Chapter Eighteen
Even with the practical promise of learning about normal things reasonable boyfriends and girlfriends did, and lots of kill two birds with one stone arguments about Cassie and her probably wonderful magic advice when it came to his other issues, it took two days to talk him into dinner.
And even after she had managed to convince him, he wanted to do everything just right.
She got to his place, ready to go together from there, and found he had made twenty-seven pies.
They were all over his kitchen counter and table, some of them steaming, some of them smelling heavenly, others looking very strange indeed.
“Don’t go anywhere near the one that keeps squirming,” he said, as he flew past her to the suddenly smoking oven. “I accidentally gave it eyes.”
Though truthfully she felt the fact that it could see was the least of his problems. “I think the sheer volume of desserts here might be a slightly larger issue,” she said, while trying to avoid two overflowing pie tins on the floor. At which point, he stopped. He seemed to register what he’d done.
“I just panicked, okay. I mean, I like blueberry and tomato, but what if they don’t? I had to at least attempt a few other possibilities.”
“This isn’t a few other possibilities, Jack. This is a pie shop.”
“Oh, I could never open a shop with these. At least ten of them are poison.”
“Okay, but do you remember which ones? Because we need to go. And I think the most important thing is to turn up with one that won’t kill anybody,” she said, but that only deepened his clearly dawning despair.
He put his hands in his hair. Chose one pie, and then put it back. Then another and put it back.
“None of them,” he said, finally. “What am I gonna do?”
“Well, you could just try taking some nice flowers.”
“Flowers are also necessary? This is a nightmare. I don’t know how humans do this. I’m never gonna be able to learn all the rules, and even if I do I’ll just ruin things five minutes later by becoming so immense while kissing her that my tongue turns her face into paté.”
He blurted the words out while dumping a pie that was more legs than crust into the trash. But that just meant she didn’t guard her reaction to this idea, and then he looked up too abruptly and clocked it. She knew he had clocked it, even though she tried to make her eyes smaller before he did.
“You’re never going to let me kiss you again, are you,” he said, and she sort of wanted to say absolutely never. But he sounded so morose about it that all she could think was He wants to do it again. He wants to kiss you again. And maybe not just on the lips, either .
“I don’t know. You managed to not split me in two the other day.”
“Right, and I’m starting to think that was very reckless.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that soon. Because we’re going to solve it. We’re going to solve everything. Now let’s go,” she said, and when he went to protest she held up a finger. “We can pick up a nice bottle of wine on the way.”
And they did. She even let him choose it, from the cheese place at the end of Main Street.
Though it took him a while. He paced. He sweated through the nice jacket she’d helped him pick out, then yanked it off and scrunched it into a ball.
“I don’t understand why one squeezed grape says thank you for ploughing my driveway , and another says I am glad we are having dinner together ,” he said, before finally settling on a rosé that she didn’t have the heart to tell him meant he was a kid trying to apologize to his mom.
As far as she was concerned, he was doing great.
He even got a smile out of the Bentley kids and their father at the tills. And that bolstered him enough to get him over to Cassie’s. He managed to park the truck, and cross the grass, and get up the porch steps.
It was only when they got to the door that he hesitated.
Bottle going round and round in his hands. Left leg jigging. One eye on the window in the door, where he could just about see his own dark reflection. “My hair looks nuts,” he groaned, but she didn’t have time to correct him.
The door swung open.
And it was showtime.
Or at least, she could tell Jack thought it was going to be some kind of showtime.
He smiled too wide, offered the wine immediately, tried to seem in every way like a very normal human man.
Only to encounter a man with a raccoon on his face.
And even wilder: the raccoon abandoned said face the moment it saw Popcorn, dancing in between her legs.
It practically launched itself at Popcorn.
They spent the first ten minutes there chasing a raccoon riding on the back of a pug around Cassie’s home.
She couldn’t even say Popcorn seemed unhappy about it.
Jack seemed more distressed, truth be told.
He had to find around twelve different ways to express terror over his new best friend being ridden, while also appearing like a model dinner party guest.
She had never seen anyone try to disguise using their tie as a lasso with an insistence that it needed straightening.
Though to be fair, it did work. And nobody seemed to mind.
“See,” she whispered to him as Cassie ushered them to the kitchen table.
“Sometimes you don’t have to be a model anything.
You just need to be amongst people who understand you and are the same way you are. ”
And it calmed him, somewhat.
He sat beside her, only sort of surreptitiously watching everything she did. She scooped some peas from a big tureen onto her plate, he did the same. She thanked Cassie for the pork chops she offered, he did the same. Then after a while she noticed it wasn’t just her he was doing that with.
It was Seth.
Seth who tucked his napkin into his sweater. Seth who chose the right utensils. Seth who didn’t werewolf out at any point.
She shouldn’t have been surprised when Cassie winked at her, and then offered her cheek to Seth for a kiss. Because of course the moment Seth obliged happily, Jack clearly thought he should do the same thing. Even though doing the same thing was just a little bit agonizing for him.
He was practically vibrating as he leaned down.
She was sure she saw a ripple of red over his throat, deeper than any blush should be. And then he made the most delicate contact, and it seemed to make him bunch the tablecloth into his fist. Plates skidded across the table. Things rattled.
She met Cassie’s gaze over the food.
Though Cassie didn’t say anything until dinner was over.
Jack was on the porch, talking to Seth about how he’d won Cassie’s heart.
She heard the words I have no idea, I’m the luckiest guy in the world , just as Cassie dumped a pile of books in her arms. “You’ll need these, my little starter witch.
Though, to be fair, your particular problem here is not going to be that hard to fix,” she said, her bright gaze on Jack, framed in the doorway, trying to glance back to see her while pretending that wasn’t what he was doing.
“So you have a potion, then. You have something I can use,” Nancy said.
But Cassie shook her head. “You don’t need it. Your own magic will do fine. Your own magic will work better, in fact, because your understanding and care for him will be in it. Just let yourself feel that, and then—do you know what your knack is?”
“Writing words, I think.”
“Good. It’ll be easy, then.”
“What will be?”
“Covering him in your magic, of course. Just, like, getting it all over him. In a purely platonic sense, naturally, because I can see you and him? Totally just friends. Nothing going on. He’s definitely not making you go all heart eyes whenever you even vaguely refer to him,” Cassie said while definitely trying not to smile.
Then, just as Nancy started out the door, she called after her, “And his heart eyes? Oh, I’m sure they’re for anything but you. ”