It was a kiss that made me feel like I’d never been properly kissed before, and as we paused to take a breath—a minute later? an hour?—he leaned his forehead against mine. I looked up at him, and a thought passed through my brain before I could stop or analyze it. It’s you—of course it is. There you are.
And as I touched his cheek and his hand tightened on my waist, I leaned forward to kiss him again, knowing as I did that something was ending while something else had already begun.
Tamsin cursed under her breath as she watched the owl sitting on the branch regard her with what she was almost certain was disdain. This was supposed to be the one area where she was showing any kind of natural inclination, and she had been failing miserably all morning.
“You’re distracted,” the Elder said from the tree stump where he had sat, motionless, for almost an hour now.
“Maybe,” Tamsin acknowledged as she watched the owl ruffle its feathers in a distinctly haughty way.
“Does it have something to do with Sir Charley Ward?” the Elder asked, his voice innocent.
“How did you . . . ?” Tamsin started, then gave up, realizing what a foolish question it had been. She had been aware the Elder knew everything, but until that moment she had thought it was restricted to things like the names of all the plants in the kingdom. She hadn’t realized it also included knowledge of her first kiss.
“Be careful there,” the Elder cautioned.
“It’s fine,” Tamsin said, turning back to the bird. She would prefer not to discuss Charley with anyone, but especially not someone old enough to be her grandfather.
“It’s always a risk,” the Elder said, but more quietly now, like perhaps he was no longer speaking to her. “Wherever there is great emotion. Because there is power in that. And few people handle power well.”
“It was only a kiss,” Tamsin said, focusing back on the owl.
“Oh,” the Elder said, shaking this head, “that is where you are mistaken. Believing that such a thing—just a kiss—has ever, for even a second, existed in this world.”
—C. B. McCallister, A Murder of Crows. Hightower & Jax, New York.
Chapter TEN
Almost without my noticing it, the summer started to find its rhythm. I had dogs to walk, I had my friends to hang out with, and my dad and I were finding a little more to say to each other day by day. But mostly, I had Clark.
“So Karl and Marjorie duck into a roadside tavern,” he said to me as we walked three hyperactive terriers, all straining desperately at their leashes, like the trees up ahead of us were just so much better.
“But they’re going under false names,” I reminded him, and Clark nodded.
“Of course. They can’t let their real identities be known, not with the bounty on their heads.”
“And it’s raining.”
“Naturally,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it. “It’s a proverbial dark and stormy night.”
I looked over at him and smiled. “And then what happens?”
It had been two weeks since Clark and I kissed, and things were going well. I had been grounded for the first eight days—dropped down from ten, with some careful negotiation on my part—so he’d started coming with me when I walked Bertie. We’d hold hands while we walked, stopping to kiss multiple times, or as much as we could with Bert yanking on the leash. Clark would sometimes come with me on other walks, which I always appreciated, since a full day of walking dogs by myself led to me talking way too much to animals who were never going to answer me back.
But even though we hadn’t been able to go on another real date that first week, we’d ended up talking on the phone nearly every night, conversations that happened while he took Bertie for his nightly walk and I sat up on the roof and looked out at the stars. I’d never had conversations like that with a boyfriend before, conversations that were easy and free-flowing, hours passing in what felt like seconds.
I was still getting my head around how Clark seemed happy to talk about almost anything, including sharing how he felt about things. The only thing he really hadn’t told me much about was his father. Whenever we got close to the subject, I could sense Clark’s walls—which were so rarely present—start to go up, and I changed the subject quickly.
But I’d begun to fill in the picture of Clark Bruce McCallister in a way I never had with any of my other boyfriends. I knew now that his favorite color was green, that when he was little, he’d wanted to be a wildfire firefighter (“they fight fires from helicopters, how cool is that?”), that he talked to his older sister, Kara, on the phone every Sunday, that he still refused to watch Jaws because it had given him nightmares for weeks as a kid, that he hated cinnamon, and that he had found a spot, just below my earlobe, that drove me crazy when he kissed it. I didn’t know these types of things about any other guy, including Topher, and none of them would have known them about me. It was different with Clark. And one way I knew this, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was the fact that we were getting close to the three-week mark and I had no interest in seeing it end. It was pretty much the opposite, as a matter of fact—it was feeling like something was just getting started.
• • •
“And we’re doing groups this year,” Palmer said enthusiastically, as she pushed up the brim of her sun hat. “Chosen randomly. Which means, since there will be two of you, the challenges are going to be that much harder.”
We had been at the beach since nine, and by my count, Palmer had been talking about the summer scavenger hunt for at least forty-five minutes. She’d sent a group text at eight a.m., saying that it was the perfect beach day, she’d already staked out a spot, and we should join her and bring her an iced coffee. Somewhat miraculously, everyone else’s schedules had aligned—and I’d shifted some walks around to make mine work as well. We’d spread out on the patch of sand Palmer had been zealously guarding and now had a stretch of blankets and towels and snacks and magazines.
“Sounds good,” Toby said, her eyes fixed on the water in front of her. “Absolutely.”
“What are you looking at?” I asked, pushing my sunglasses up and trying to see what was in her sight line.
“What do you think?” Bri asked, shooting me a look. In the two weeks since Wyatt had come back to town, Toby’s crush seemed to be getting stronger by the day. She had calmed down enough that she was no longer acting strange around him, but she’d taken to spending much too much time on her hair every day and trying to devise increasingly complicated ways that they could be alone together. She was sending us long emoji missives about her feelings, and I don’t know if she was getting better at it or if I was just getting used to it, but I’d been able to accurately decipher a message yesterday that detailed her current emotional state, using mostly just dolphins, the weird gourd fruit, and clapping hands. She was so single-minded about this—about him—that I wasn’t sure anymore if her crush was really about Wyatt, the guy who had, by my count at the diner the night before, said only fourteen words. There was a piece of me that wondered—though I would never suggest this to her—if maybe she was just used to the idea that she was in love with Wyatt without stopping to see if it was still true and if he was really what she wanted.
“I’m just making sure nobody drowns,” Toby said, her eyes not straying from the water even when Palmer started to tickle her bare feet.
I looked out to the water and smiled. Clark, Tom, and Wyatt were all on stand-up paddleboards, but not a single one of them was paddling along placidly, like in the pictures hung up in the tiny building where you could rent kayaks, paddleboards, and boats. Instead, Clark and Tom were using their oars as jousting spears, trying to knock each other into the water. And Wyatt was paddling, but sitting down, with one leg over either side, like he’d really wanted a kayak and was doing his best to approximate one.
“Who rented those to them?” Bri asked, sounding baffled.
My phone beeped with a text, and I pushed my sunglasses up to get a better look at the scre
en, then fumbled the phone when I saw who it was from.
TOPHER
Hey—heard you were staying in town
You around this weekend?
Let me know. It’s been a while
I looked up from my phone, but Clark was still in the water, and none of my friends seemed have to notice I’d gotten a text. I read the message again, then started typing fast, holding my phone off to the side.
ME
Hey—I’m around
But kind of with someone now
TOPHER
Got it. Let me know when you’re free to hang again
ME
Sure. Yeah.
Will do.
I set the phone down, then turned it to silent and dropped it back in my bag, trying to figure out why this was bothering me. It wasn’t like it was that unexpected for Topher to text me—so why did it suddenly feel like another part of my life had intruded when I didn’t want it to? And I didn’t want to compare the two, but the proof of how different Clark and Topher were was right in front of me—in the very fact that Clark was hanging out with my friends.
It wasn’t like it had been great right from the beginning—and that was my fault. Normally I would have planned it better, but I was in full-on early-make-out haze and didn’t think about what it would mean for Clark to meet all my friends at once. This had never been an issue for my other boyfriends, but they’d gone to school like normal people, in regular classrooms with more than just their sister. So when I introduced Clark at the diner, Toby, Bri, Wyatt, Palmer, and Tom were all there, which in retrospect was too much, too soon. Clark barely said a word the whole night, and when he did talk, it mostly seemed to be reciting facts I’d told him about my friends back to them. It didn’t help that Tom was almost equally quiet, stunned into fanboy silence at the reality of sitting across from one of his favorite authors. So all in all, not a huge success.
And it wasn’t that Clark couldn’t talk to people—last week I’d come in from walking Bert to hear him on a conference call with his editor and publisher and something called a “marketing team” as they discussed a cover redesign. Even though I had a feeling he was the youngest person on the call by a decade, he was very much in charge, clearly running things. Which was hard to reconcile with the fact that he seemed really intimidated by my friends—especially, for some reason, Bri and Toby.
“They were kidding, right?” he asked one night as we sat outside Paradise Ice Cream, he with his with mocha almond ripple, me with my cookie dough and a pint of mint chip I was bringing home for my dad. “They don’t really want me to call them Tobri.”
“They were kidding,” I assured him as I helped myself to a bite of his ice cream.
“They do kind of seem to share one brain, though,” he said, reaching over for a spoonful of mine. “I swear, they had a conversation without ever saying anything.”
I nodded and moved my ice cream out of reach. “They do that. But they liked you. All my friends did.”
Clark nodded but didn’t seem convinced, and even when I tried to do better the next time, and not present him with five people he’d never met before, just bowling with Tom, Palmer, and Toby, he was nervous and awkward, reminding me of how he’d been in the early days with me.
I was thinking that maybe it just wouldn’t work out, but then, a few days after bowling, came what Bri later called “the beginning of a beautiful bromance.” I stopped by Clark’s to pick up Bert and found Tom and Clark on the couch in the book room, eyes fixed on the TV, which the room did, it turned out, have. (It just looked like a mirror when it wasn’t turned on.)
“Hi,” I said as I looked between them, trying to figure out how this had happened.
“Hey,” Tom said, nodding at me, like it was totally normal for him to be hanging out at Clark’s house.
“Hi there,” Clark said, standing up and giving me a quick kiss. “Here to get the beast?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I was actually a little disappointed to see Tom there, as I’d been hoping for a little prewalk kissing action. “What are you guys doing?”
“Well,” Clark said, nodding at the TV. It was paused, but I couldn’t tell what was on it—it just looked like gray and raininess. “Tom doesn’t have to rehearse today, so we’re watching the Batsmen.”
“The what?”
“All the Batman movies,” Tom clarified. “We’re still debating the plural.”
“Batmans?” Clark asked, heading back to the couch.
“Batmen,” Tom offered.
“I’ve got it,” Clark said triumphantly. “Batsman.”
Tom shook his head. “I really don’t think that sounds right.”
“Well, have fun,” I said, as I went off to find Bert. I was having better luck with him when I could sneak up on him with the leash. If he didn’t know there was a walk afoot, he didn’t have time to play the run-away-from-the-leash game. I waved at them when I left, but they were back to watching, and I wasn’t even sure they noticed. I was happy to see it, though, Clark and Tom hanging out. It seemed like a good thing.
I was less convinced when I came by the next day—I was adding Bert into a group walk for the first time—to find Tom and Clark still on the couch, both of them looking a little glassy-eyed. “Are you guys still doing this?” I asked, feeling my jaw drop open. “How many Batmen are there?”
“We moved on from that,” Tom said, blinking at me a few times. “Now we’re watching the James Bond movies.”
I looked from him to Clark, hoping for an explanation. “Why?”
“Well,” Clark said, pushing himself off the couch and coming over toward me, “we were talking about whether it was fundamentally wrong for a Brit to play Batman.”
“He’s the closest thing we American actors,” Tom said, clearly including himself in this group, “have to a classic part. He’s our Hamlet.”
“And then we were talking about how they’d never cast an American to play Bond.”
“Who’s they?” I asked, feeling like I didn’t have time for this, with four dogs waiting in the car.
“So we started watching them,” Tom finished, like this was the only logical explanation. “In order.”
“Shouldn’t you really be watching the Supermans?” I asked, then paused. “Supermen?”
“See, it’s hard,” Clark said.
“I wanted to,” Tom said, pointing in Clark’s general direction. “It’s not often you get a real live Clark in your midst. Especially one wearing glasses.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“But then we remembered that Superman is kind of lame.”
“Bond versus Superman,” Clark said, looking over at Tom, then stopping to yawn hugely. “Who wins?”
“Which Bond?”
“Which Superman?” Clark countered.
“Have either one of you slept?” I asked. Bertie trotted around the corner, and I saw my opportunity and grabbed him by the collar.
“Sleep is overrated,” Tom said, yawning as well.
“I’ve got to take him out,” I said, stumbling a few steps behind Bertie, who was whining and stretching toward the door.
“I’ll call you later,” Clark said, giving me a quick kiss, and even though he looked exhausted—his hair was sticking up all over the place and his eyes were bleary behind his glasses—he also looked really happy.
“Sure,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. “We’ll talk then.”
And while I was glad that Clark had found someone to discuss all the different Doctors Who with, I realized I was also happy for Tom. Watching them crack each other up was making me realize that I hadn’t ever seen him with a guy friend before.
“I think they’re coming in,” Toby said now, her voice going immediately more high-pitched as she dug in her bag and emerged with a lip gloss. She uncapped it, then squinted out to the water, where Clark and Tom were starting to swim in with their boards. “Oh. Never mind. It’s just Tark.”
I rolled over on my si
de to face her, already shaking my head. “Please don’t give them a nickname.”
“I think it’s catchy,” Bri said. “It sounds kind of badass.”
“You have to admit, it’s better than Clom,” Palmer said, lowering her sunglasses. That had been Toby’s first attempt, and I had done my best to quash it.
“It’s not about what the nickname is,” I said, even though Clom had been pretty awful. “Why are you giving them one at all? Why not one with my name and Clark’s?” All my friends looked at me at once, and I focused on smoothing out the wrinkles on my towel.
“Hold the phone,” Palmer said, sitting up straight and looking at me. “You’re really in a couples-nickname kind of a place?”
“I didn’t read anything about hell freezing over today,” Toby said, shaking her head.
“I’ll check online,” Bri added.
“Never mind,” I said, hoping by now I’d gotten tan enough so they couldn’t tell I was blushing.
“Candie,” Toby pronounced triumphantly, and I made a face.
“Ark?” Bri supplied.
I shook my head. “Just forget it,” I said. “I shouldn’t have . . . um . . .” I lost total track of whatever I’d been about to say next, because Clark emerged from the water and started walking toward me, and all ability to verbalize left my head.
I had made it clear to Clark early on that all we would be doing was kissing. He’d been a little taken aback, but seemed okay with it. And for the most part, that was all that had been happening. All our clothes had stayed put, so today was the first day I’d actually seen that Clark was in way better shape than writers of fantasy novels were supposed to be, as far as I’d been led to believe.
“Shouldn’t have what?” Toby asked, then saw what I was looking at. “Oh.”
“I know,” I said, trying not to stare, but then giving up on that immediately. Clark’s arms were muscular, his abs were defined, and his shoulders were much broader than I’d realized, now that they were out in the open and not hidden under one of his T-shirts. I was suddenly rethinking my clothes policy.