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I put my hands up. “Okay, whatever, hotshot. So, enjoyed kicking bucket number three?”

“That’s worse.”

“Oh my god, there’s literally no winning.”

She laughed, turning to me, and she seemed to lose her composure when she did—her cheeks tinted pink, and she glanced away shyly. “I’m glad we got to go. Thanks for taking me.”

I suddenly got the trope about kissing at the end of a date, and all the magical things it meant. This wasn’t a date—even though I guess it could have been in another world—but I wanted to kiss hersobadly. She was so pretty. I hadn’t been ableto stop thinking it all night. Was it just because I’d been thinking more about what beauty looked like to me, or was it… more than that?

I couldn’t handle it being more than that, so I chose to believe that it wasn’t. Case closed.

“Still plenty more where that came from,” I said. “Go get some sleep, gorgeous.”

Whoops. I’d meant to saydorkorloserornerdor something. Harper blushed harder, giving me a nervous smile. “Yeah… sorry I’m such an early sleeper.”

“Nah. You’re cute like this.” I reached out and caressed her cheek, which—come to think of it, that was a hell of a move, wasn’t it? I wondered when my hand had even gotten there, but hey, I liked the way she reacted, melting into it with her brows arched, eyes closed, lips parted.

“I’m… guessing you’re going to take me somewhere else tomorrow?”

“Honestly, I should probably put some hours in at the shop, y’know? People will start forgetting it’s there.”

“Any idea how you’re addressing the blonde hair?”

I made a show of being surprised, touching my head. “Oh, what? Oh… it’s blonde. Did I do that?”

She sighed. “Yeah… thing is, I think people actually would buy that from you.”

I winked. “Paisley the mastermind. But I’ll see if we can squeeze in something together.”

“Well, I’ll… try to think of the next bucket.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” And my self-control lost, because I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers—a quick kiss, just a second, leaving her there breathless and reeling, eyes wide, blinking fast, and I tried to ignore the way my heart beat wildly in my chest as I turned away.

“Paisley—”

“See you tomorrow, Harper.”

“I… I’ll see you tomorrow…”

I got home in a rush and collapsed on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, and I heard myself giggling. Wonder what that was about.

Either way, I got changed, taking off my superhero disguise and changing back into regular old Paisley, glasses and oversized sweater, and I tried to make myself a midnight snack, but I didn’t have any crackers, so I climbed over the fence into Emberlynn’s yard and popped open the back door. Aria caught me on my way out, my hands full with crackers, and she raised her eyebrows as she paused at the bottom of the stairs.

“You’re… blonde,” she said.

“Oh. Yeah. I found some hair bleach and decided to see what it did.”

“What it did,as if it’s up for debate…” She sighed. “Blonde and stealing food. Well, at least the blonde part is new. It suits you. You actually applied it pretty well too. I’ll tell Emberlynn not to jump when she sees a blonde girl in the house crawling around under the sink.”

“You’re marginally okay sometimes, Ar,” I said, skipping on out of the house.

∞∞∞

I got some hours in at the shop that night, flipping the sign around and cleaning up the shelves that had accumulated a bit of dust—I hadn’t worked in a couple of days now, but, like, sue me. A good few people came in, and only Charlie stopped to ask me about my hair, so maybe I was surviving this thing after all.

I slept for maybe four hours that night, too excited somehow to stay asleep, and I cleaned up and headed out to the shop again, half because I wanted to get some time in while Harper was still working so we could both have the evening and half because I needed somewhere to pace excitedly and talk to strangers. I was at the till watching a couple of people leave when I got a text from Harper, and all I could think was the sudden memory of kissing her flashing through my head.

I talked to Anders about interesting things to do in town, and he recommended some kind of treehouse thing south of town. Do you know what he’s talking about?