Page 20 of Everything She Does Is Magic (Fableview #1)

Darcy

Grace taps the mic to gain everyone’s attention. “The winner of our first-round semifinal, with an amazing twenty-six apples captured in a minute, is Anya Doyle!”

Anya sulks her way to the front, claiming the smaller semifinal trophy.

“We’ll have four more semifinal rounds, so it’s not too late to enter,” Grace announces afterward.

Kyle jumps off the front of the stage, making a beeline for me. “Can you tell your girlfriend to leave me alone?” he asks. “She sabotaged me up there, cutting in front of this old guy who was just about to volunteer to be the fourth bobber. Did you put her up to it? I just—”

He’s still talking, but my mind has snagged on “girlfriend.” He called Anya my girlfriend. And it wasn’t even judgmental. At least not judgmental of us dating. Judgmental only of Anya beating him. Why does Kyle think that? And why did Anya do the apple bobbing contest in the first place?

“I have to go,” I tell him, cutting off whatever point he’s rambling on about.

“If you’re nice enough, I’m sure Grace will let you enter another semifinal.

” Grace would never break the rules like that, but it’s the only way to get Kyle off my trail.

He can’t be stalking behind me, distressed about his loss, when I have more important things to handle.

Anya slinks off the stage with her trophy and the towel Grace has handed her. She’s out of view from the rest of the audience, hiding between the back curtain of the stage and the side of a tent. There are stray props back here. Extra medals and ribbons. Tubs full of unused decorations.

I’m not sure what energy I have, but I have a lot of it, and it has me storm up to Anya and say her name like an accusation. She startles, fumbling the towel she’d been cupping around the ends of her hair.

The wobbly, heart-squeezing feeling inside me only swells at the sight of her this close.

There are goggle indents around her eyes and a red oval on either side of her nose.

Her black tank top is wet, with her black cardigan falling off her shoulder.

Her chin-length hair is usually stick straight and tucked behind her ears.

Now it’s flung across her face, stuck to her cheeks.

For whatever reason, despite all of it, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Is your hand okay?”

Forget the gnome, Maddie’s wings, Julia’s comment, the family dinner invite, Anya’s participation in the apple bobbing contest. I need to know that she didn’t get too hurt in the shop.

Anya looks down at the new bandage she’s put there, much smaller than the one I placed on her. It’s one of the only dry things on her body after the bobbing, thanks to her hands being tied behind her back.

“It’s totally fine,” she tells me.

“That’s good,” I say. I have an instinct to reach for her, examine it like a doctor at a follow-up appointment, to make sure this isn’t yet another thing she’s been lying to me about. “You’re into apples?”

“Oh yeah. Big time,” she says back, letting a tiny sliver of a smile creep onto her face.

My stomach does an unexpected flip, setting me off-kilter. “Congrats on your win up there.”

“Someone had to put Kyle Holtzenberg in his place.”

“He’s so offended you won. I barely escaped his complaining. He told me to tell my girlfriend to leave him alone.”

I watch to see the way the word affects Anya.

She’d called me her friend, like a warning or a suggestion I needed to take.

But there’s a spark that lights up her face when I say “girlfriend” in relation to her.

Her hands reach for her heart, her towel clutched against her chest as she takes a moment to look down.

I try to imagine what it’s like inside her head, behind the storm cloud of flawless French and silent stewing. If she’s back in the supply closet like I am, so close to each other. Living in that almost .

“What were you doing with my ceramics?” I ask.

“I was trying to fix everything before it’s too late,” she says.

“Too late for what?”

“For me. For all of it.”

“The gnome looked good as new,” I say.

“I was pretty happy with him,” she admits. “But I didn’t get a chance to finish the rest. Darcy, I—”

“You forgot something else too,” I interrupt, stepping closer, no longer capable of ignoring this anymore.

Needing, for once, to not have her worried about all the things in my life she wants to help me solve.

That’s usually my job, finding solutions for other people.

Between the two of us, we have a problem that we both need to figure out.

“What?” she asks, a flash of worry darting across her face as I close in on her.

“You forgot to kiss me,” I say.

Her eyes dart to my lips, then back to my eyes.

She drops her towel, and it lands on my feet.

I don’t sever the delicate tension we’ve built.

If she turns me down, she has to do it to my face.

And it’s a good thing I keep my eyes on her, because the switch happens in front of me—her expression going from nervous to curious.

“Do you…really want me to do that?” she asks, her bottom lip quivering.

“Do you not?”

“I—” She reaches for her towel on the ground, lifting it and then dropping it all over again. “What am I doing? Of course I do.” I expect her to wrap me up, the tension snapping like a branch, giving in to something chaotic and urgent.

But this is Anya. She’s never what I expect.

She steps on the towel to get her leg between mine. She cups my chin in her hand as she watches me the same way she always does. Like she can see through me, to the core of my being.

“You have no idea who you are to me,” she whispers. “How much I don’t want to mess this up.”

“I don’t want to either,” I whisper back. There is so much that could complicate this—her secrets, my secrets, everything in between. But when we’re this close, none of that seems important.

Her eyes close, long dark lashes fanning gently across her upper cheek as she leans forward. “Are you ready?”

I close my eyes and meet her there, pressing onto my tiptoes to reach her lips for a kiss.

It’s so gentle, the same way my heart feels, soft and exploring, like cracking the spine of a book and reading the first page.

Where will this take me? Where can we go?

My hand reaches for the dampness of her back, holding her water-soaked sweater, letting my fist swirl the fabric into a tiny tornado. We’re so close that the water’s started to soak me too, seeping into my overalls.

“Darcy,” she whispers.

I almost open my eyes to look up, but then she kisses me deeper, all the gentle exploration shifting to something bolder. There’s a fire in her hands, on her mouth, lighting me up inside. I move my lips to her neck, inhaling the scent of her.

“Anya,” I say back, like that’s the answer.

Because it is. It feels like this entire month has been a test, a pop quiz about me, and now, with my mouth on Anya’s neck and my hands wrapped in her hair, I’m finding the correct answers.

This is who I am.

This is what I want.

And all of it is exactly right.