Page 87 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

It starts quietly, but I join her, and suddenly we’re standing in the middle of a damp sidewalk laughing because two grown women have walked nearly twenty minutes without either one having the slightest idea where they were going.

“We’re idiots,” I say.

“I thought you had a plan.”

A giggle escapes me, and the smile that lights up Flora’s face is something out of my wildest dreams, I think. “Why would you ever assume I have a plan?”

She laughs again, and I decide this is sufficient evidence that the evening has been a success.

We turn around eventually, although neither of us seems particularly motivated to get back. Flora keeps her hand in mine, and without the question of where we’re going hanging over us, I stop paying much attention to the route. We retrace our steps through the same wet blocks, past the restaurants beginning to empty and the darkened storefronts, talking when something occurs to one of us and letting the conversation disappear when it doesn’t.

It feels totally different from dinner.

There, I’d been aware that we were on a date. Not nervously, exactly, but enough that every so often I’d remember it. I’d look across the table at Flora and think, Wow, I’m on a date with this stunning woman. I’d wonder what she thought of me, whether I was talking too much, whether the fact that we’d already kissed should make this less nerve-racking than it was.

Out here, somewhere between getting lost and finding our way back, I stop thinking about any of that.

Flora’s thumb moves absently over the side of my hand. And I notice that most of all.

Except when the restaurant appears at the end of the block, and with it comes the unfortunate reminder that our cars are waiting for us in opposite directions.

I slow down without meaning to, and she follows my lead. For a few more steps, neither of us acknowledges it.

She smiles, but when we reach the corner where I know we need to part ways, she doesn’t turn toward it.

There are things I could do here. Sensible, normal date-ending things. Tell her again that I had a good time. Ask when she’s working next. Kiss her goodnight and walk to my car while feeling appropriately pleased with myself for having successfully completed a date with a woman I very much want to date again.

But instead, my whole body is screaming at me to do a very Merryweather thing.

“I just don’t really want to go home yet.”

There.

But it comes out quieter than most things I say, and without the joke I probably would have attached to it a few weeks ago, so that the disappointment isn’t immediately palpable.

Flora’s expression softens.

“Neither do I.”

Her answer settles warmly somewhere beneath my ribs, and I step closer.

I don’t have to ask this time, because Flora meets me before I’ve quite finished closing the space between us, her free hand coming up to my face as she kisses me.

The first touch of her mouth right at the corner of my lips is soft enough that I smile against it.

Then she kisses me again, and there is something almost unfair about how quickly my body remembers her. The cold air and the wet street, and the people moving in and out of establishments around us all recede when Flora’s fingers slip into my hair. I move closer, my hand finding her waist beneath the open edge of her coat.

Flora makes a quiet sound when I kiss her again, and whatever intention I had of keeping this appropriate for a public sidewalk disappears.

Her hand slides from my hair to the back of my neck. I can feel the heat of her palm there despite the cold, and when she presses closer, I forget for several seconds that we were supposed to be saying goodbye.

I can feel my pulse beneath her fingers.

Flora smiles.

“I like kissing you,” I say, somewhat clumsily and in my classic Merryweather fashion.

She brushes her thumb beneath my ear, and for a fraction of frozen time, I think she’s going to step back and thank me and say, “Goodbye, Merryweather,” and I’ll never see her again.