Page 76 of Witch You Would
Ouch. “It grew too fast.”
“It grew too fast,” she agreed. “If I hadn’t gone to the bathroom when I did, I would have been in the kitchen when it exploded.”
Holy fuck. “You could have died.”
“My abuela almost did. She ran into the kitchen to... she thought I was still there, and it was burning, smoke everywhere...and then something under the sink went up in a huge fireball... She was in the hospital for two weeks. Even with healingmagic, she needed skin grafts, and her lungs were never the same.”
Penelope turned her face away, like she didn’t want me to see her cry. She shivered, but didn’t make a sound. Nothing likemy mom, who went all out with big sobs and dramatic wailing. I moved the armrest up and scooted closer, gently wrapping myarms around her.
This explained so much. Why she triple-checked all our ingredients. Why my little fireball had freaked her out, and Amy’sspell explosion had given her a full panic attack. And most importantly, why she was so angry at Leandro Presto for messingup his spells and acting like it was no big deal.
Was I encouraging my fans to do things wrong as a joke, when they might get hurt? I always explained, always showed the correctway, but if Sam was right, most people didn’t care about anything but the fuckup.
Shit. Maybe Penelope was right aboutMage You Look. Maybe something needed to change. Possibly a bigger issue was, would she ever be able to accept me being Leandro if I keptdoing what I was doing?
Penelope blew her nose on a napkin and swallowed, her facesplotchy. “Like I said before, I don’t want you to feel like this is me trying to make excuses. It’s just . . . reasons.”
“I get it,” I said. “We’re both stressed out.”
“Are we... good?” she asked meekly, looking at the space movie carpet.
“We’re good,” I assured her.
“Okay. Okay. That’s good.” She paused, then said, “I also wanted to talk about... us?”
My heart sped up like a car in the HOV lane. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. As in, not our team, but our... vibe?” She laughed and shook her head. “Why is this so hard?”
“That’s what she said?”
Penelope smacked my arm lightly. “I’m just trying to figure out what we’re doing here? And the thing is...”
When she didn’t keep going, I said, “The thing is?”
“The thing is, there’s this guy.”
My racing heart crashed into a highway wall. “Oh. Okay.”
“It’s not what you think,” she said quickly. “It’s... This is probably going to sound super ridiculous.”
“I’m ridiculous professionally, don’t worry.” I was worried.
“So. I’ve been emailing this guy for, like... months now?”
Oh my god.
“I’ve honestly had a huge crush on him the entire time, but I never said anything. And he’s been friendly, but he never...He’s been nice. Possibly flirty, but I’m not sure.”
Oh my fucking GOD.
“I emailed him right before we started here, because... I don’t even want to explain because it’s more ridiculous thananything else, but I sort of asked him out?”
My brain had climbed onto the roof of my crashed heart car andwas quietly screaming. “So you . . . have a thing for this guy and don’t want to keep, um. Doing anything. With me?”
Penelope waved her hands in front of her. “Yeah, no, that’s not what I mean! I just wanted to be up front about why my feelingsare a mess? And you made me think, when you talked about people not really knowing you... maybe I don’t know this guy aswell as I thought. Maybe I was crushing on a version of him that was only real in my mind.”
Everything I had imagined about this conversation seemed like a weird dream now.
