Chapter 17
FELIX
“What’s this?” Amelia asked, peering into the brown paper bag I’d handed her.
The sky had been overcast when I’d woken up this morning—after a thunderstorm on Sunday—but now there was a single beam of sunlight streaming through the studio kitchenette window, drawing a line between me and her on the tile floor.
“Iggy tells me they’re lavender cream-filled Earl Grey-infused doughnut balls,” I said. They were about the size of a golf ball each, rolled in sugar, and they smelled amazing. “He promised me you’d like them. The blondies are off the menu.”
Amelia raised an eyebrow.
“It’s also an apology?” I offered, passing her the coffee with her name on it. I’d since learned her new order was a latte with a shot of both caramel and hazelnut syrup in it.
Iggy had given me an almond milk latte without asking.
“I see,” Amelia said, accepting the coffee and perching on the counter in the same spot I had on my first day here.
I leaned against the wonky table, the short leg clacking on the tiles as it tilted under my weight. After a moment of clutching my coffee to my chest as though it was my favorite stuffed animal, I gathered the courage to speak again.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
It wasn’t that I was bad at apologies, exactly. Just that I wasn’t used to screwing up this often.
One more thing I’d have to learn to live with.
Amelia waved me off with a wry smile. “I’ve already forgiven you. Apology appreciated, though,” she said, the bag rustling as she reached into it. “As is breakfast. Have you eaten?”
I opened my mouth to lie, then shook my head.
“Eat,” Amelia said, offering me the bag. “We’re not having this talk on an empty stomach.”
“We’re having a talk?”
Amanda’s brow rose again. I could almost see don’t argue written along the arch of it.
“Eat.”
I took one of the doughnut balls out of the bag, sugar crystals instantly coating my fingers. They really did smell good, and I was hungry. I’d been too focused on having to set things right with Amelia to eat.
And I was used to black coffee for breakfast. The almond milk was almost too rich for me.
Amelia made an obscene sound as she bit into one of the doughnuts, closing her eyes and wriggling in place on the counter. “If Iggy’s husband wasn’t gay…”
I snorted. “Half the town seems to be?”
“I know at least three or four straight people,” Amelia said.
“Which accounts for the other half.”
Amelia gave me a look, but there was the hint of laughter sparkling in her eyes. We were okay. She wasn’t mad at me.
“I am sorry,” I repeated. It was easier this time, now that I knew she wasn’t irrevocably mad at me. “You’re the last person who deserves my bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit,” Amelia said.
Which was a surprise.
I waited for her to continue once she was done licking sugar off her lips.
“Eat your doughnut,” she said, pointing at it. “I’m gonna talk for a minute here.”
I hesitated, but when it became obvious that this was non-negotiable, took a bite out of my own doughnut.
Amanda’s reaction instantly made sense. The thin sugared crust gave way under my teeth to soft, fluffy insides that spilled smooth lavender cream into my mouth—not so much lavender it tasted like soap, and not so sweet it drowned out the bright citrus note of the Earl Grey.
I hadn’t met Iggy’s husband yet, but his baking alone made me think the guy had married well.
“It’s not bullshit,” Amelia repeated. “You have a right to be mad about all of this. You don’t have a right to take it out on me,” she added, pointing a sugar-covered finger at me, “or anyone else. But it’s not bullshit to be angry. It’s grief.”
I popped the rest of the doughnut in my mouth to save myself the temptation of speaking. Not that I had any idea what to say to that.
“I’ve been where you are,” Amelia continued. “And I was mad. I was so mad I could’ve torn the sky down with my teeth. I get it. And I’m not trying to rush you, either. Grief takes as long as it takes. It never really goes away, but… it becomes part of the previous act.”
My tongue darted out to catch the sugar on my lips. Amelia knew what she was talking about—she’d been through this. I knew that, intellectually. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought to talk about this with her sooner.
Because that makes it real, Cooper’s voice echoed in my ears.
He’d been through this, too. Not the same way, but he knew the broad strokes of the feeling.
Maybe…
“And you know, the act always ends when there’s a big change,” she went on.
“And then we all run off to switch costumes and Avery pulls us aside to smudge our eyeliner and then we get back on stage. Because there’s another act.
Things are different, but we’re still there, and the rest of the performance is ahead of us.
You’ve hit the end of an act,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes.
“And you can’t ever go back. But you can go forward, and unlike in a ballet, you get to decide what the next act looks like.
You get to decide what you want. So, what is it? ”
I licked sugar off my fingers as images of breakfast on Saturday played through my head, a wave of something that threatened to drag me under and drown me rising up in my chest.
I shoved it aside. No. What I wanted was to get back as much of what I’d had as I could sink my fingers into.
Wasn’t it?
“You don’t have to tell me,” Amelia continued. “But you’ve gotta be honest with yourself, and it has to be moving forward. If you keep trying to swim against the tide, you’ll eventually drown.”
“Are we dancing, or swimming in this metaphor?” I asked.
Amelia gave me exactly the unimpressed look I deserved for being a smartass while she was trying to help me.
It was just…
“I’m winning this competition for you,” I said. I wasn’t sure I believed I could, but I was going to try my hardest. I owed Amelia that. I wanted that.
And the change of subject saved me thinking about the way Cooper smiled at me when I kissed him, or the way his fingers felt when they were curled around mine.
Amelia turned another wry smile on me. “Anyone ever told you you’re bad at talking about your feelings?”
“Uh… no, actually,” I said, blinking at her.
“That’s because you don’t do it,” she said, hopping off the counter and offering me the doughnuts again. “Eat another one of these and come show me the choreography. But you should think about what you want after the weekend, ‘cause it’s coming up fast.”
When I opened my door to find Cooper standing on the other side of it, I didn’t know what to say.
It was Friday night, and I hadn’t seen him since Saturday. But there he was, wearing a nicer-than-usual t-shirt, a less faded plaid over it, holding two paper bags and looking shyly at me from under his lashes.
“Hi,” I managed, swallowing down the twist in my stomach.
“Hi,” he responded, raising the bag in his left hand. “Mrs. Sharma’s lamb balti, garlic and cheese naan, enough pakoras to feed a small army, and the fluffiest basmati rice you’ll ever have in your life,” he said, pausing before raising the other bag. “Yuzu-chili sorbet. Wanna share?”
I blinked at him.
“I thought you were mad at me,” I said without really meaning to. It made me feel like a three-year-old, but it was the only thing that’d come to mind. I had thought he was mad at me.
“I was never mad at you,” Cooper said.
He said something else after that, but the rush of relief at hearing that deafened me. He was never mad at me.
I’d snapped at him, and he was never mad at me.
I believed that. Cooper had never lied to me yet. He’d never had reason to, and he had no reason to now. If he was mad, he could’ve stayed that way.
But he was here. With food.
Which I was starting to understand meant something to him. He fed people he…
Cared about.
Of which I was clearly one.
“Felix?” he asked, tilting his head, those expressive brows furrowed in concern.
“Uh.” I licked my lips. “I missed… everything after you not being mad at me,” I admitted. “I thought you were.”
One of Cooper’s warm fuzzy blanket smiles spread over his face.
“I didn’t pick Benji up this week because I promised my dad I’d work a few extra hours to make the time up.
And… because I thought maybe you didn’t want to see me.
But then I thought, y’know, I wanted to see you, and…
you could tell me to go away if you didn’t want to see me.
And I thought maybe you could use a night to relax before the big day. So. Here I am.”
He held up the bags again.
I wanted to kiss him.
I wanted to drag him inside and fuck him against the wall, actually, but I was willing to compromise on that for the sake of eating what smelled like truly amazing food first. I was starting to remember what it was like to enjoy eating.
Possibly not as much as I would’ve enjoyed sex, but there’d be time for that later. I hoped.
“I did want to see you,” I confessed. I’d wanted to see him all week and I’d been disappointed when he didn’t pick Benji up after Monday or Wednesday’s class.
Cooper’s whole face lit up. Could I kiss him? Would he be okay with that?
I decided to find out, surging forward to close the distance between us and pressing my mouth to his, grabbing a handful of his shirt for balance. Cooper made a startled sound, but a heartbeat later I felt him relax, tension draining out of him.
We were okay.
I hummed as he leaned into the kiss, pulling back to tease him before kissing him again, savoring the warmth rolling off his body. It was late enough that the night had cooled, so it was nice to have my own personal furnace.
“How long do I have you for?” I asked, instead of doing the smart thing and taking advantage of him being here for however long I did have him.
“Mom and Dad volunteered to take care of Benji tonight when I told them I wanted to come see you.”
Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Richards.
A smile tugged at my lips. I took the bag with the sorbet in it out of Cooper’s hand, then curled my fingers around his now-free ones.
“Come on up.”