You could’ve said you were busy,” Alex mutters venomously.
“I’m not.”
“You were at work.”
“I dictate my own hours.” I can’t help but gloat. “Does being around me make you uncomfortable?”
He scowls. “Do whatever you want. I don’t care.” Then he pulls out the list of items we need to find around town, ignoring me while his eyeballs burn through the paper, making sure he holds it at an angle that makes it difficult for me to read. He and I had the misfortune of drawing the same color paper out of a hat, because the universe is being a big old donkey, so now we’re shackled together as Team Yellow for the next twenty-five minutes. As Kristin mentioned, I love games, so I should beast this thing pretty quickly, and I’m always motivated by a prize at the end. Whoever wins gets a dozen cupcakes from Wafting Crescent.
“Aye-oh!” Trevor yells at us as he swaggers out of Half Moon Mill, hands cupped around his mouth. Half Moon Mill was the game’s starting point. “Already got one, suckers!” Teyonna, Trevor’s partner, is happily eating one of Ms. Vaughn’s waffles and mirroring Trevor’s celebratory dance moves. Her shirt reads DOGS AREN’T LAWN DECORATIONS. THEY BELONG IN YOUR HOUSE.
“Damn it,” Alex mutters. I grab the paper from him, accidentally tearing off a corner.
These moons are good with syrup
Get something sugary for your sweetheart
What lovebirds! He built her a house and decorated it
Bring a flower of the gods to the ghost of Downigan
Take a picture where the town begins
At a glance, it looks easy enough.
“You and Trevor . . .” Alex says under his breath, watching Trevor and Teyonna advance in our direction.
“Are adorable,” I finish for him.
“I’d love to know how that came to be.”
“Well, I’ve always been adorable. Trevor grew into it quite recently.” He lowers his head, gazing at me dead-on in that probing You will tell me all of your dark secrets way that he has, and I remind myself I have no reason to be flustered. I can lie to this man easy peasy. “We work together. Over time, we fell for each other.”
“He’s your boss. Seems unethical.”
“Colleague. Not boss.”
“Wouldn’t have pegged him as your type.” As in, How could you possibly want anyone who isn’t me? The arrogance is astounding.
“I’ve changed a lot since we knew each other,” I reply, allowing acid to coat my words. “And I don’t have a type. I like all sorts of men, not just ones who wear leather bracelets.” A quick glance at his bare arms informs me that he isn’t that type anymore. It also informs me that he isn’t married. No tan line where a wedding ring might ordinarily be, either.
His expression is indecipherable. I used to be able to guess his thoughts easily, but he’s gotten good at screening them.
“How’s it going, elder bro?” Trevor asks Alex, seeking my hand. He grabs it like it’s an apple he’s picked out of a supermarket bin. “How’s business?”
“Fine.”
“Fall into any bushes lately?”
Alex scowls. “I’ve never fallen into bushes. I’ve never fallen, period.”
“I don’t believe that.”
I feel my face scrunch. “Why would he fall into bushes?”
“Isn’t that a common hazard of the job?”
I bark a laugh. “Of being a neurologist?”
Alex is watching me with a strange expression, like he almost wants to smile. As if he thinks he might have misheard me, and what he imagined I said is hilarious. “I can’t believe you still remember.”
My mouth opens.
“I’m a roofer,” he clarifies. “Not a neurologist. Didn’t make it a full year through med school.”
I have nothing to say. He nods as though my stunned silence confirms a hunch.
“Isn’t that wild?” Trevor exclaims. “Dude could’ve been rolling in money. How much do you make a year? Forty-five thousand?”
“Be nice.” Teyonna elbows him. He elbows her back, that goofy smile returning to his face.
Alex rolls his eyes. “How much do you make? Curious to know what it pulls, pretending to be witches.”
I try not to smirk. Ooooohh, that bothers him.
“Oh, I’m not a witch,” Trevor replies. “I just support the witches. Let them do their witchy thing, while I run all the marketing. Which I am amazing at, thank you.”
I lean against him. “So amazing. And supportive. Hands down, the most reliable, dependable man I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Isn’t that nice,” Alex says flatly.
“What she does is legit,” Trevor tells him. “You staple shingles. How’s that more valuable than bringing true loves together?”
I think Alex is going to be insulted, but instead he flashes a lazy grin. “I also clean out gutters, if you ask real nice.” His eyes snap to mine. “Changed your mind about working with kids?”
The sideways attack spins me off-kilter.
I wave it away. “That was the dream of a teenager. What I wanted then wasn’t the fate my stars had in the works for me.”
“Hm,” Alex replies at length. I don’t appreciate the judgment wavering at the very top of his tone. He slides his hands into his pockets, leaning against a tree.
“You’re not doing what you thought you’d be doing when we were kids, either,” I point out snippily.
“True. I’m just surprised, is all. You always had a way with children.”
I pen in the flood of emotional bile I could dump in response. “What one is interested in changes as one ages,” Trevor observes sagely. “For example, one’s taste in significant others. Looking back, the girls I was with when I was eighteen . . . what was I thinking? I’m sure it’s the same for you, Romina.”
“I can’t imagine still being with the kind of person I’d date at eighteen,” I agree.
The corner of Alex’s mouth slides halfway between smirk and irritation. “Subtle.”
“Oh, right!” Trevor snaps his fingers. “I forgot. You two used to go out, didn’t you? My bad. Hope that doesn’t stir up any nasty memories, Alex.”
“I’m very over it.”
“Good, because Romina might end up being your stepsister-in-law someday.”
For a moment, Alex’s impassive stare glitches. His jaw tics, but he says nothing. Trevor decides to cap off his direct hit by leaning in for a kiss. I startle and swerve, his lips landing on my cheek. To save face, I try to kiss Trevor, but he chooses that moment to initiate again, attempting to kiss my other cheek, like we’re going for a French thing. We end up with three weird cheek pecks and one on the mouth, which tastes like waffles. Alex is poker-faced again when Trevor withdraws, arm slithering possessively around my waist.
Teyonna is quiet, fixating on a mound of dirt.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate us for being such a pretty couple?” Trevor wheedles, and Alex laughs.
Laughs!
I hate him for it. Who does he think he is, pretending to be unbothered? He has to be bothered. I would be, if my ex were presumably sleeping with my soon-to-be stepsibling.
It is infuriating that he might not be bothered.
“Come on,” Alex tells me, and begins walking, expecting me to fall in line. “I’m not losing to that guy.”
After finishing our waffles (which involved a lot of poking and prodding from Ms. Vaughn, who wanted to know if we were single. Alex confirmed he is—not that I care or anything), we walk quickly to make up for precious time. Our second destination is an obvious one.
Moonville isn’t your average town. You can walk our streets at high noon in August and not need to shade your eyes, everything a few degrees cooler beneath dense trees and shrubbery, a high, leafy green enclosure that blots out half the sky. Our brick roads are more than a century old, so narrow that street parking causes chaos and locals prefer walking or biking. Vallis Boulevard is interrupted here and there with snaking creeks, waterfront shops painted up like spring tulips. Between buildings, we have lush, ancient gardens, greenery climbing brick, swaying over your head.
To the west, East Falls plunges into Raccoon Creek, which threads off into wooded hills. By the end of next month, all those hills will be blue with love-in-a-mist flowers. Back in the 1920s, a circus train crashed somewhere up there, and allegedly there are still a few exotic beasts hiding out in the wilderness. I’ve heard campers and hikers swap stories about nearly being mauled by lions, showing blurry cell phone pictures to anyone who would look.
In the opposite direction, there’s the dilapidated train station from Moonville’s days as a mining town; Pit Stop Soda Shop and its sign’s revolving malted milkshake nicknamed Scary Larry due to the chilling number of teeth in its smiling face; and Our Little Secret, a murder mystery dinner theater.
And across from my shop, brother-sister duo Zaid and Bushra are in the business of selling something sugary for your sweetheart. Wafting Crescent Bakery is an apple-green Queen Anne house, the second floor of which is an apartment rented by Morgan. Like The Magick Happens, Wafting Crescent plays into town folklore, their windows a pink carnival of cupcakes. Someone recently proposed to his boyfriend by sticking a ring in a cupcake from that bakery, like a frosting decoration, so Zaid and Bushra have been trying to capitalize on the attention by pretending that using their cupcakes to propose is an old tradition. Now half of their cupcakes come with plastic rings on top.
For a tiny dot on the map, we get a steady trickle of tourists thanks to ghost-hunting blogs touting our history, our popcorn drizzled with pink chocolate and crushed sweets, and of course, the big one: the legend that there’s love magic in our air, in our streams and trees. Visit our town with the person you’re sweet on and come away engaged to be married, or so they say. You can trace the roots of this story back to As Evening Falls, an anonymously authored book of poems, country sayings, and short tales written about this area in the mid-1800s. The author must have fallen in love here, romanticizing their experience into a whimsical ninety pages that sank teeth in our foundations, legends only strengthening with time. Some of my neighboring shop owners believe the stories, truly. Most don’t. But all of them welcome the tourism with open arms.
I look at the lore of love magic in the air sideways, from a cautious distance lest it ever reach out and try to gobble me up again. Twice, I have given my heart to someone in this town, albeit different halves of it, with different types of love. Both times, it was handed back to me broken. At any rate, there’s nothing in the legend’s fine print about the love being lasting.
“Hello, hello!” Bushra chimes as we walk through the door, heavenly scents (many of them common in Bangladesh) curling up to greet us. Key lime pie. Chomchom. Rosogolla. Kheer Mohan. Balushai. Shondesh. Cocoa brioche morning buns, banana fritters, and every flavor of bread. She spots the paper in Alex’s hand. “You’re the third team to show up so far.”
“Because you took so long flirting with your boyfriend,” Alex mutters to me. “We could’ve been first.”
“We would’ve been first if you hadn’t insisted on arguing with my boyfriend,” I counter.
Bushra’s smile takes on a nervous energy as her eyes swivel between us. “So . . . something for your sweethearts, then?”
“Nothing wrong with third place!” Zaid pipes up, shuttling a tray of dough into the oven.
Alex and I both grunt. We used to play games together all the time, and it could get . . . fierce. At the time, we had affection for each other to round out our competitive edges.
Not so, anymore.
I study him sidelong, wishing he weren’t so good-looking, trying to find fault but unable to come up with any. Physically, anyway. He’s a little above average height, average build. He’s got strong arms (probably a result of his career) but isn’t ripped, his torso is a little thicker in a way that I like. And then, of course, there are those stupidly attractive eyes rimmed with dark lashes. A hard jaw. A pouty mouth that makes him look like he’s simmering on the inside.
“Let’s hurry it up,” he says, as I pore over the selection of iced, colorful treats. To Bushra: “I’ll have the Danish.”
“You’ll have the Danish, please,” I add tartly.
He mumbles a please, throwing me an irritated look for calling out his lack of manners when he used to call out other people for their lack of manners, and I’d bet anything he still does.
In spite of wanting to speed this up so that we can advance to number three—What lovebirds! He built her a house and decorated it—Alex trying to rush me while I choose my sweet is a cheese grater against my nerves.
“Hmmm.” I tap the glass display case. “What do I want . . . what do I want . . .”
Alex opts not to give his food to a sweetheart and practically swallows it whole, like a snake. “Have the Danish.”
“No, I don’t think so . . .” I glance up at Bushra in her lilac headscarf and matching lipstick, taking pains not to meet Alex’s burning stare. “What’s your special of the day?”
She brushes the flour on her palms onto her apron. “Cherry turnovers.”
“Mm. Hm hm hm, la te da te da.” I tap the glass some more, drumming a tune. “I’m not in the mood for cherries. What about pineapple upside-down cake? You got any of that?”
Alex shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “For the love of god.”
Bushra bites her lip. “No, I’m afraid. We do have pineapple-cherry dump cake, but . . . it has cherries in it.”
I beam. “Sounds perfect!”
Alex provides a dramatic backdrop, stare withering, as I stab a plastic fork into my dessert and eat it one tiny bite at a time. I’ll be my own sweetheart today, too. I circle the bakery at a leisurely pace, stepping one tile at a time, chitchatting with every customer who comes in. Finally, he has enough. “Can we get moving now?”
“Sure, I’ve been waiting on you,” I reply brightly, pointing at the gooey contents of my bowl. “This is delicious. You want some?”
He makes an exasperated noise, pushing out the door.
