Kiss Her Once for Me (105)

The force of feelings hit me like a train. I don’t want friends. I want to kiss that white scar. I want to be the person standing at Jack’s side. I want to be the person who celebrates with her after everyone else goes home, a bottle of wine for just the two of us, toasting her, whispering, You did it, I knew you could. I want to be Jack’s arms and her everything else, to be there for all the seasons, and the past seven weeks have done nothing to dull the intense certainty of these feelings. I want her so badly, it pins me in place by the door. It’s the ache, in my heart, in my stomach, between my legs, but it’s not an ache of loneliness. It’s the ache of wanting something so badly, you will throw yourself down a flight of stairs if you can’t have it. It’s the ache of wanting to risk everything for the smallest chance at something.

It’s a good kind of ache.

“Girl, wipe that horny look off your face,” Ari hisses. “We’re in public.”

My eyes are on Jack, watching as she whips her head around. She’s wearing her glasses, and her hair is freshly cut, shaved on the side and neat, like that day I first met her. She turns again, and she finally sees me and Ari by the door.

Her expression shifts, but I’m not sure what it’s shifting to; I’m too anxious to read the nuances of her mouth and eyes. “Shit. She’s seen me. What do I do?”

“Um, go talk to her?”

“What? No. Gross.”

“Continue standing in the doorway like a weirdo, then. You’re right, that’s a better plan.”

“Ugh. Fine. I’ll go talk to her.”

But before I can even motivate my legs to move again, Jack comes across the room to talk to me first. “What are you doing here?” she asks in her too-loud, easy-to-overhear voice. She doesn’t sound angry to see me, but she doesn’t sound quite happy, either. Approximately half the room turns to face us.

Ari slips her arm out of mine and vanishes into the crowd without a word.

I need to say a word, so I go with, “Congratulations!” and I sort of shout it at Jack while throwing one arm needlessly into the air. “You did it. I knew you could.”

It’s not the way I want to say those words to her, but Jack gives a little waning crescent of a smile, and it’s enough to turn my ache into a gentle, pulsating heat throughout my body.

“It’s not bad, is it?” Jack looks around the room—at the beautiful space she’s built with her own two hands and her willingness to fail.

“It’s incredible,” I say.

Jack’s eyes flicker up and down my body. “What are you doing here?” she asks again, and there’s a tiny quarter-moon tugging on her lips. That quarter-moon smile almost looks like hope to me, but it’s too soon to get carried away on Jack’s hope.

“Your family invited me. Insisted I come, actually.”

“You didn’t… want to come?”

Honest, even when it’s hard. “Of course I wanted to come,” I admit. “I wanted to see your dream come to life. I wanted to support you. I wanted to… to see you. I just didn’t want to ruin your event.”

She tilts her head and half-moons at me. “Are you planning on ruining it?”

“No! But I have a pattern of unintentionally ruining things with you, so…”

“You have a pattern of thinking you’re going to ruin things,” Jack corrects, “and then when they’re ruined, you take that as proof that you were the ruiner.”

“Yeah, I know. You already told me I’m a self-fulling prophecy, and I’m working on it. Trying to become less… prophetic.”

“I said that to you?” Jack leans back against the table behind her, and shit. This woman should not be allowed to lean in my presence. Everything has gone sweaty.

I peel my blue scarf away from my throat. “Well, you sort of shouted it at me? In the snow? You know, after you found out I horribly betrayed you.”

“Ah.” Jack winces. “I maybe blocked some of that out, on account of how awful it was.”

“Very fair. Unfortunately, when the woman you love tells you you’re the reason your life is miserable, you tend to remember it forever in a very self-punishing sort of way.”

Jack’s smile disintegrates on her face. “What did you just say?”

“Not that I didn’t deserve it!” I backpedal. “I did! I am so sorry for the way I hurt you. You were totally right to say all of that to me! You were right about a lot of things, actually, and I’ve really been trying to make some changes based on your very honest feedback. It was sort of like a comment card, but for a romantic relationship, and I’ve… um… taken those comments under advisement.”

Oh, fuck. Thank goodness I finally stop talking, but I’m pretty sure now the entire bakery is staring at me.

“No.” Jack shakes her head. “You said when the woman you love… Do you? Love me?”

“Did I say that?” God, why did I wear a scarf indoors? So, so much sweating. “I don’t think I said that.”

“You did,” Jack counters. “Basically everyone heard it.” She turns to some random person over her right shoulder. “Sorry, but did you just hear this woman with the braid and glasses say she loves me?”