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Aiden Valentine: Flowers die. Everything dies. Caller: I thought this was a romance hotline.
I laugh and Jackson goes bug-eyed on the other side of the glass. He presses his face up against it, nose squished to the window, hands cupped around his eyes to get a better look.
pleaseeeasdsadsasa
“I like that. Thinking that I’m worth paying attention to. Something ordinary made extraordinary by the person you’re sharing it with.”
“Do you find anyone sexy yet, or is that a thirteen-year-old thing?” “Patty,” I say again, a warning in my voice. Maya shrugs, scooping the avocado off her sweater. “I think books are sexy,” she says very seriously. “No one at school has quite lived up to Aragorn yet.”
“Lucie.” He sighs. He taps his pointer finger against my ankle, then circles it gently. He squeezes. “I don’t like seeing you sad.”
“Nah, Lucie.” In my dream, he brushes a kiss against my forehead. “I think you’re the magic.”
“How’d you know it was me?” I ask, letting him guide me to the bar on the corner. The one with flower baskets spilling from the windows. Flame-lit lanterns flickering by the entrance. “There are plenty of sad girls in Baltimore.” “Ah, Lucie.” Aiden smiles, his fingers fanning out wide against my back. “I’d know you anywhere.”
“I think you’re a closet romantic,” she tells me. “Decent human being,” I correct. “Secret swoony boy,” Lucie parrots back.
Sometimes I think I hear her voice twisting through my dreams. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I feel like she should be in the space next to me, her laugh ringing in my ears.
“Aiden,” she says again, slipping closer. “Dance with me. Please.” “Lucie,” I whisper back. “Don’t make me publicly dance to ‘Thong Song.’ ”
Lucie tips her face toward mine and all I see is green, green, green. Hedera canariensis, I think blearily, but prettier. The prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.
“You’re bossy.” “I certainly can be,” I tell her.
I have the insane urge to guide her hand down the front of my T-shirt. Warm her skin with mine.
He rubs his palm against the gold chain around his neck and the muscles in his arms flex and release.
bark bark bark bark
“I like a woman who can toss me around.”
Because my mom couldn’t stand the smell of the hospital antiseptic, and lavender was the only thing that helped her sleep. He filled our entire front garden—made gardens in the back too—and would bring her bunches of it, filling vases on every flat surface of the hospital room.
“Fuck it,” I whisper, and I drag her mouth to mine.
Aiden kisses me like he’s mad about it.
“Mom?” she calls blearily. I wonder if I’ll ever stop hearing her voice in an echo of a memory, my name called out a thousand times through the dark. Maya then and Maya now.
Lucie fills up this room like a ghost, and kissing her did not calm the attraction like I had hoped. It poured gasoline all over it and I’m walking around with a wildfire in my chest.
Lucie wants fun. And I want to give her whatever she wants.
“Because you said it was your favorite,” I admit. “And I want your favorite to be my favorite.”
“Don’t tell me that.” “What?” “Don’t tell me you liked it when I bossed you around.”
“So polite,” she says, fumbling with the box. My hands squeeze. “I’m about to be really rude, to be honest.”
“I’m gonna love you so good, Lucie.”
