Window Shopping

by Tessa Bailey

If I were a girl who believed in magic, I would say there was a tingle of Christmas magic in the

air that propelled me

But magic is for suckers and children, so that can’t be it. Maybe I was just ready to look again.

Don’t trade emotional currency with strangers. You will never get a refund.

“That wasn’t a smile,” I blurt automatically, outraged that someone thinks they caught me—me?—engaging in anything but hostile judgy-ness.

This man smiles constantly. I hate him.

wonder if I’ll ever be able to express emotions like that again. Just pow. No hesitating. Without toning the feelings down or worrying that if I get too emotional, my dam will break and everything will just come pouring out.

Everything is a balance.

I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope you weren’t a bow tie thief. My collection is valued at forty, some might say fifty dollars.”

A loved one’s vote of confidence goes a long way. It can lead to discovering more of your own.

that. I’m going to design the shit out of this window. First, I’m going to try not to throw up from nerves.

“Okay, sweetheart.” As if he senses that I need to be anchored, he squeezes me tight with his left forearm, stroking his right one down the back of my hair. “You’re okay.”

“Don’t let the bow tie fool you, Stella. I’m not always nice,” he says, a deep burr in his voice. “When the situation calls for it, I can be downright rough.”

I don’t mind complications. I’d do just about anything to get complicated with her.

I’ve held the girl in my arms one damn time and now all I can think about is doing it again.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are just a representation of the speaker’s insides—not me. And not you.

It’s like he’s allergic to being anything less than positive at all times.

Maybe it’s okay to loosen it up once in a while and let yourself feel or express some bad stuff. It’ll only make the good that much more valuable.”

It’s in that moment that I discover something I’d missed. Something monumental. Aiden Cook has a firm, thick bubble butt.

“Now, that’s a laugh worth waiting around for, Stella.” Then, more to himself, “I was wondering if you were ever going to let me hear it.”

The idea of coming home every day to the same person and knowing how they want to be pleasured, what they like to eat, how to coax them out of a bad mood . . . God, I’ve dreamed of that. To be depended on like that.

To depend on someone else to know what I need even when I don’t.

Not only did I fantasize about her body, I had the nerve to pick out dinnerware without her input.

“It’s weird. When you’re younger, you think you know everything. Then you get older and live in constant awareness of how little you actually know and understand.”

I let the bow tie fool me, didn’t I?

This man thinks about me in his spare time and changes his plans to include me. The boys in my memory made any time spent together seem like an accident. Almost like they didn’t want me to get the wrong impression that they cared.

might be falling in love with this man. Real, authentic, no-escaping-it love.

“This isn’t about me carrying you, it’s about us walking together and deciding where to go, all right?”

He’s Sunday morning swooping in like a hero when you woke up thinking it was Monday.

She’s window-shopping, while I’ve already bought out the whole damn store.

won’t deny that. I do think everyone has some good inside them deep down,

but I’m also logical. I’m realistic enough to know some people might never locate that good or do anything with it.

I like myself with you.”

Yeah, I love Aiden. The way-down-deep kind of love.

I belong with him and he belongs with me. There’s not a single doubt in my head any longer.

“I matching robes love you.”

“I matching robes love you back,”