The Serendipity (Only Magic in the Building)

by Emma St. Clair

I wonder if it would be rude to interrupt this imaginary conversation.

Don’t get used to conversations, I silently warn the building. Then realize what I’ve just done and silently chide myself: Don’t talk to buildings, Archer. And don’t buy into anything Galentine Valencia is selling.

“I’ll be in touch if I need anything.” I won’t. I can think of very few circumstances in which I would need help from a woman who speaks to buildings.

“It was so lovely to meet you,” she calls over her shoulder in a tone generally reserved for people who club baby seals.

She gestures to her shorts. Which, I realize now that she’s forcing me to look, have llamas on them. Llama pajamas. I almost laugh, and the urge to do so stuns me into silence.

“And this is my problem how?” I ask. Willow crosses her arms. “Because you’re my new landlord, and that makes me your problem.” She most certainly is.

“You are not a T.A.R.D.I.S. or a portal. You aren’t even a Narnian wardrobe. There is no Mr. Tumnus or Turkish delight inside you.” I shake a finger at it. “Remember your place. You have one job, and it is not to somehow transport me into the closet of a very attractive man who now thinks I’m some kind of stalker and who also has the power to evict me. Do we understand each other?”

Normally, I don’t speak to inanimate objects. But normal flew out the window thirty minutes ago.

I have to agree with his assessment, which is that what I said happened couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have. The problem is that it did.

Irrelevant, I tell myself. Too old. Too grumpy. Too much the owner of the building you live in.

Something—besides my closet—is clearly wrong with me.

I’m the broke, disheveled failed baker who apparently teleports in llama pajamas.

Archer’s face comes to mind again. His hot, rent-increasing face.

My muscles tense like over-coiled springs as the scent of her—sugary almond and vanilla—hit my bloodstream like a drug. I swear, I can feel my pupils dilating.

I am caught, a boy elbow-deep in the cookie jar. Or a man who has better things to do than search for a tablespoon while wearing a pink apron.

But now I’m far too aware of myself. Overthinking my words. Distracted by my hands and feet.

But all day long, the smell of sweet almond sugar cookies lingers around me, just like thoughts of the woman who baked them. And for the first time in years, I find myself truly longing for something sweet.

When I need my feet to come back to earth, I remind myself that he wouldn’t try my cookies. And can you really trust a man who refuses a cookie? No. You can’t.

Right now, the distance between us is highly unreasonable. We’re end of a first date about to kiss close. You may kiss the bride close. Soldier back from war close. Or, in our case, possum frightened into panic mode close.

In a hiss and a flash of pointy teeth, the possum miraculously revives and launches itself at Archer. With a very girlish scream Archer shoots to his feet, flailing his arms as the possum climbs him like a tree.

lol!

“We’re not talking chances. We’re just talking cookies.” And I don’t want to even give him those.

That was some intense chemistry—until I remembered who I was chemistry-ing with. Definitely didn’t want to feel that.

I find myself grinning. Why is his grouchiness suddenly so amusing to me? Oh, right—because he’s wedging it right between my ex and me like a solid wall of protective grump.

His attention is still focused solely on me, and I wonder briefly what it would be like to have this kind of intensity directed my way in a different context. I shiver. Archer frowns. Then he shocks me for a second time by taking off his suit jacket and draping it over my shoulders. “You’re cold,” he says.

“You didn’t need saving. But someone did need to put that uncomfortable conversation out of its misery.”

Her cheeks burn a sudden, bright pink. I hadn’t read anything into her words. But now I am.

I’m not sure what my face is communicating right now, but it must be something because Willa’s blue eyes go wide and she practically shouts, “I’ll keep my hands to myself!”

“Ew! Archer, these taste like spicy dirt! How can you eat these?” While I do like the taste, she isn’t wrong in her description. “I suppose I happen to like spicy dirt.”

“Don’t downplay your accomplishments. Honor them. Repeat them. Then build on them.”

I didn’t even see the ring. All I could see was his lack of understanding.

“I keep lists,” Archer says, and I glance over at him, noting for the first time how tired he looks. “What?” “I forget things all the time. I have to keep lists. Then, I share them with Bellamy so he can remind me in case the list isn’t enough.” He lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “My ‘big, Ivy League-educated brain’ isn’t much help.”

“It’s not that,” I whisper, kissing her cheek, then her jaw, ignoring whoever is now jiggling the door handle. “It’s that I don’t trust you with a hot iron.”

hahaha!

“That is a low bar. I’ll make it a point to raise that bar very soon and very often.”

But Willa has become like my sun. Lighting up corners in my life I didn’t know were shadowed. Reviving things I thought were long dead or didn’t know existed. Like: a true desire for a family of my own.

“How much ice cream did you eat?” she asks, and I don’t appreciate her tone. “None of your business—that’s how much,” I snap, taking another vindictive spoonful.