CHAPTER TWENTY PRESENT DAY
Jesse hasn’t replied to any of my calls or messages, so I’ve resorted to setting up camp on the living room couch and peering out the window every few minutes. He’ll have to leave his house eventually, right?
Steam curls from my mint tea. A quilted throw blanket Lucia thrifted for my fifteenth birthday covers my legs.
My journal lays open over my knees. Every entry since the curse has been dark and depressing, so I filled five pages with the joy of yesterday’s shopping trip.
I described watching my friends’ faces light up when they found their favorite dresses; Rainie and Lucia’s argument when Rainie flipped the price tag and tried to return her dress only for Lucia to offer to pay the difference; Aida’s little smile as she ran her fingers along the stitched bodice of her pink mermaid gown.
I grin into my shoulder. No attacks, no orange eyes, no rotting smell. For a whole day, I got to pretend none of this was happening.
A car speeds by, headlights shining through the window and trailing across the living room like a pair of yellow eyes. They illuminate Jesse’s car parked in his driveway. I know he’s home, and I know he knows I’m home.
Setting the journal aside, I open the window and offer my hand to the punishing bullets of rain.
I have never minded that Ward is a stagnant place. A collection of dots on a map for tourists to skim past on the hunt for somewhere better. A town where the dust never stirs.
Even when I dreamed of living outside Ward, part of me knew it would never be anything but a dream.
I couldn’t abandon Baba. He had no family here, no hobbies, no true friendships.
Not even his wife’s tombstone to visit. On our anniversary last year, I told Alex my doubts, and he laughed.
He thought I was joking. His parents had existed before him.
They would exist after. I didn’t know how to explain that the day my father left Masr for me, he reached into the future and changed it.
He created a debt I would pay, lovingly, forever.
He left for me, and I will stay for him.
Still, I don’t mind the dream. Reality can’t cast its shadows there.
In it, a phantom version of me gets to live a thousand different lives.
Golden lives full of sunshine and colorful gardens.
Lives where I go to Masr again and sip fragrant espresso at one of the cafés facing the endless blue of the Mediterranean Sea.
Where I meet Baba’s side of the family and show off the paltry local knowledge I’d acquired during my first visit.
It is safe to rest my hopes there, in these dreams where no shadow stays.
A knock comes at the door, startling a yelp out me. I forgot to keep watch over the driveway, but it couldn’t be Baba. Baba would just use his key to enter, and he isn’t due home for another hour or two.
Another knock. “It’s me. Open up.”
If I knock over the journal and nearly overturn my tea in my rush to get off the couch, well—nobody needs to know.
I throw open the door, belatedly remembering that I’m supposed to be annoyed with him for dodging my calls.
Rain drips from the awning behind Jesse. The porch light we’ve been meaning to fix flickers petulantly over his head. It glows over the length of the boy on my porch, his mouth pulled into a tired half-smile.
“Hey, Sour Patch.”
“I’m about to sour-punch you,” I tell Jesse, fiercely determined not to find his smile charming or the wet hair plastered to his forehead endearing. “Where have you been?”
The half smile becomes a full grin. My heart performs a complicated flip in my chest. Jesse is always handsome, even in his brooding, solitary hours, but a smiling Jesse?
My grip on the door tightens. I avidly observe the awning behind his head.
“Sorry, honey bun. Did I miss the kids’ bedtimes?”
I try to slam the door in Jesse’s face, but he catches the frame with one hand and pushes it back with mortifying ease. “I love it when you get all huffy,” Jesse says, leaning over the threshold. “So un-cheerleader-like of you.”
“For the last time, I am a dancer. It is a different set of rules, a different coach, a different training regime, a whole other competition track—”
I stop myself midway through the sentence, recognizing the trap too late. Shaking my head, I throw out, “Jerk. What are you going to do when you get your soul back and half your personality disappears?”
Regret hits me as soon as I say it.
Jesse’s mouth drops open. So does mine. We stare at each other for a full thirty seconds.
Before I can profusely apologize, Jesse bursts into laughter. He doubles over, heaving like he’s about to hack out a lung. He laughs for so long, my remorse melts back into irritation, and I put my hands on my hips.
Another minute ticks by. “Let me know if you’re almost finished or if I should go grab a snack while I wait.”
Jesse straightens, wiping at his eyes. When he speaks, his voice rasps with poorly suppressed delight. “Imagine how well we would’ve gotten along if you’d just been yourself all these years.”
“Who else do you think I was?” I say tetchily.
Jesse sighs. Studies me. “Never mind. I take it back. We would’ve killed each other before sophomore year.”
He steps closer. The edges of his jacket brush my bare arms. “Or,” he murmurs right by my ear, “I might have fallen desperately, pathetically in love with you.”
I freeze. Another joke?
I search, but there is no malice in Jesse’s features. No indication he’s playing games with me.
“Big words for a guy who basically threw himself into oncoming traffic when I kissed him,” I say hoarsely. A little teasing to show him the kiss in the train doesn’t have to sit between us like an unpinned grenade.
Except there’s nothing joking about the way Jesse’s jaw tightens.
My mouth goes dry when his hands cup my face, his thumbs light as a feather on either side of my cheekbones.
“Yasmina Mansour, hear me well, because I’ll only say this once.
Actually, that’s a lie—I’ll say it as many times as you want to hear it.
As many times as it takes for you to believe it.
” Jesse’s voice drops, his breath caressing my parted lips.
“If you still want to kiss me after we break this curse, I am all yours.”
I stop breathing.
“I thought it was obvious, but I forgot who I was dealing with,” Jesse continues, a hint of frustration seeping into his tone.
He catches one of my curls and wraps it around his knuckle.
“When you’re not stuck with me anymore—when you have every option available to you again, including Mama’s Boy—I’ll know that when you kiss me, it’s not just because I’m the only one left. ”
Frustration boils inside me. He genuinely thinks he’s some kind of placeholder for Alex. How am I supposed to convince him that I haven’t given Alex more than a passing thought in weeks?
The temptation to argue is overpowering. So what if Jesse’s the only one I can be around right now? I had wanted to kiss him because he was him, not because he was there.
The fact that it was the best kiss of my life, well … his ego doesn’t need the stroking.
I stay quiet. Even if I know he’s wrong, he doesn’t. Jesse, who tries so damn hard not to care about anything and winds up caring more than any single person should, is offering me the chance to hurt him. For the first time, Jesse Talbot isn’t hiding that he cares.
“I’ll hold you to it,” is all I say, and the relief on Jesse’s face makes me doubly glad I didn’t try to push.
He steps back. The mood shifts, a stiff formality replacing his warmth. “You should go get your coat.”
I eye the rain pouring behind him. I have exactly zero desire to leave my comfortable nest on the couch and step into the deluge. “Why?”
“We need to go to the mortuary. There’s something I need to show you.”