Chapter 13 Jack
Jack
I manage to avoid Rosie for three days, but on Thursday, I find myself shooting glances at her store all morning, watching the golden strands slide underneath my front door, across the cobblestone road, and under her door.
The kiss bond has been much more of a mind fuck than anticipated, giving me the overwhelming urge to cross the street every single day and see her.
Talk to her. Touch her, the voice in my head says, but I ignore him the fiercest, pushing him back into the box that I’ve very carefully kept him in since I last saw Rosie.
Today is the first really cold day of the season, summer officially gone, and a dreary, rainy, cold fall day in its place.
Because of this, the town is pretty quiet, and my shop is even quieter.
I filled a handful of online orders that needed to be completed today before Jefferson, the mailman, arrived.
After, I did some general cleaning and inventory management, but now I have nothing else to distract me from the store across the way, which has a closed sign flipped to face the street.
It’s a slow day, but she doesn’t typically close just because it’s slow.
Not that I’ve been taking notes. Since her car is parked behind her place and all of the lights are on, I’m pretty sure she’s home.
Without much else to keep it occupied, my mind starts moving.
Maybe she’s sick. Maybe she’s hurt. Maybe a spell went wrong.
Maybe she needs someone, something. Maybe she needs me.
My mind continues to spiral, and I decide that the only way to make it so I can actually focus on anything today is to go over and check on her, make sure she’s okay.
The gold tingles across my skin with a mind of its own, aligning with the sentiment and nearly jumping with excitement at the prospect of seeing Rosie.
I sigh, then put the hood of my sweatshirt up before moving out my front door and rushing (to avoid the rain, of course) across the street until I’m in front of her place, the overhang stopping the freezing cold rain from hitting me.
Instead of barging in, though, I stand there, contemplating what the fuck I’m doing.
With the increased proximity, the gold strings are now tugging at me, their source somewhere in my chest, but I force logic to win out.
If I just barge in there and there’s nothing wrong, Rosie is never going to let me live it down, even if I explain that it’s a symptom of the stupid bond she placed on me, even if I go into detail about how I was worried, even if—
A loud, annoyed groan comes through the door, and with it, concern floods me. I twist the doorknob of her shop, pushing it open. I remember her saying she rarely locks the doors, something I find insane, but in this moment, I’m a bit grateful for.
“What the fuck!” her exasperated voice calls from what I think is her backroom.
That’s when a wave of cold hits me, not colder than outside, but surprisingly chilly nonetheless.
Definitely not her normal warm, welcoming store.
I look around, trying to figure out where it’s coming from as I move by instinct toward where I’m assuming Rosie is.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” my grandfather’s ghost says, floating through the wall and shocking me.
I think I’m taking all of this pretty well, but I don’t think I will ever be used to my dead grandfather floating through a wall.
I haven’t been in the shop since the bond snapped into place, but now I can see her pink glittering magic around the place, and I am dying to know what each trace of it is for.
Cleaning? Organizing? The building of a bookshelf?
In the days since the bond, I’ve determined that Vi’s magic is lavender and Poppy’s is a mint green.
I was also stunned to see a rainbow of other colors throughout town, reminding me that Rosie said Heartwood Hollow has more than just the magical sisters living here.
But I don’t have time for that, not when Rosie is clearly in distress.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I move through the bookstore, winding around shelves.
“Her heater died. She’s in the back room.” I slowly start making my way to where the heating unit is, following the sounds of groans and whimpers and the tug of the bond. Grandpa floats along with me with a smug look on his face that I can’t focus on much, not with the pull of Rosie being so close.
“The heater?”
“Yes, looks pretty old, but not much older than mine, which you knew how to fix.” Before my grandfather moved in with my parents, I came to his house often to do minor handyman repair work, not wanting him to get overcharged by some asshole who saw an old man and took advantage of him.
Not because I felt bad for my grandfather, but because if he realized, he would cause a scene, getting into a full-blown argument with whatever asshole tried to take him down, and I’d typically get called in to handle it anyway.
Since I had to work on his heater more than a few times, I’m well aware of just how finicky they can be.
Finally, I open the door to her back room, where boxes are littered everywhere and piled high, and shelves are filled with overstocked books.
I let out a quiet sigh of relief that I refuse to examine too closely when I catch Rosie on the ground, her head in her hands, a small pink toolbox before her.
“Uh, hi?” I ask, and her head jolts up, a wrench in her hand, wielded as a weapon.
I have to fight the urge to laugh, especially when I see a smear of dust over her cheek, eye makeup smeared beneath her eyes like she’d been rubbing them, and her normally perfectly coiffed hair thrown into a wild knot on top of her head.
“Oh my god, you scared the shit out of me,” she groans, the wrench falling with a clatter to the cement floors as she lets out a sigh.
When she sits back, I realize she’s in a pair of pink pajamas with little books on them, the buttons pulling at her full chest with the way she’s sitting, and I have to force myself not to think about whether or not she’s wearing a bra.
It looks like she rolled out of bed and got to work on this mess.
My mind wanders to what she looks like when she first wakes up, but I shut it down quickly.
That fucking kiss bond. It’s messing with my head more than I’ve been willing to admit, but now that she’s here, right before me, I can’t ignore it anymore.
“You okay back here?” I ask, fighting a smile on my lips.
“Yeah, just dandy. Something you need? I’m closed for the day, and I’m too busy to go on an ingredient adventure. Don’t worry, we’ve got more than enough time until the moon.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I say, looking around. The front panel of the heater is open, and a YouTube video is playing with the sound off on a laptop a few feet in front of her.
“What happened?”
She lets out a deep sigh; whatever modicum of nonchalance she’d been holding onto is long gone.
“My heater kicked out. The last time I had Chuck out here, he helped me limp it along, but he said the next time it went out, I’d probably have to replace the whole thing, which is like a billion dollars.
Isn’t that crazy?” I don’t think this is the right time to tell her it definitely wouldn’t cost a billion dollars, so I just nod instead.
I also know that Chuck, the local handyman, is kind of an ass and loves to overcharge people when he thinks he can get away with it.
“You can’t fix it with magic?” I ask, confused. She shakes her head and lets out another forlorn sigh.
“Unfortunately, since I don’t know what’s wrong, I can’t tell the magic what to do.
Practical magic is wildly impractical that way.
I have to know at least how to do it, and despite my watching these videos all morning, I still can’t figure out what it is this thing needs,” she says, then kicks her foot out, hitting the heater.
It makes sense, I suppose, that her magic can only do what she already knows how to do, even if the concept of magic as a whole is new and doesn’t actually make any sense to me.
“I don’t think kicking it is going to get you the results you want,” I say, moving closer and squatting in front of the unit to inspect it.
“I told her it was the same one I had,” my grandfather says from beside me. “He knows how to fix it.” From the look of it, I think a few of the connectors have gone bad, and it might need a new circuit, but it’s nothing that would be too difficult. I bet I could…
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t—“I could probably help you,” I say against my own best judgment. Her head tips up, hope on her face, and I know I’m fucked. So very fucked.
“Really?”
Say no. Say no, Jack. Say no. Tell her you’ll stand by when Chuck comes to make sure he doesn’t take advantage, give her some pointers, say you have emergency surgery today, say anything so you’re not stuck here with this consuming feeling for hours on end, anything but—“Yeah. Definitely.” Her eyes start to water then, and any hesitation I felt about helping her in order to maintain distance is completely washed away.
Distance? Who needs it? Definitely not me with my mixed emotions and scrambled thoughts.
“Oh my god, you don’t know what that would mean to me.” Pride swells in my chest at the look on her face, and again, I have to fight not to give in. Instead, I move to squat and take in the unit before looking at her pink toolbox.
“Will those work?”
I give her a smile, because while I have a full-sized box of tools in my shop, I’d rather use her things, show her how to fix it so her magic can do it next time. So instead of heading to grab my things, I reach behind me and take off my damp hoodie, tossing it in a corner before nodding.
“Yeah, they’ll work. Want me to show you what I’m doing so you can learn?” Her eyes water again, and she surprises me by putting her arms around my neck and pulling me in for a tight, grateful hug.
“That would be amazing, Jack. You’re a lifesaver.”