Page 34 of No More Love Songs

His brow crinkles, and he chuckles. “What are you staring at?”

“Um.” My eyes draw up to meet his too late. “Sorry.” I point at his chest. “You have a tattoo I didn’t know about and I’m helplessly nosy,” I admit. “I don’t think I can move on until I know what it is.”

He tugs down the collar of his shirt to reveal the ink in its entirety. “It’s Ari. But as a fairy poking her head out of a tulip.” He tucks his chin to look down at it. “She was five when I had it done. She’d been telling everyone she was a fairy since she was two and tulips were her favorite.”

I smile. “She does look like a fairy.”

He moves his shirt back into place. “She checked for growing wings until she was nine. At that point she accepted she was a wingless fairy.” He sets his fork down in his nearly empty dish and puts both on the table beside my plate. “She hardly talks about it now, but it’s been part of her identity for as long as I can remember. She’s made fairies as real to me as she is.”

“You didn’t believe in fairies before?” I ask, pulling my legs up into the hammock and letting the momentum sway me back and forth.

He shrugs. “I kind of have a policy to never not believe in anything.”

“Anything is possible,” I muse. “That’s always been my approach to things too. Who am I to say what is and isn’t real?”

“Exactly.”

“Santa Claus?” I ask.

“As real as the Easter Bunny.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more on the same page with another person.” I say it like I’m joking, but I can’t deny the words feel heavy with more truth than I was expecting.

“So,” he starts again, his eyes drifting sideways, the usual amusement and curiosity dancing in them. “You were saying before you got distracted staring down the front of my shirt.”

I’d have preferred he didn’t put it like that, but I certainly can’t argue that it’s what happened. Which leaves me no choice but to get back to my original point. “I’m a little addicted to your perspective right now,” I get right to the heart of it. “You have a way of untangling my thoughts for me and playing them back to me so I can hear what I’m actually saying before I know what I’m saying and I thought I might save us both some time by just including you in the songwriting session instead of writing the whole thing without you, playing it for you, having you tell me what I meant to be singing about and then making you rewrite it with me.” I swing my feet over the side again, letting them dangle for the moment, while I stare past them at the ground. “I could get on my knees for the groveling if that’s your thing. Or, we can skip straight to bribery where I can offer first mention in the credits, your choice of commission percentage and of course, I’d want you to record it with me.” I think about it for another moment. “Oh, and I can publicly promote the lodge for you. Which I was going to do anyway, but you didn’t know that, so I figured I’d throw it in as a bargaining chip.”

When I finally stop talking, I look up to find him watching me. No smile or smirk. Just watching.

“You don’t need me to untangle your thoughts, Sky, but I get that I give you space right now to have thoughts you’re not used to having, thoughts I gather you’re used to hearing aren’t worth having, so yes,” he nods slowly, “I’ll play with you tonight. No bribery or groveling required.” Finally, his mouth quirks at the corners again. “But I do appreciate the offer.”

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KIT

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She wasn’t wrong. Herlunch was way better than mine. After having a bite of her sandwich, my leftovers weren’t half as appealing anymore. Not that I was going to admit that. She may be second guessing a lot of her choices right now, but she knows when she’s onto something. And that sandwich business would have gone straight to her head. Worse, I would have loved it. Her expressions and snarky comments would have stayed with me all day, making me crack up at all the most inappropriate moments, like in front of Mavis, who absolutely would have read too much into it.

As it is, I’m constantly having to explain my smiles to her lately, and I’m not a generally grumpy guy, so fighting the urge to smile while I walk into the kitchen where Mavis is currently baking up a mess of peach pies for the coming week is downright uncomfortable.

“Who’d you have lunch with?” Mavis starts in on me the second I make it to the sink with the dishes I brought down.

“What makes you think I had lunch with anyone?” While Ari’s at school it’s not at all uncommon for me to retreat to some quiet corner and enjoy a quiet meal alone.

“You have too many dishes for just you,” she points at the sink with floured fingers.

“I have one plate and one container. They could easily have both been mine,” I argue, letting the water run hot so I can wash them while I’m here.

“But they’re not,” she insists, going back to kneading her dough.

“How do you know?” I turn off the water and stop what I’m doing.

She shrugs. “Because you would have just said they were, and you didn’t.”

I turn away and get back to my dishes. “I could really do without you trying to mess with my head, Mavis,” I grumble scrubbing way too hard at a plate that’s already clean.

“I’m not messing with your head,” she says with an air of obliviousness becoming of no one, least of all someone who clearly knows what I’m talking about.

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