Page 56

The shock was almost too much to keep Leo from kissing her back. Almost.

It was as if, five years after their first kiss, they were continuing what they’d started. Like they’d hit pause, and there were her lips moving once more against his, there was that little sigh escaping her throat, there was her body pressed warm and tight against his, and oh god he was going to get hard right here in front of this maniacally grinning elfin family.

That thought was almost enough to make him pull back, but he couldn’t stop. Not now. Not with her hand tangled in his hair and her tongue slipping through his lips and her melting into him like she wanted to become one.

He closed his eyes, surrendering to the kiss, and then she popped up. Not Shira. Emily. Her chin was trembling; her arms were crossed, her body turned slightly away as if she couldn’t bear to face him full-on.

That thought was enough to make him pull back. Not easily. Not smoothly. The kiss broke like something smashing, a light suddenly going dark.

They stood there for a moment, almost nose to nose, breathing in sync. She spoke first. “Is it Emily?”

Hearing her name out loud was like a bucket of ice water drenching his head. He took a step back. “Emily and I broke up. I told you that.”

Shira touched her lips, then shook her head. “But you’re still hurting over her.” Even though the only light out here was emitted by cheerful elves and a plastic menorah, he could still see how crimson her cheeks were. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I thought…I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think.”

He couldn’t help himself. “This is the one time in your life that you choose not to think something through before doing it?”

Little spots of red bloomed on her cheeks. “What are you talking about?”

Honestly, he wasn’t totally sure if he was talking to her or to himself. “Everything was great in our relationship, until I started thinking about things too hard. She wanted to get married and have kids,” he said. He took a deep breath. “And we’d been together for almost three years. We’re almost thirty. She wasn’t rushing things or being unreasonable, and that’s what made it so hard. I thought about it for way longer than I had to, and she got really mad at me for stringing her along.” Which he hadn’t been. He’d loved Emily. He’d loved her the whole time. He just…

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Shira during all the wrong moments.

“What?” said Shira. “You don’t want to get married or have kids?”

“I…” The words stuck in his throat. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married or have kids. When he thought about himself five, ten, fifteen years in the future, there was a kid or two there, learning how to hit a ball off a tee or painting a picture of a smiling family beneath a shining sun. He heard someone calling him Dad, and he felt a woman standing there by his side.

He just didn’t think it was Emily.

He’d loved Emily. He cared deeply about Emily. But when he thought about everything he’d go through in the future, he didn’t see her there next to him. He saw Shira. And that made him furious because Shira had made it so clear that she didn’t see him there with her.

So to have her kiss him like this out of nowhere, right now, now that he had everything in his life together? When she hadn’t wanted him before?

It felt shitty. So shitty.

And even shittier to have her admit that she hadn’t thought about the kiss at all, that she’d just kissed him on the spur of the moment. Like she could just play with his feelings and those feelings didn’t matter. When he’d spent all this time thinking so hard about his future and his relationships and she could do this to him with a snap of her fingers, it wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair.

“I’m sorry,” Shira was saying now. “It wasn’t cool to kiss you without asking. Especially since you’re still hurting over Emily. I shouldn’t have made things about you and me right away.”

She sounded so calm about it, like she assumed he’d spent plenty of time thinking about the two of them, that it almost made him want to stomp the head of an elf into the dirt. “What are you talking about?” he said, an incredulous laugh bubbling up in his throat. “What do you mean, you and me?”

Her eyes were wider and rounder than any chocolate gelt coin he’d ever eaten. “Well, you kissed me before—”

“Five years ago,” Leo said. “And then remember what happened after that?” He spit out the words like he was trying to rid his mouth of something bitter. “You didn’t think I was good enough for you.” His stomach bubbled. “And now, what?” In a flash, that whole speech she’d given him while “house hunting” about only wanting a sturdy three-bedroom took a whole new light. “You’re ready to settle, so I should still be at your beck and call?”

“That’s not at all how I feel,” Shira said, and now her eyes were shiny like gelt. Well, too bad, Shira. Leo refused to feel sorry for her. “I had to change and grow up and mature and realize those shiny status symbols didn’t matter to me anymore. It has nothing to do with—”

“So if I was still at the warehouse, you’d want to kiss me.”

She reared back like he’d slapped her. “You hated the warehouse,” she said. “You were miserable.”

“Yeah, but did you actually care about that, or did you just care about being seen with a guy who works at a warehouse?”

“I was immature,” she whispered, then raised her voice. “That was five years ago! People are allowed to change in five years and decide that they care about different things than they used to.”

Sure. Sure they were. But he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to get over the lingering feeling that she’d never think he was good enough. He’d quit his fancy job at the studio. He was going to work on houses, and then what? Maybe he’d decide to do something else. Maybe he’d make another game. He was a grown-up, and he’d always make sure he had enough to pay the bills, because of the whole grown-up thing, but he wasn’t done growing and changing. He didn’t know who he’d be next.

But he knew he’d never be the kind of guy Dr. William had been, because he didn’t want to be that kind of guy. He didn’t want to work work work and never do anything else. He didn’t find his passion in a job. He hoped he’d find it somewhere else, but maybe not. Maybe he just wasn’t one of those people with a great all-consuming passion anywhere in his life. Maybe he’d just be content. That didn’t sound so bad.