Chapter Twelve #2
Cosima blamed Green Bay for the failure of Fauxmage.
She had no trouble believing that Edie was meant to do something creative and special, and the existence of the pizza crust factory job seemed to offend her.
And—not to beat a dead sartorial metaphor—there was the jacket.
The Paul Smith jacket was the jacket of a serious woman.
She had no trouble imagining Cosima personally rounding up patrons from the brew pubs and sports bars and Targets back home and escorting them to Fauxmage until Edie had to expand to meet the demand.
In no time at all, Cosima Frank had become a friend and probably the best, most loyal champion Edie had ever had.
It was the kind of friendship that, if Edie was careful with it, would mean that she lost the “whose life is the worst” game forever, just for having such a friend.
She met Cosima’s big blue eyes, which at some point had become Cosima’s eyes, not Phoebe Frank’s.
Cosima’s were more interesting. Stormier.
Right now, they were obviously trying to figure Edie out, probably because Edie was staring at them while her stomach plummeted like she was flying down the first drop on a roller coaster.
This woman was difficult—so difficult that her difficulty established a scale that balanced Edie’s personality and made her somehow not difficult.
Made her fit. Did Edie want to be anywhere else on earth right now than inside of this tête-à-tête with Cosima Frank on a Lincolnshire train?
No, she did not. No other place would feel correct.
She liked this feeling of fitting somewhere that was exactly right.
Cosima gave Edie a sly, subtle look that somehow communicated she was taking a break from their mutually intense eye contact before someone got too horny and kissed the other on the forehead.
She adjusted her position, gracefully reclining with her arms crossed and one booted foot perched on her knee.
“I could tell you something that I wasn’t going to tell you.
I was planning to maintain a polite silence about it.
” She bit her lip. “I think my life might be better if I stopped with things like polite silence.”
“That sounds like a secret.” Edie’s heart rate kicked up.
“I don’t think so. It’s not something I’ve known long enough that it qualifies as a secret, and I think you’ve already guessed it. But it might not be something you want to know for sure, out loud, sitting beside me inside a steel box with no escape.”
“You must have really killed at girls’ boarding school.” Edie narrowed her eyes. “I bet you sat on gossip like a fat dragon on doubloons.”
“I’d like to kiss you.” Above the ivory silk drape of her blouse, Cosima’s throat went red, making Edie’s vision tunnel at the same time her heart stopped.
“What I mean is, I’ve started thinking about kissing you, and I’m having a difficult time stopping myself from thinking about it.
Keep in mind that I’m not planning on doing anything about this.
They are only thoughts. Intrusive, near constant, but thoughts. ”
Edie wondered, very sincerely, if her native language was English.
She had never been without words, but at this moment, she doubted that her consciousness was comprised of anything more than bright shooting lights, a racing pulse, and gay panic the like of which she hadn’t experienced since she was at a seventh-grade sleepover and Britnee Cordan spent the entirety of a movie braiding and re-braiding her hair.
“Say something.” Cosima made this request with her mouth.
Her mouth that had picked up the blush bleeding over her cheeks and made her lips look swollen.
Her mouth that would like to kiss Edie’s, wanted it so much it was sending intrusive thoughts to Cosima’s brain.
Constantly. Constant, muscled, insistent kissing thoughts everywhere in her mind. About Edie.
Cosima wanted to know what Edie tasted like and felt like and how she would respond to being kissed.
“I can’t say something.”
“Why?”
“My friendship plan.” Edie was regretting their purchase of express tickets. She needed the train to stop so she could suck in some outdoors air or lay down on the platform.
“How does what I said—what I shared very vulnerably, I might add—disrupt your friendship plan? Which you haven’t mentioned to me, let’s be clear.”
“I don’t have a friendship plan. I just said it impulsively because I’d already told you that I can’t say something, and so I briefly tried something out that seemed vaguely adult.
You can’t just tell a person something like that.
” Edie had nothing. Nothing. She was rifling through a pile of disorganized boxes labeled how not to say anything stupid, and they were empty.
“Like what? I can’t tell the person I want to kiss that I want to kiss her? Or did I tell it wrong? I wasn’t under the impression there was a script.”
“You said that you’d like to,” Edie protested weakly. “That you were thinking about it. Not that you want to.”
Cosima shoved herself against her seatback with a huff. “Semantics. Honestly. I have no words.”
“You have no words? Now you’re copying me.” Edie didn’t realize how loud her screech was until the older man across the aisle turned to frown at her American lack of comportment. She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “Look, Cosima, how am I supposed to respond to something like that?”
“Not at all, if you’re going to offer up a lot of rationalization.
Besides, I’m pretty sure if I’m thinking about it, it’s because you’re thinking about it, too.
As much as I continue to enjoy our charming banter, I’d rather you gracefully receive my admission or tell me, of course, that you want to kiss me. ”
Without stopping, interjected Edie’s crush demon. Tell her you want to kiss her without stopping.
“Seriously?” Edie tried to cool her face with the backs of her hands. “Who wouldn’t want to kiss you, woman?”
That was what her mouth decided to go with.
For fuck’s sake. She looked at the annoyed British man to see if he was hearing this, too.
He was. He seemed disappointed in her. Same.
“With the hair and the blue, blue eyes and the legs? You must know that your cold, imperious reserve only makes what you have on offer hotter.”
Cosima leaned forward and wrapped her hands around Edie’s wrists to tug them away from her face. She was so close, smelling as edibly expensive as a pastel pink buttercream rose on a two-thousand-dollar wedding cake.
Go wake up the princess. That was what Morag had said.
Now the princess was awake—very, very awake—and Edie seemed to remember there were a lot of rules about awake princesses and kissing.
“I want to kiss you.” Cosima’s voice emerged honey-smooth from her throat.
“I don’t think it’s vacation, or grief, or the treasure hunt, or friendship.
I want to kiss you, Edie Whitelock.” Cosima shook her head as though amazed at herself before she continued.
“I’ve never had anything like this to tell anyone.
In fact, other than a revolting handful of minutes at a party where I was compelled by a game to kiss Leland Cronkite until an ice cube from the champagne bucket melted in my hand, I haven’t kissed anyone, and I haven’t wanted to, and I have always been content. Until now.”
Just when Edie had thought Cosima couldn’t layer on any more stakes, she’d frosted the entire situation with pastel swoops of demisexuality. Edie did not have the defenses. She would be stuck dreaming forever, trying not to beg for what she wanted most.
Which meant she couldn’t feint. Or lie. She only had to exercise some self-restraint, for the first time ever. “I mean, yes. Yeah. Of course I want to kiss you. Obviously.” Edie’s voice cracked like a twelve-year-old boy’s.
When Cosima smiled, her upper lip caught ever so slightly on an incisor, and Edie ached in such a delicious way that she could not think.
Cosima came closer, her hair brushing Edie’s cheek, her famous eyes searching. Edie’s heart kicked hard inside her chest. Cosima didn’t kiss her, but Edie’s mouth could feel how little space had been between their lips before Cosima brushed past them and put them against Edie’s ear.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I look forward to it.”
Then she pulled back, letting the warm air inside the train fill in the space between them. Edie’s heart still hadn’t found a rhythm when Cosima looked away, leaving Edie with at least a dozen more questions.
But the moment to ask them had dissolved—or hadn’t come yet, if it ever would.
A recorded voice told them their next stop was Sleaford, where they would transfer to the train that would take them to their castle.