Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(13)
The kiss.
It’s all everyone except for my mom and Griselda has wanted to talk to me about. The video of Gil and I flying around the coffee shop just beyond the reach of the dragon’s blood tree limbs has gone viral. My sisters cornered me in my room last night and my dad brought it up this morning at breakfast. Then, on my walk to the bookstore, absolutely no one was the least bit shy about staring to see what ridiculous magical mishap would happen around me next.
And now here were my besties, Birdie and Eli, using their morning teatime break from their corporate jobs to track me down at my usual spot on the deep green couch in the stacks, tucked between divination manuals and dusty tomes dedicated to the life stories of minor witches from the local area. They bracket me on the couch, making sure I can’t go anywhere with one of them on each side and the coffee table loaded down with my food tray and laptop directly in front of me.
“I mean, yeah, there was a spell,” I say, trying to find something to say to move the conversation away from the incident—yes, that’s what I’m calling it in my head. “He did send both of us up in the air.”
Birdie’s double-raised-eyebrow look of uh-huh-whatever is all I need to see to know she isn’t having it. Well, it was worth a try.
“Matilda Grace Sherwood,” she says, managing to almost sound like my mom calling me out on the carpet, “I’m talking about the ‘kiss me’ part.”
Humiliation, my old friend, there you are making my cheeks match the bright red of my hair. Awesome. “Ugh. He’s the worst. I don’t know what happened.”
“But you don’t like him,” Eli says as he snags one of my mini pear tarts and pops it into his mouth in one bite.
“I don’t.”
Can’t stop thinking about him isn’t the same as liking him. I won’t go into the whole constantly having inappropriate thoughts about him and the kiss that almost was but thank the fates was not actually. No one needs to know about that. I wish I didn’t know about that.
“You’ve called him a know-it-all jerk face more times than I can count,” Birdie says, “and I’m an accountant.”
“I’m aware.” She even looks like an accountant today, with her puffed-sleeved white blouse buttoned up to her neck, glasses, and curly hair tied into a severe bun on top of her head. “You do my taxes.”
“We really need to work on your deductions.” Birdie curves her body, blocking out the rest of the customers in the bookstore, and drops her voice as if she’s imparting state secrets. “You know you can put down your mileage since you can’t magic yourself to where you need to go.”
“You two are getting lost in the ten-forty woods here.” Eli leans past me and snags the last of my mini tarts from the tray on the coffee table. “What was the deal with that kiss?”
“Number one, I didn’t kiss him,” I say, sending up every prayer to the universe I can think of that would delete that viral moment in the coffee shop from the Internet forever. “I don’t know what happened, but there wasn’t a spell. He didn’t chant, use his wand, or do anything else after he saved us from crashing into the bakery case.”
“Must be fate,” Birdie says.
“What, for me to make a fool of myself at every possible opportunity? Oh yeah, that definitely tracks.” I glance down at my phone on the coffee table and the four billion notifications popping up on my screen as everyone and their witch cousin tags the Sherwood family social media accounts in the videos of me begging Gil to kiss me. “Look, I gotta get back to work. See you at the next meeting?”
“Sure,” Eli says as he gives Birdie the look so she gets up too. “Don’t forget, you’re helping us out at the fundraiser in the park this weekend.”
“I’ve written it into my calendar in hot pink,” I say. “I’ll be there.”
I can tell Birdie wants to say more, but Eli nudges her forward and out the bookshop’s door, which leaves me alone in my corner of the shop to sniff the wondrous smell of leather-bound books, fresh ink, and the apple-scented magic of falling into a story. Okay, fine. It isn’t really magic, but it’s as close as I ever get to experiencing a little of the shazam, and I’m not going to downplay it—which reminds me I promised Effie I’d pick her up a copy of Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo and You: A Meditation on Magic.
I pack up my stuff, figuring I’ll grab the book and finish up my workday at home on the back veranda overlooking the herb garden my great-grandmother started as a kid. It’s a bit ragged in places and wild in others—especially in comparison to the rigid formality of my mom’s garden—but it is where I feel most at home. Plants cross over from one plot to another, yew trees stand among the California gold poppies and evening primrose, and there are wildflowers everywhere, growing untended in whatever direction the sun takes them. There are no mistakes there, no errors, no bad luck. Instead, everything all comes together, working stronger as a unit than apart. Family legend has it that Grandmother Hecate started the garden after a vision of the future and enchanted it so that it would be ready when needed.
Well, truth be told, I need it now.
I sling my crossbody bag over my shoulders and head deeper into the stacks for Effie’s book. I make it almost all the way there when the air shifts, and I know before I hear him that Gil is behind me. Ignoring—or trying my best to ignore—the champagne fizz of anticipation in my belly, I turn around and face my nemesis. He has honest-to-the-fates suede patches on the elbows of his blazer. That should make him look old and stuffy and out of touch. Instead, it—along with the collared shirt under a dark blue sweater and jeans—just makes him look fuckable. It isn’t fair. Assholes should have asshole looks, not give off vibes that are a mix between the hot hero from The Mummy and Indiana Jones in all of his whip-wielding glory.