Page 62 of Five Stolen Rings

She hesitates only briefly, her hairmussed, her chest rising and falling rapidly. When she speaks, her words are broken.

“Don’t kiss me again unless you mean it,” she says, her gaze darting away from mine. “I’m not going to be someone you regret kissing. I’m not going to be someone you like against your will or better judgment.”

“I don’t like you.” I spit the words out automatically, vehemently.

Stella’s shoulders fall, and then she nods. “My mistake.” She swallows. “Thanks for your help today.”

My heart tightens, sinks, plunges—but she’s already turning around, hurrying down the hall—and then, a few seconds later, with a quiet click, the front door opens, closes behind her?—

And she’s gone.

There are consequences for kissing someone. There aredefinitelyconsequences for kissing someone two days in a row and then handling it very, very poorly.

Stella doesn’t answer when I call her the next day. When I go over to Maude’s house after work and knock on the door, no one answers.

And when I try to enter through the living room window, I have to cut through several layers of plastic wrap before I can climb in—only for my feet to find an entire row of rollingpins.

I finally track her down at Maude’s, two days before Christmas, putting the finishing touches on a Christmas tree in one corner of the gloomy living room.

Normal,I chant to myself.Be normal. Act normal.

There doesn’t appear to be any plastic wrap in place over the window this time, but I knock on the glass anyway—quietly at first, so I don’t startle her, and then louder when she pretends not to hear. When she finally rolls her eyes and opens the window for me, I climb gratefully in, my fingers numb from the cold.

“You’re acting like a stalker,” she snaps at me, standing back to give me room.

“Believe me, I know,” I say with feeling once I’ve unfolded myself and closed the window behind me. “It’s very out of the norm for me. But you’re avoiding me, Princess.”

“Of course I’m not,” she says.

I point to her twitching jaw, and she scowls, her hand jumping to her face to cover it.

“That’s what I thought,” I say with a nod. “You’re mad at me, so you’re not taking my calls or answering my texts.” I amble slowly toward the stiff, uncomfortable couch and then settle myself there, looking up at Stella.

“Well, what do you want from me?” she asks, sighing. She slumps back over to the tree and picks up where she left off, weaving sparkly tinsel garland through the boughs. “You kiss me, but you say you don’t like me. Fine. Friendship, then?” She glances over her shoulder at me. “But friends don’t talk every day, Jack. They definitely don’t see each other every day.”

Normal,I remind myself.Do not think about the kisses.

“Some friends talk every day,” I say.

“Oh, stop it,” she says, whirling angrily on me and letting the tinsel garland fall. “I’m not going to let you demand something deep but call it shallow. You can’t do that to me. Work out your issues on your own time.”

I stare at her, stunned, but she’s not done.

“I don’t kiss my friends, Jack,” she says, sounding nothing so much as tired now. “I don’twantto kiss my friends. I don’t see them every day. I don’t even talk to them every day. So don’t get mad at me for acting like a friend when that’s what you claim to want.”

And for a second, even the birds in their atrium are silent. I wish they would squawk, screech, whatever it is that birds do—because Stella is right. She’s completely right, and it’s such an uncomfortable realization that I’m tempted to dive right back out the window I came in through.

“We reunited not even two weeks ago,” I say slowly, carefully.

“Yeah,” she says, turning back to the tree. “So?”

“So…” But I trail off, because—as I realize too late—I don’t have anything to say. Nothing, except that I can’t possibly be this stupidly crazy about her when we barely know each other. There’s no way.

But you do know her,a little voice in my mind whispers.You know she’s kind and caring; you know she makes you laugh more than anyone in the world. You know her weaknesses, and you want to hold her anyway.

“Friends,” I say, the word strangled as I force it out of my throat. “Normal friends. For real this time.”

She pauses just briefly, her hand around a gaudy glass ornament in the shape of a martini. “Apologize first.”

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