Page 73 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

Merry kisses me, and I kiss her back, and for once in three years, wanting something doesn’t feel like the beginning of a problem waiting to happen.

It just feels good.

Eventually, I realize, we have to breathe.

She pulls back first, although her hand stays around my waist. Her eyes open slowly, blue and bright beneath the ridiculous little crown that is now noticeably crooked and very much slipping from her hair.

I reach up and straighten it.

She laughs, breathless.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

My hand starts to fall, but she catches it.

And then we’re kissing again.

CHAPTER 21

THE THIRD FAIRY

12:23 AM

The Third Fairy

I’ve been thinking about your number four.

You said you want to stop feeling like you’re behind, and I think there’s something strange about the way we measure that. We look around at everyone else and assume they’re moving forward because their lives are changing in ways we can see, while standing still can look a lot like being careful. Or healing. Or waiting until you’re certain you won’t make the same mistake twice.

Sometimes people come out of relationships having lost more than the relationship itself.

Not because anyone asked them to give those things up, necessarily. Sometimes you can love someone so much that your life slowly rearranges itself around them, and you don’t notice how much has moved until they’re gone. Friends become people you’ll call next week. Family dinners become things you’ll make it to next time. The things you used to want become the things you used to want, and somehow that doesn’t seem alarming while it’s happening because you’re happy.

Or you think you are happy.

Maybe you are happy.

I think that’s what makes it complicated, don’t you?

And afterward, it would be very easy to decide the safest thing is to make sure it never happens again. To hold on so tightly to yourself that nobody could possibly take up that much space in your life.

There are worse instincts.

But there’s probably a point when protecting the life you rebuilt becomes another way of refusing to live it.

Anyway.

Your first three answers tell me you’re better at this assignment than you think you are. You want something beautiful for no reason other than it caught your eye. You want to be heard. You want good sex, which I am choosing to address with the maturity and professionalism expected of someone you paid five hundred dollars to.

Number four is different.

I don’t think you actually want to catch up.

I think you want to stop looking around and wondering whether everyone else knows something you don’t.

And as for number five, you can leave it blank.