Page 17 of Bows & Eros
"I asked around," she said to Ethan, without pretense or preamble. "Your boy and his uncle left a few hours back, looking for new trouble to get into, I imagine. They offered to take some sandwich platters over to the school so anyone still there could have a decent dinner."
"They went back to the school?" I repeated, teetering somewhere between outrage and disbelief. "When?"
Edna's eyes slid from Ethan over to me and she gave me a little grin, the silver fillings flashing in her teeth. "Around sunset, I reckon. It gets dark so fast these days that I can't be entirely sure."
"Were they causing trouble here in the diner?" Ethan pressed, seemingly unconcerned with this revelation that if we had just stayed put, Aaron would have come to us.
"You mean throwing airplanes around?" she guessed with a little laugh. "They started to, but I shut that down pretty quick after one hit me in the tuchus, and they behaved after that. To be honest, I didn't mind the airshow, I just took issue with them using up my menu inserts. I bet you didn't even know that we had a special on the BLT today, did you?"
"We did not," Ethan replied somberly.
"Mhm," she replied with disapproval. "Anyway, I knew they stayed a while, but didn't see 'em leave, so I figure you've got an hour or two lead."
"You were hit by a paper airplane?" I pressed, staring at her in a way I'm fairly certain she didn't appreciate. "And you don't feel strange at all?"
"Honey, if a smack on the rear was enough to ruin my day, my marriage would have fallen apart a long time ago." She glanced over her shoulder at her husband and blew him a kiss, which he promptly appeared to catch and put into his coat pocket for safekeeping. It made her giggle as she turned back to us. "Can I get you two a doggy bag?"
"No, we're all set here," Ethan said, his eyebrows brushing his hairline. "Thank you, Edna."
"Thankyou," she sang, already turning on her heel and heading to the next table.
"Maybe they ran out of magic," I suggested once she was out of earshot.
"Maybe," he replied, looking unconvinced. "
"Or it might not work on people who are already happily paired up," I thought, watching Edna bustle from table to table, her cheeks rosy with contentment. "We haven't seen any obvious cases of infidelity around today, I suppose."
"Do you think there's any chance at all that they are still at the school?" Ethan asked, his tone making it apparent that he personally did not.
"I'll text Hazel," I said, fishing my phone out of my bag and tapping it to life. "Hopefully people are at least starting to retrieve their children by now."
He muttered something I couldn't quite make out and swiped the check from the table, heading up to the counter to pay.
I sent my text off and stood up, finishing off the last gulp of my coffee and bracing myself for the next leg of this adventure. I stretched, stifling the urge to yawn as my eyes dropped to the booth I had just crawled out of and I froze, my blood grinding to a halt in my veins.
This would all be over soon, I told myself. It waspossiblethat there was no more crazy love paper airplane magic to terrorize the town with, right?
At least, that was my hope. My deepest, sincerest hope. My desperate, nearly hysterical requirement of reality.
I snatched up the crumpled, hot pink flyer that I had been sitting on throughout the meal, the telltale folds of its past life as a thing that flies evident in the way it collapsed, and I stuffed it in my purse, gathering up my coat and particulars in the same hasty motion.
I felt fine, didn't I? I felt just fine, considering the circumstances.
Even if I had just spent the last hour sitting on one of Cupid's arrows.
CHAPTER9
"Everything okay?" Ethan asked me, accepting his jacket from my hands. "You look more stressed than you did a second ago."
"Just stood up too fast," I lied, attempting a reassuring smile for a second before abandoning the enterprise in case it made my face look weird.
Was I suddenlymuch moreattracted to him than I had been before? My heart was racing, but that could have just been anxiety. I searched his face, attempting to spark the butterflies I had felt earlier when our hands had been linked. Surely paper airplane insanity butterflies would feel differently than the standard ones.
"Are you sure?" he asked, placing a big, warm hand on my shoulder in a way that made my knees liquify. "You seem off."
"Nope! Fine!" I insisted unconvincingly. "Shall we?"
"Okay ..." he replied, a slight frown on his face as I turned from him, that hand of his slipping off of my shoulder and back to his side. "Did Hazel reply to you?"
