Cosima’s crescent moon brows found two wrinkles in the middle of her forehead. “I like it better when you talk instead of being so quiet. Continue.”
“If my phone worked, I would pull it out and make you record that, so I could play it back later when you complained about me.”
“When have I complained about you? You’ve talked plenty, and I’ve never told you to be quiet. You wiggle around like you’re actually plugged in, but this doesn’t bother me at all. What else could I complain about? That you’re kind? Charming? Maybe that your esoteric knowledge goes surprisingly deep?”
“My raincoat. You complained about that.”
“And I solved my own problem by replacing it. Nothing to do with you, actually.”
“You complained that I—” Edie tried to remember. Had Cosima complained about her? As inher, Edie, the essential Edie Ashlynn Whitelock? “Hmm.”
“Exactly.” Cosima nodded with only the point of her chin, like a royal. “I have not. Also, you can be assured that if I do have a complaint about you, it will be one hundred percent correct. Like the jacket.”
Edie was in new territory. The princess took her seriously.
More than seriously. She hadn’t presented Edie with an ounce of skepticism or jokes about Fauxmage, even as Edie tried to beat her to the put-downs.
Cosima blamedGreen Bayfor the failure of Fauxmage. She had no trouble believing that Edie was meant to do something creative and special, and the existence of the pizza crust factoryjob seemed to offend her. And—not to beat a dead sartorial metaphor—there was the jacket. The Paul Smith jacket was the jacket of a serious woman.
She had no trouble imagining Cosima personally rounding up patrons from the brew pubs and sports bars and Targets back home and escorting them to Fauxmage until Edie had to expand to meet the demand. In no time at all, Cosima Frank had become a friend and probably the best, most loyal champion Edie had ever had.
It was the kind of friendship that, if Edie was careful with it, would mean that she lost the “whose life is the worst” game forever, just for having such a friend.
She met Cosima’s big blue eyes, which at some point had becomeCosima’seyes, not Phoebe Frank’s. Cosima’s were more interesting. Stormier. Right now, they were obviously trying to figure Edie out, probably because Edie was staring at them while her stomach plummeted like she was flying down the first drop on a roller coaster.
This woman wasdifficult—so difficult that her difficulty established a scale that balanced Edie’s personality and made her somehownotdifficult. Made her fit. Did Edie want to be anywhere else on earth right now than inside of this tête-à-tête with Cosima Frank on a Lincolnshire train? No, she did not. No other place would feel correct. Shelikedthis feeling of fitting somewhere that was exactly right.
Cosima gave Edie a sly, subtle look that somehow communicated she was taking a break from their mutually intense eye contact before someone got too horny and kissed the other on the forehead. She adjusted her position, gracefully reclining with her arms crossed and one booted foot perched on her knee. “I could tell you something that I wasn’t going to tell you. I was planning to maintain a polite silence about it.” She bit her lip.“I think my life might be better if I stopped with things like polite silence.”
“That sounds like a secret.” Edie’s heart rate kicked up.
“I don’t think so. It’s not something I’ve known long enough that it qualifies as a secret, and I think you’ve already guessed it. But it might not be something you want to know for sure, out loud, sitting beside me inside a steel box with no escape.”
“You must have really killed at girls’ boarding school.” Edie narrowed her eyes. “I bet you sat on gossip like a fat dragon on doubloons.”
“I’d like to kiss you.” Above the ivory silk drape of her blouse, Cosima’s throat went red, making Edie’s vision tunnel at the same time her heart stopped. “What I mean is, I’ve started thinking about kissing you, and I’m having a difficult time stopping myself from thinking about it. Keep in mind that I’m not planning on doing anything about this. They are only thoughts. Intrusive, near constant, butthoughts.”
Edie wondered, very sincerely, if her native language was English. She had never been without words, but at this moment, she doubted that her consciousness was comprised of anything more than bright shooting lights, a racing pulse, and gay panic the like of which she hadn’t experienced since she was at a seventh-grade sleepover and Britnee Cordan spent the entirety of a movie braiding and re-braiding her hair.
“Say something.” Cosima made this request with her mouth. Her mouth that had picked up the blush bleeding over her cheeks and made her lips look swollen. Her mouth that would like to kiss Edie’s, wanted it so much it was sendingintrusive thoughtsto Cosima’s brain. Constantly. Constant, muscled, insistent kissing thoughts everywhere in her mind. About Edie.
Cosima wanted to know what Edietastedlike andfeltlike and how she would respond to being kissed.
“I can’t say something.”
“Why?”
“My friendship plan.” Edie was regretting their purchase of express tickets. She needed the train to stop so she could suck in some outdoors air or lay down on the platform.
“How does what I said—what I shared very vulnerably, I might add—disrupt your friendship plan? Which you haven’t mentioned to me, let’s be clear.”
“I don’t have a friendship plan. I just said it impulsively because I’d already told you that I can’t say something, and so I briefly tried something out that seemed vaguely adult. You can’t just tell a person something like that.” Edie had nothing. Nothing. She was rifling through a pile of disorganized boxes labeledhow not to say anything stupid, and they were empty.
“Like what? I can’t tell the person I want to kiss that I want to kiss her? Or did I tell it wrong? I wasn’t under the impression there was a script.”
“You said that you’dliketo,” Edie protested weakly. “That you were thinking about it. Not that youwantto.”
Cosima shoved herself against her seatback with a huff. “Semantics. Honestly. I have no words.”
