Page 68 of A Witch in Notting Hill

“It’s fine,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.It’s fine.That’s it? Her relationship was in early days and it was justfine? Maybe this guy really was a dick. “What about you?” she asked. “No romance?”

I watched as she staggered a few small pumpkins, then lit a votive with a decorative match from a glass case. She shookthe match out, and smoke drifted from her hand into the space between us, at once heavy and light and making me wish there wasn’t space between us at all. Was she asking because she was making polite conversation, or was she asking because she wanted to know?

“No romance,” I confirmed, taking the match from her hand and dropping it into my back pocket to throw out later.

“What about that ex Lola mentioned?”

“Fuckin’ Lola.” I laughed, raking both hands through my hair. “She’s digging, honestly. That ex is ancient history. I mentioned her once when I was drunk last year and Lola hasn’t let it go.”

“Why’d you break up?” she asked. I let out a whistle, not quite expecting that question and trying to figure out how to answer.

“Difference in beliefs, mostly,” I said eventually, settling on the truth and trying not to cringe at her hard exhale. “She thought being in a relationship meant we should be together every second of every day. Same friends, same plans, same hobbies. You lose yourself pretty quickly like that, you know? Started to feel a bit suffocating after a while, but she wasn’t interested in talking about it, so there wasn’t much left to do but part ways.”

“That must have been hard,” she said, her brown eyes warm and soft in the morning light. “Dating in the industry is the exact opposite. No one ever sees each other, never has the same plans or is even in the same city. You get to keep yourself, but you lose the relationship.”

“There’s got to be a happy medium somewhere, don’t you think?”

“In a perfect world.”

“But not this one?”

“Remains to be seen.” For a second, her smile was enough to convince me this might be a perfect world after all.

“Willow,” I said, clenching my jaw while I mustered the courage to get the rest of the sentence out of my mouth. “Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I have to ask. Is it serious with this bloke? The one you’re seeing?”

She cast her gaze to the ceiling, taking a few breaths before she looked back at me. “It’s... early days,” she said again, a phrase that was becoming more meaningless every time I heard it.

“Early days that are going to turn to later days, or early days that are going to fizzle out before you get very far?”

“That’s a loaded question, Hadley,” she said, a smile playing on her pink lips.

“That isn’t an answer, James.”

“Why does it matter?”

“I have a hard time believing it isn’t obvious why I’m asking.” I stood from the stool I was perched on and took a few steps in her direction, hands in my pockets to mitigate temptation. She was too smart for me to have to spell it out. And I was too wired to say it eloquently. At this rate, I was at the risk of blurting. And I wasn’t that kind of guy. The kind of guy who blurts.

“Oliver,” she said.

“I’m listening.”

She put the edge of her thumbnail between her teeth, and that look alone told me everything I needed to know.

“You wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t know the answer,” she said.

Okay, so, same page.“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear you say it.”

“You took the easy way out,” she said, dropping her voice to a pitch I thought was meant to mimic mine. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Hardly the easy way. Just not keen on underestimating you, that’s all. Don’t want to be spelling something out for ya that you already know.”

She rolled her eyes, and it drew me in even farther. Another step. “I wouldn’t be here if it was serious.” she said.

“Here in London?”

“Here in the shop.”

This time she took a step, and time slowed. It was hardly eight o’clock in the morning, and my pulse was racing, my palms itching. Head spinning. Nothing ever happened to me. And I liked it that way. But now here I was, face-to-face with an A-list American celebrity in my shop before I even opened, dancing around things we couldn’t quite say, for reasons we weren’t willing to acknowledge.