Serious Moonlight(54)

His mouth was on mine. Warm. Open. Eager. He kissed me like he meant it—like he was trying to say a thousand things to me at once. Like he’d been lying awake and thinking about kissing me again since that first day we met in the diner, even after he’d gotten to know the real me.

Like we belonged together.

Somewhere outside our shelter of darkness, a voice was shouting. It was Wadsworth, calling time. We broke apart, breathing heavy, still tangled up in each other’s arms.

“Dammit,” Daniel murmured, letting go of me.

My knees gave out a little. “Oh!”

“Whoa,” he said, holding my waist tighter. “You all right there?”

I clung to him as a breathy laugh escaped my lips.

He chuckled. I wasn’t even sure what was so funny, but I was smiling and swaying in the dark, and my hands were filled with his shirt.

Suddenly there were voices on the other side of the bookcase. “Crap!” I whispered, pushing away from Daniel.

“Hello?” a voice called.

Daniel pressed the button, and the bookcase opened, flooding my squinting eyes with light. I blinked it away and refocused on the couple standing in front of us. The stupid kids from Daniel’s school. Daniel looked at them. They looked at us. And then Daniel’s fingers went to his bare collar.

I glanced down at my hand; I was fisting his purple bow tie.

So much for our hands-off policy. At least our pants were still on.

“The clues are inside the secret room,” Daniel told the couple as we skirted around them. They mumbled something I didn’t catch, but it sounded judgmental.

Go on. Stare, I thought defiantly. Maybe they’d add me to whatever scandalous gossip they whispered about Daniel.

And maybe I didn’t give two shits about it.





“If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you.”

—Inspector Chen Cao, Death of a Red Heroine (2000)





17




* * *



We didn’t win Clue for Couples. I don’t know about Daniel, but I blamed our loss on what happened in the secret room. Because after that, I spent our clue-searching time replaying the kiss inside my head in disjointed, staccato fashion. And because most of the other rooms didn’t afford us much privacy, we didn’t repeat the kiss or even acknowledge what we’d done. Problem was, even though we had plenty of chances to acknowledge it, we still didn’t. Not during the game. Not after Colonel Mustard and his drunken wife figured out who’d killed Mr. Boddy. Not when Daniel dropped me off at the ferry.

I suppose that’s not entirely true. He did give me a peck on the cheek that lasted a little longer than it should have, even though we were standing outside his car at the ferry terminal while pedestrians walked around us. Or maybe it was just in my frazzled imagination. Maybe it was a normal peck on the cheek, one that you’d give a close friend. I told myself it didn’t matter. After all, for a date that wasn’t really date, it was pretty wonderful.

Besides, Daniel probably felt as awkward as I did about everything. That’s why he wasn’t acknowledging the kiss. Or kissing me like that again. Or giving me any kind of indication about his feelings when I texted him after getting back home, as he asked me to do:

Me: Hey, I got home. All safe.

Him: Thanks for letting me know.

Me: You’re welcome.

Him: Have a good night.

Have a good night? Not even a polite “I had a nice time tonight,” or maybe an “I enjoyed kissing your face off.” Did he regret the kiss?

DID HE REGRET THE ENTIRE DATE?

I didn’t know. I had no experience in any of this, and I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming rush of emotions that came with the unknown. I was worried. I was baffled. And even as I whipped myself into a state of mild hysteria over his bland-as-milk texts, some other part of me was experiencing a poignant longing-pining-aching for Daniel, and all of this turned my thoughts into a big, jumbled mess.

I was a wreck, and because my body had become accustomed to staying up all night for work, I couldn’t sleep. All night. All the next day. I dozed off for a couple of hours early the next evening and nearly missed my ferry in to work.

When I stumbled into the hotel with seconds to spare, it was with zombielike grace and heavy bags under my eyes. I had no business being at work. And I was both dreading and longing to see Daniel, so naturally I avoided him in the employee break room (pretended not to see him). And in the lobby (busied myself with greeting a guest). At the registration desk (literally ducked down and hid when he walked past).

But there’s only so much successful avoidance a zombie can manage in a hotel before their luck runs out. And like Cinderella, my luck ran out at midnight. That’s when I was busy standing on a stepladder in front of Octavia the Octopus’s tank, opening up a hidden hatch to dump a small bowl of thawed, raw shrimp into her water. The person who normally did this was out sick, but I didn’t mind. I liked taking care of Octavia and the rental goldfish.

“Hey,” Daniel said, the otherworldly light from the tank rippling over his face as he looked up at me from the bottom of the stepladder. “Shrimp duty?”

“Yep,” I replied curtly.

“I wonder if Octavia realizes it’s frozen shrimp from Thailand and not the shrimp from the Sound.”