19. Salem
SALEM
The funnel cake line was moving too slowly for someone trying to look like they weren’t completely undone.
I was failing at it.
Ethan stood beside me with his hands in his pockets, doing that thing where he looked effortlessly unbothered, and I was trying—and failing—to match his energy.
He smelled like cedar and something that lived in the category of things that make you lean closer. I know this because I had already done it twice without noticing and was working very hard not to do it a third time.
We had just kissed.
In public.
In front of a line of people waiting to get their faces painted, which—honestly—felt on brand for us.
We met in front of a camera. The video went viral.
The first kiss was probably always going to have an audience.
I just hoped this wasn’t going to be a theme, because I was running out of public dignity.
“You’re staring,” Ethan said, without looking at me.
“I am not.”
“Mm.” He finally glanced over and winked.
I looked away.
“Should I be flattered or concerned?”
“Definitely concerned,” I said.
He let out a quiet laugh, and his arm brushed mine. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to have to kiss you again.”
My stomach immediately betrayed me. “Yeah?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second. “Yeah.”
“We should post the obligatory selfie.”
“I mean, it is contractually required.”
We took the photo. He captioned it Hotter than a funnel cake with a heart-eyes emoji and tagged me. His hand moved toward mine. Slow, deliberate, giving me every opportunity to pull away.
I didn’t take it.
My fingers shifted toward his—barely but enough—and when his hand closed around mine, it felt like what it was.
A choice, and both of us made it at the same time.
The noise of the fair turned down a notch, the autumn sun warm on our shoulders, his hand solid against mine, and for about thirty seconds, everything was right.
And then—
It was not.
His hand dropped. Posture tightened. His attention shifted somewhere over my shoulder. The loss of it hit before I could prepare for it.
“Wow.” Lucy approached.
Of course.
Her hair caught the breeze at the exact right angle. The sun positioned itself behind her like it had been hired. Her tan skin glowed in the October light like she had been specifically designed for outdoor autumn events.
The breeze plastered my dark hair directly across my freshly applied lip gloss. We were not the same.
Cool. Great. Perfect.
“Ethan, I am obsessed with the face painting, you are so good at that,” she said.
He said thanks. Even. Giving her nothing.
“Are you guys having fun? Can I stand in line with you?”
“Sure,” I said, half a second before my brain arrived at the conversation.
She turned toward me with that bright, practiced smile. “Did Ethan ever mention funnel cakes are my favorite? We always come to this stand. Every fair, every festival.” She let out a small laugh, and her hand found his arm like it lived there. “It’s kind of our thing.”
Ethan shifted slightly, just enough to create a few inches of space between them without making it a statement.
“We came once with a group of people,” he said casually, like he was correcting a minor factual error and not dismantling the entire narrative she’d constructed.
Lucy’s smile held. Her eyes didn’t quit. “Right,” she said smoothly. “That is what I said.”
She turned back to her phone like the moment hadn’t happened, which was, I had to admit, impressive. I was standing there holding the wreckage of it, and she had already moved on to scrolling.
Ethan’s eyes found mine over the top of her head. Just for a second.
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling.
“I am so happy with the social reactions,” Lucy continued, deep in her feed. “Have you guys seen everything?” She scrolled, narrated, kept going. “And Salem—here’s you!”
I looked away immediately.
Too late.
It was genuinely one of the worst photos ever taken of me in all the years of being a person. Mid-expression, eyes half closed, mouth slightly open, paint smeared across my face.
I understood immediately what this was.
I’d grown up mostly outside of this kind of warfare. Rowan and I were always too busy being each other’s person to get pulled into other people’s quiet battles, which was probably why I hadn’t seen it coming until it was already landing directly on my face.
I looked up slowly.
Lucy’s expression was perfectly open. Warm, even. Her eyes said everything the rest of her face wasn’t.
“And here’s one of Ethan and me,” she added, turning the phone toward him.
Just the two of them. Cropped perfectly. Lit beautifully. They looked good together.
I heard my own voice before I’d finished deciding to use it. “I should find Alba. She needed me to—help with something.”
Smooth. Truly exceptional crisis management.
“I’ll see you later.” A small wave. A pivot. I was gone before either of them could respond. Walking at a pace that could generously be described as casual but was not casual at all.
Okay. I ran.
I ran anywhere else, wearing three small black hearts on my cheekbone, having kissed the man ten minutes ago and fleeing the scene.
This was fine.
Some days, you kiss someone at a face-painting table in front of a crowd of children.
Some days you run.
Today was apparently both.