m going to pass on coming tonight. Please don’t invite me to anything like this again.” I cut off the supply of my magic to the calling chip that was pressed between my thumb and my forefinger, and the spectral messenger immediately winked out, flitting off to find the next message being offered for delivery.
I walked to my room, tossed what little clothes I’d brought into my bag, making up my mind to return to my little college town a day early, and then tossed one last scathing look at my leaking windowsill as I left my apartment. I was angry for many reasons: that my weekend home had been tainted by a bad friend, that nothing had been particularly pleasant, thatnothinghad felt like home. The whole time I had been here had been akin to trying to fit myself into a jacket that had shrunk in the wash. It looked the same, and seemed the same, but it just didn’t fit me right anymore. The entire time I’d been here, I’d been thinking about Alistair and how my heart fluttered at his deep, buzzy voice and thatirritatedme too. He’d ruined my dislike of that shabby little village with his wing sparkles and his quiet questions. He’d made it seem more like home than my real home. I wasn’t even sure which one was my real home anymore. And that made me angry too.
“To the train station, please,” I told the cart driver with a certainty in my chest that I hadn’t expected as I climbed in and closed the door behind me. It was the only thing that had felt right this whole weekend.
“Sure thing, miss. That’s a real pretty apple you’ve got there,” he said, nodding toward the piece of fruit I’d pulled out of my bag and bitten into. “Can’t say I’ve seen one like that before.”
An unwilling grin spread across my face. “No, you haven’t. They’re very unique,” I told him.
Just like the man who grows them.
Chapter 7
Lilith
Several weeks later
I pounded on Alistair’sdoor in a huff, even though I knew he wouldn’t be awake yet. “Alistair! Get up! Your damn frog is back!”
I’d come home from work afterweeksof frog-free living to find that silly frog back in my house. It’s entirely possible that he’d been there longer than I realized because the pothos was getting a little unruly, but I glanced at the mushroom fae as I set down my purse and there he was, hiding in the leaves with them.HOW DID HE DO IT?
“It’s unlocked,” came a sleepy, muffled reply.
I pushed the door open and entered. “Why is your door unlocked?” I chastised him. “What if somebody—” I stopped in my tracks and promptly burst out laughing. “What are youdoing?” I asked him incredulously.
He was lying face-down on his couch as though he were ‘planking’, his arms down by his sides, with his face literally pressed into the seat of the couch.
“Are you asleep?” I asked doubtfully as I leaned over to peer at him. “Is this how you sleep?”
He didn’t reply other than to give an irritated buzz.
“You sleep like a baby owl?” I asked, cackling with delighted glee at the ridiculousness of it. I’d figured he probably didn’t lie on his wings, but I had never imagined a full baby-owl-position.
He lifted his face off the couch seat to stare at me with bleary eyes. “What?” he asked, still sounding half asleep.Oh, my heart.
“Baby owls sleep sprawled out just like this, with their faces flat on the floor because their heads are too heavy for their bodies,” I informed him, nearly in tears at the image before me. I couldn’t stop laughing at the mental comparison. “Alistair, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Your antennae are a mess, by the way,” I told him through my laughter.
He buzzed at me again and put his face back down, causing me to cackle even harder.
“No!” I squawked at him. “Get up! Your frog is back. Patrick! He’s in my house again.” I poked at his shoulder through the mounds of feathery gray fluff that covered it, surreptitiously enjoying the softness of it and the sparkly scales that came away on my fingers when I touched it.
Just the other day we’d sat together on this very couch, sipping mango smoothies and discussing our preferred medium for propagating plant cuttings—as I wondered privately what it would be like to kiss his face off—and I’d chuckled about how much glitter always fell out of his chunky-knit throw blanket.
“That one was a lost cause from the start, I’m afraid,” he’d informed me. “I hand knitted it myself using that lovely homespun yarn the goblin who lives across the hall from you makes. You know Susan, right? Well, any fiber I touch is forever destined to be shiny. But it’s so soft, isn’t it?” The blanket was currently in a pile on the floor next to him.
Alistair made a grumpy noise at me and lifted his head again. “He’s notmyfrog.”
“You named him,” I argued.
“I didn’t name him! That’s his name,” he insisted. I was so used to Alistair’s weirdness that it didn’t even occur to me to ask how he knew the frog’s name.
“He lives at your orchard,” I protested, picking up his blanket and trying to drape the enormous thing across the back of his couch. “Why did you sleep on your couch? You’re such a bachelor.”
“I didn’t expect little elves to come barging in before wake-up time,” he mumbled into his seat, laughing when I made an outraged sound, and then wrapping his two left arms around me to pull me down onto the couch with him. “We need to find you some diurnal friends,” he told me as he tucked me into his side. I was stunned, quietly delighting in the warm press of his body against mine and the deep, woodsy scent of him, so heavy I could drown in it. We were very comfortable with each other at this point, but that had never extended tosnuggling.
