S he’s trying to resist. She’s attracted to me. She used the word very .
Well, I’m in shock, but it’s a happy kind of shock.
“You’re right. Free will is very important.
Accidents are often bad things—but not always.
Insulin, penicillin, the pacemaker, and even superglue were all discovered by accident.
The first three have saved millions of lives.
There are happy accidents, and if this feeling that you give me is real, and the voice I hear singing in my head is true—this is the happiest accident I’ve ever had,” I laugh.
Chloe’s eyes glow with a hint of gold for a second, and I understand, without knowing how I understand, that that golden glow means happiness. “You’re so smart,” she whispers, a little note of awe in her voice.
I shrug. “I’m more academic than athletic.”
“Me, too,” she says, a sudden smile bursting to life.
It melts my heart, and I store it away, so happy that we’ve found our first non-magical thing in common.
“Some of the world's greatest discoveries have been made by accident. Life-changing discoveries. This could be one of them.” I shrug off the insecure voice that says to play it cool, because I’ve already played it so uncool that you could roast a chicken on my level of weak-for-this-goddess, heart-on-my-sleeve mess.
“Maybe it could save our lives. Y’know? Make them better. More worth living?”
Chloe nods, slowly, hesitantly. Her fingers are around the sweating glass of ice water I brought her.
Her nails tap, and I notice the housewarming plant from my landlord that rests on the coffee table in front of her knees is pulsing in time to her taps.
The leaves beat up and down, like breathing lungs.
Oooo-kay. We’ll store that up as well. Plants respond to my wife.
Future wife.
Possible future wife.
“Of my own free will, and with all intention, and no accidents, I’d like to ask you out on a date tomorrow night. Would you like to come over? I’ll cook you the best meal you’ve had in recent memory.” Way to brag, idiot. What if she’s like Julia Child, Banshee Edition?
But before I can go down the familiar path of second-guessing and berating, Chloe exclaims, “Yes! I would... I would love that.”
“Good! And if you like it, I’d like to take you out again.
I have the whole week off, so...” I spread my hands.
“I could take you on a tour of the new Botanical Center and Research Lab at PR NYU? It’s closed right now, and the campus is deserted because of Spring Break, but I have a pass to all the buildings.
It could be just the two of us, in a garden wonderland. ”
Chloe breathes out, a little moan under the exhalation, and all of the sudden, all I can imagine is lifting her up onto the stainless steel tables in the back of the botanical lab, wrapping her legs around my waist, and—
“And on another day, we could go antiquing. Thrifting?”
She rises, and my plant rises.
Not in the air, but the center of the philodendron plant shoots up like six inches, with baby green and white leaves unfurling and sprouting all around it.
Okay, I need to ask about how that happens.
“You like thrifting and antiquing?” Her hands are on her hips now, and there’s a tremble in her voice that makes my temples ache.
I think that might be the banshee version of “tell me the truth, or I’ll give you a migraine.”
“Well, yeah, but only for nerd stuff,” I admit. “Old vinyl records, action figures from the series I watched when I was a kid but couldn’t afford to get back then, stuff for my D&D campaigns.”
Chloe is flushed. Breathing hard. The pain in my head leaves, and pressure asserts itself in my groin.
Is she doing that, or am I doing that because I’m imagining her panting, flushed, and on top of me? Or under me. Or sitting ever so strategically above my face so I can... “Whoa.” I bite my lip to try to focus somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“I have a lot of vinyl records. And so does Mad Hatter Music underneath me. Have you ever been there?”
“I keep meaning to, but I’ve never found the time. I thought maybe it was more like modern music stuff, headphones, earbuds, that sort of stuff. We could go this week? Make a day of it? Oh, you probably have to work.”
“I do. But not all day, every day. I do that too much because I don’t have anyone or anything else in my life right now except Marmalade and book club.”
“I love to read. Big, big fan of Terry Pratchett and R.A. Salvatore. I gotta be honest, though—I never liked marmalade. It’s too bitter. I prefer strawberry jam. Or raspberry. The raspberry jam you get in Ukraine is like, on another level from American jam. Do I sound like a snob?”
“No. A foodie.”
She says foodie in a way that could melt lead. The heat and the admiration in her voice are just...
“I need to go get some water,” I choke out. I also need to turn on the ice maker and direct it directly into the front of my pants.
“Marmalade is my cat,” she calls as I turn.
“You have a cat? I love cats! Look what I just did.” Thoughts of water are temporarily forgotten, and I whip out my phone to show her the Adopt-A-Pet app I just put on it.
“I’m looking for a cat or dog. I had a dog—but my ex kept him.
And the house. Said it wouldn’t be fair to take him away from the big yard and make him live in a little apartment while I’m at work all day. ”
Chloe nods, and with a cautious, lingering side-eyed look, she says, “You know what I like about owning my own shop?”
“Hm?”
“I can bring my cat with me to work every day. I could probably bring a dog, too. A well-behaved one.”
Is she hinting like I think she’s hinting?
The rosy future fantasy of us heading out to work every morning snaps into place so hard my glasses fall off.
The dog and cat trot out to her car and hop in the back.
He looks like an Irish setter, just tiny.
The cat’s an orange tabby. We kiss at the car doors, her with the pets on her way to work, me with—
A little girl on my hip and a diaper bag on my shoulder. Taking the baby to daycare. She doesn’t go every day, but she goes a couple times a week. Sometimes she’s with Chloe at the store, or I work from home. Sometimes my parents babysit.
How do I know that?
I feel lightheaded in the best way possible. What the heck is happening? Was that a daydream? Sleep deprivation? Can banshees see the future or something, and if they can, do they project little bits of it onto their spouses?
“Jen Chambers, the vet tech at the university’s vet program?
She was telling me that there’s this older lady out on Ridge View Way, all the way down, almost out of town—and she does fostering and rescues from puppy mills.
Lots of pure breeds that are underweight or not quite good enough with their markings to make show dogs? I bet she’d have something for you.”
“I want an Irish setter,” I announce firmly.
Chloe laughs. “To match your Irish banshee bride?”
“Um. Well, no, but... But do you ever get a picture in your head of something, and it seems so real?”
She nods vigorously, pale hair flying around her blushing cheeks. “Yeah. That’s been happening to me a lot tonight.”
“Me, too. If that lady has an Irish setter puppy... I’m calling it—your song was fate, and I approve. At that point, I’m afraid we’ll have no choice but to accept the scientific validity of the betrothal song.”
“What if there isn’t an Irish setter?” Her lips purse into a Puckish grin.
“That’s okay, too. We’ll say that it was a variant of the experiment.”
Chloe and I nod at each other. Her arms are crossed over her middle. Mine shift nervously from the back of my neck, to jamming in my pockets, to adjusting my glasses.
I have no chill, man. None.
“I should have just gotten to know my neighbors. Maybe then we could have gotten to this point naturally, like over six months,” she mumbles, looking guilty.
“Isn’t your magic a natural part of you? It’s not like you take magic vitamins or get your magic added in at the magic salon... is it?” I ask, suddenly nervous, because what if that is how she does things, and that’s what’s perfectly expected for banshees?
“No,” she chuckles. “Okay, it is natural, but we could have taken our time.”
Hoo boy. Cards on the table time? “I’m fine with a fast track to happiness—if this really does make us happy, Chloe.
I’m serious. I’m thirty-eight, I’ve already had one broken heart, a lot of bounces from university to university, research team to research team.
.. I’m ready for the best part of my life to begin, and I’d like it even more if my gorgeous, magical neighbor was the cause of it. ”
The philodendron on my table sprouts a flower, a waxy, cone-shaped beauty that’s coral pink and wrapped around a long, cylindrical pistil.
Blushing petals. Erect tubes.
Is she flirting with me through my houseplants?
I look at her, one eyebrow arched.
“I h-hope so, too. Okay. Um. Dinner tomorrow night?”
“Dinner tomorrow. Six-thirty?”
“I’ll bring the wine.”
“Perfect.”