With Any Luck (The Improbable Meet-Cute, #5)

by Ashley Poston

We are fated, like my grandmother, my mother, my sisters, and me, to be the person before. The rebound, the partner at the beginning of rom-coms who is rarely named because they are always what the main character doesn’t need. They are the utterly forgettable Before. “I know it sounds crazy,” I told my soon-to-be best friend the first day we met at college, “but I’m the kiss before you find your true love.”

sucked in a breath between my teeth. “Oof, sorry, can’t do, champ. You just friended the wrong girl. This brain? Full of Twilight quotes and omegaverse lore, not math.”

I glanced around the floor of the café around us. A sliver of something silver peaked out from beneath the bakery case, and I grabbed the quarter and held it up. “That’s enough, right?” “You seriously just found that on the ground?” I shrugged. “It’s a curse.” He laughed at that. “No, you’re lucky,” he remarked, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek as I grinned.

No. If my best friend’s going to jump, I’m at least going to be his spotter.

Ever since I could remember, whenever I’ve kissed someone—on-the-mouth kissed someone with a purpose—the person finds their soulmate, the love of their life, the next day.

“I think I kissed Rhett last night. I don’t—I don’t remember when, but it was after the bar and after we got doughnuts. I remember . . .” My voice cracks. Tears pool in my eyes. “Oh God, I’m terrible, aren’t I? For kissing my best friend the night before his wedding?” For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, and then he rubs his face with his hand tiredly. “No. No, I don’t think you did, Audrey.”

He’s quiet for another moment. “All right. Close your eyes,” he says. Baffled, I stare at him, because now is not the time. “Why?” He leans a little closer over the table. His eyes have turned dark and inky, like my favorite emerald pen. “Just close your eyes, Audrey Love.” So I do. I’m not sure what happens next—no, that was a lie, I know exactly what happens next, but I’m too stunned to do anything about it. Because he takes my chin in his grip, and tilts it up a little, and then his lips catch mine.

“Sometimes when you love someone, you both have to do shit you don’t want to.”

“I know you’ll do anything for her,” I said in the quiet night. My words came out in puffs of frost. “But will she do anything for you?” He shoved himself to his feet. “I’m done talking. You don’t understand,” he said and left without another word.

“I just—I don’t know what I’ll do after all this. It was just us, you know? And now it’s Carmilla, too, and I like her so much but . . . I won’t be your ride or die anymore. I’ll be alone.” “So will I,” said the owner of the footsteps behind me.

“Hey, hey, you won’t be alone forever. Someone like you? You’re bright and funny and talented,” he said. I sniffed. “You don’t even know what I do.” “You’re a copyeditor. You always write in a green pen. Your favorite food is a s’more, and your favorite word is ‘susurrus.’”

He went on, “Rhett wouldn’t shut up about you when I first met him. You should’ve heard the way he talked about you—like you hung the moon, the sun, and all the stars. I couldn’t wait to meet you in New Orleans, and when I did, I realized he didn’t even tell me the good parts.”

“W-what a-are the good parts?” “That you’re sexy as hell.” “My mascara’s all over your coat.” “Minor setback,” he replied, and reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I wasn’t joking yesterday when I asked you to kiss me.” My bottom lip wobbled. “So you can find your t-true love, too?” “Fuck that,” he growled and took my face in his hands and kissed me. Crushed our mouths together, our breaths intertwining in the cold.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked. “About kissing me?” He felt so hard against my middle, and I hadn’t had anything intimate in so long I wanted it. So, so badly. “Because it’d be you,” he said. “I knew it’d be you.”

My chest felt tight. He didn’t have to explain what it was. It was the thing I had been trying to find my entire life. It had been the thing that always eluded me. The thing that followed every guy I ever kissed. I was always the girl before the happily ever after. I was the person you stopped at for a little while for shelter. I wasn’t the person you stayed with. I wasn’t that person to anyone— Or at least, I thought.

God—I wish I had remembered this sooner. Because the way he kisses feels like the way I fall in love, sharp and quick and deep.

I pull away with a gasp. “Oh my God. That means Rhett isn’t missing because he found his true love!” He sighs and sits back. “Yes, because it’s Millie, we already know this.”

“No one’s seen him since last night?” “It seems that way,” Theo says tiredly. “And Carmilla?” “As I said, I didn’t want to freak her out—” “But she is in her room, right?” I ask him. “She came to brunch? She did all the wedding things today?” The silence says it all. He sits up straight. “She wouldn’t,” he says, but by the tone of his voice, he doesn’t believe it himself. “She wouldn’t.” As a matter of fact, she would and she has.

And on the bed is a note, written in Carmilla’s beautiful handwriting. It’s addressed to Theo and me, and it says what we’ve already figured out. “They eloped,” he deadpans. “Without telling anyone.” He drops the letter on the bed and falls down beside it.

I’m not going to bring up the kiss again, but if he kissed me last night and today we’re together, and he’s yet to meet anyone else . . . Are you mine? Maybe.