Chapter 8
Arthur freezes mid–pancake flip. The runny batter slips off the side of the spatula to land in a sizzling splatter on the hot griddle.
My mom dated a guy once who called those little bits “dog pancakes” because he would feed them to his sweet hound dog as treats.
I liked Dodger, the dog. Dodger’s owner was a compulsive gambler and stole money from my mom. She left him when she found out, and we moved a week later.
Arthur gets over his surprise and finishes the flip, the pancake landing with a splat.
Then, he grunts.
The sound—always deep and loud enough for me to hear—tempts me to smile. But more than grunts, I want Arthur to talk to me. Maybe get my mind off the pain machine still grinding away. Or better yet, he could give me some guidance on how to get over his lying piece-of-shit relative.
“Come on. I’m curious. Why is Arthur Kraut single?”
His beard twitches, and I get the sense there’s a hard jaw grinding underneath it.
“You Arthur?”
I scoff. “Nice try. We both know why I’m single. Right now, we’re talking about pancake-master Arthur. These are delicious, by the way. I’ve outdone myself.”
The mailman pretends to glare at me, and a tense pain in my stomach eases at the surly expression. Something about his perpetual grumpiness comforts me.
“Explain it to me,” I press. “You’re a decent person with a full-time job, a house, and at least basic cooking abilities. Some ladies find those qualities appealing. Why hasn’t one snapped you up yet?”
“Some ladies?”
I poke his big biceps. “You’re trying to distract me. Answer the question.”
The man grumbles what I’m pretty sure are just random, annoyed noises and not actual words, but with my hearing loss, I’m not sure.
“What was that?” Reaching out a leg, I nudge his thigh with my toe. Needling him until he provides me with a distraction from the wreckage of my love life.
“Haven’t found the one,” he says, eyes on his spatula as he slips pancakes onto a plate for himself.
“The one?” I watch Arthur turn off the stove burner and settle at his tiny kitchen table after grabbing syrup from the fridge.
He doesn’t repeat himself, but I know I heard that right.
“You mean, like, the one?” I put special emphasis on the last two words. “You’re saying you think there’s a single person who is right for everyone in the world?”
I know some of the Krauts have a fascination with a storybook kind of romance—one of the reasons I found Daren’s family so charming when I first met them—but I didn’t think the grumpy postman in their lot fell into that group.
Arthur grunts, neither confirming nor denying my definition.
“That’s ludicrous!”
He scowls at me while forking a flapjack into his mouth.
“You can’t really believe in, like...soulmates. Right?” I keep talking when he doesn’t seem interested in explaining. “How are you supposed to identify this perfect one? Does a golden light shine down from the sky, illuminating them in a sparkly soulmate glow? Does a baby in a diaper pop out of the bushes and shoot you with a heart-shaped arrow?”
Arthur’s eyes drop to his plate as he spreads warm butter over his banana pancakes.
“I’ll know,” he says.
Simple as that.
There’s so much conviction in that statement that I almost let the matter drop.
But I can’t. This is too odd and something I’ve never known about Arthur Kraut.
“How will you know?” At least, this time, I leave off the jokes. Because I’m suddenly, rabidly interested in his answer. Does he have the secret? The foolproof, undeniable way to distinguish if someone is the right person? The partner who won’t fool you into loving them and then destroy your heart?
Arthur takes his time answering, and I shove more of my breakfast in my mouth to keep from badgering him. Eventually, he breaks.
“A kiss.”
He doesn’t expand, and I realize that’s his entire answer.
I groan. “A kiss? My God, Arthur. I love you, buddy, so I hate to do this. But FYI, we don’t live in a fairy tale. You are not some magic prince who’s going to find his Snow White by making out with every unconscious woman you come across.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You don’t do that, right?”
He glares right back at me. “No.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” My food done, I set my plate aside, but don’t climb down from the counter. I enjoy this slightly higher vantage point. “Who convinced you kissing is the key to finding your soulmate?”
Again, he doesn’t answer right away. Arthur doesn’t do anything right away.
Except for climb into the car when I’m about to egg my cheating ex’s truck, I guess.
“My dad,” he eventually says.
I blink, mouth open to respond, but I click my jaw shut right away.
Sherman Kraut is a sweetheart, and I will never say a single thing bad about the man. I know a little of his past and the story of Arthur’s mother. Apparently, she was studying abroad in America and met Sherman at a university party. He was there to visit a friend but spent all night talking to her. When they got married, I don’t think it went over well with her family in India. Not at first, anyway. But anyone who’s ever talked about Sherman and Nimisha Kraut has told me it was love. I’ve seen a few pictures of her in the Kraut family’s houses. A beautiful woman with eyes and hair as dark as her son’s and skin a few shades browner. Arthur’s paler complexion and bearlike build come from his burly, grizzly-like, white father.
In all the pictures of Nimisha and Arthur, he’s a small kid. I think he was around two when she got sick. The flu, if you can fucking believe it. That still kills people, and it took Arthur’s mom from him before he got to know her.
My mother exasperates me most days, but the idea of never having her tears my heart to little shreds.
“Okay,” I say, stifling the disbelief and incredulity at Arthur’s romantic—yet unrealistic—idea of finding love. If he believes it, then I can be a good friend and go with it. “Your dad told you. I assume he kissed your mom and had some soulmate epiphany?”
Arthur nods and rises from the table. His plate is empty. I wonder if breakfast is over, realizing I’m still hungry. As if sensing my unsatisfied stomach, he opens his fridge and pulls out a package of bacon.
Yum. Yes, please.
Arthur returns to the stovetop, arranges a cast-iron skillet over a burner, and lays out the thick-cut strips on the quickly heating surface.
Meanwhile, my brain digs deeper into this new Arthur info.
“How many women have you kissed?” I ask.
He side-eyes me and grunts.
“Too high to count? You dog.” I playfully shove his shoulder, not that he budges. The guy is a granite rock. “Is it a one-and-done thing, or do you give them a do-over if you like them?”
He shrugs.
My bet is yes to the do-over. And the guy has probably dated women even if he didn’t think they were his magical soulmate. I doubt twenty-year-old Arthur was looking for his life partner.
But now that he’s in his thirties, maybe he’s putting more stock into his dad’s belief.
“So, you’ve kissed a lot of women, but no one has given you the soulmate spark.”
If they had, logic follows that he’d be with them.
I eye Arthur, fascinated by this stoic mailman with a secret romantic heart.
Some people might think I’d scorn all ideas of love after last night—and maybe for myself, that’s the case—but I suddenly realize I want Arthur to have his special kiss. To find his lady love, be head over heels for her, and stay true.
Arthur would stay true.
The thought makes me smile. There are good men in the world.
And you, Arthur Kraut, are one of them.
“I want one,” I announce, sitting up straighter.
The grease sizzles and pops, filling the kitchen with the delicious aroma of cooking bacon.
“Almost done,” he says, flipping the strips to brown both sides.
“Not the bacon. Although I do want one. More than one. All of it really, but I guess I can share.” I grip the edge of the counter and lean toward him, capturing Arthur’s dark gaze. “I want my shot at a soulmate kiss.”
Arthur’s thick brows pop up, and he rocks back a step.
“What?” His deep voice has dropped an octave and taken on a rough, raspy edge.
“Come on.” I spread my arms. “You gotta kiss ’em all! How else are you going to find the lucky lady?”
“You’re Daren’s—” he starts, but I cut him off with a raised finger and a scowl.
“No. I am not Daren’s anything.”
Arthur firms his lips, but then nods. “Sorry.”
And just like that, my temper fades. There’s still plenty of anger in my chest, festering and fueling my pain machine. But none of it is for Arthur.
He was doing such a good job of distracting me. Let’s get back to that.
I don’t want to kiss Arthur because I think I’m his one true love or even because I believe in that weirdness. But something in me knows that, one day, Arthur will find his special one, and he won’t deviate from her. Ever. A selfish goblin part of me wants to claim a piece of him before that day comes. To know that I kissed Prince Charming once, just for the heck of it. To rest assured that I know what the magic lips are like.
“Come on, Arthur. One kiss. Then, you never have to wonder about me. You can scratch my name off your list.” I hold out my arms again, inviting him once more.
The man’s face has gone blank.
Does he dread the idea of kissing me? Why? Because I still stink of misery from my breakup? Because he knows I’m not his soulmate?
Because he’s worried I might be?
“Come on,” I coax. “You’re not kissing Robin anyway. You’re kissing Arthur. This is just like practicing on a mirror.”
His nose wrinkles, crinkling his beard along with it. But, coming to some kind of decision, Arthur gives me a small, jerky nod. First, he turns off the burner under the bacon, and then he shifts to stand in front of me.
“Fine,” he mutters.
“I’m flattered by your enthusiasm.” I grin and spread my thighs, glad my spot on the counter puts my mouth closer to his.
With a stiff step, he moves in close, arms straight at his sides. Arthur bends at the waist, putting his mouth within an inch of mine.
And he waits.
Ah, I guess it’s an I go ninety, you go ten situation.
So, I go ten, letting my eyes drift closed as I find his lips with mine.
At least . . . I think they’re his lips.
Could just as easily be two chips of ice. Cold. Unmoving.
I press closer, softening my mouth more, angling my head, waiting for him to do...something.
Anything.
Hell, I might as well be the one who stumbled upon a princess corpse and tried to kiss her back to life.
And failed.
After a slow count of ten, I realize this is it. This is the kiss. This is the are you my soulmate test.
Surprise, I’m not it.
I lean back, breaking contact, and try not to examine the pinch of disappointment low in my gut. Arthur straightens, staring down at me, expression wary.
Like he thinks I’m going to claim him against his will.
I roll my eyes as a suspicion starts. “You didn’t have to kiss me if you didn’t want to.”
He frowns. “I know.”
“I didn’t think you were my soulmate. I wasn’t going to demand you put a ring on it if we had one good kiss. No need to go all stony on me.”
His brows dip in a deep V of a frown. “What?”
Arthur looks legitimately confused, and I have a horrible, slow-dawning realization.
“You didn’t kiss me that way on purpose? Because of Daren?”
Arthur steps back, arms crossed over his chest, frown now directed at the kitchen tiles beneath his feet. “No.”
“And that—what you did just now—is how you normally kiss? How you’ve kissed everyone else in your life?”
Now, he stares at me, expression revealing nothing. “Yes.”
Well, now we know why Arthur hasn’t found his soulmate.I keep the harsh words to myself.
He’s a bad kisser.