Page 134 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

And don’t ask me how you’ll know.

You already do.

CHAPTER 36

MERRYWEATHER

The problem with being told to choose something you already know you want is that it makes me, at least, immediately suspicious.

I read The Third Fairy’s message again Wednesday morning on the bus, one hand wrapped around the overhead rail while somebody’s backpack repeatedly bumps against my hip.

Choose the thing you keep returning to.

Flora.

Easy.

The thing you look for when something good happens because you want to tell someone.

Also Flora.

Yesterday, after Phillip sent me the preliminary description for the new role, she was the first person I texted.

The person whose attention has started to matter more than it should.

Flora. Obviously.

I scroll down.

The one you want to know you back.

My thumb stops.

The bus lurches around a corner, forcing me to tighten my grip.

It’s still Flora. But that one requires a deeper explanation.

Flora knows me. More of me every time I see her. She knows the version who can look at twelve months of sales data and find the problem everyone else has been discussing for thirty-three minutes, and the one who needs three alarms in the morning. She knows how I take my coffee and how I like to be touched. She’s seen me naked and asleep, and laughing hard enough to snort.

There are things she doesn’t know yet.

And I assume that’s normal. That’s how getting to know someone works.

Still, my mind supplies another screen. Another conversation. Another woman who knows things about me Flora doesn’t.

Things I’ve told her because she asked.

Things I’ve told her because, increasingly, I wanted her to know.

I lock my phone.

The bus drops me across from The Spindle a little after six. Normally, I cross the street and turn toward home.

Tonight, I cross the street and go inside.

I don’t stop to invent or consider a reason first.

The café is nearly empty, the pastry case reduced to a handful of items nobody wanted badly enough during the day, chairs already turned upside down on two of the tables near the back.