“Sort of…”
“Like, I wouldn’t trade being who I am to be someone or something else that could do magic.”
“You don’t mind being Normal?”
He laughs at me.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
He smiles instead. “I don’t mind being what I am. We don’t call ourselves ‘Normal,’ you know?”
“But, Shepard, you spend so much time trying to get close to magic, you must…”
He looks like he’s going to laugh again, so I stop talking. He’s still holding the strawberry lace I gave him.
“Do you even like strawberry laces?” I ask.
“No, I’m sorry. They taste like cough syrup.”
I take it from him and take a bite.
His elbow is on the back of the couch, and he leans a little closer to me.
“The thing is, I don’t feel apart from magic. The world is magickal, and it’s my world, too. Just because you think I’m not magickal—”
“I don’t…” I want to say that I don’t think that. But I’m pretty sure I’ve said it out loud, multiple times.
Shepard’s wearing his Keith Haring shirt again. He only has two shirts.
His face is long, and his eyes are wide. His cheekbones shine even by lamplight.
Whenever we leave the flat, strangers admire Shepard. He’s tall and handsome. He looks kind and interesting. And then he starts talking to them, and they like him even more. Because he’s even kinder than they were expecting, and he’s as interested as he is interesting. Almost no one is that.
The man at the dumpling shop loves Shepard. My neighbours know his name. （My neighbours don’t know my name.） And all of these people don’t even realize that it just keeps getting worse, the more you know him. That he just keeps getting better. There are no diminishing returns with Shepard—you just like him more and more until your head explodes. Until you actually die from liking him so much.
“Do you wish I was a magician?” he asks.
“No,” I say, before I’ve even thought it through.
Shepard looks down. Like that hurt him. Why? How was that the wrong answer? He just said he didn’t want to be— “I wouldn’t want to trade who you are,” I say, “for someone or something else who could do magic.”
Shepard looks up into my eyes. “Penelope,” he says.
I push up my glasses. “Shepard.”
He’s moving his hand very slowly towards my face, and I know I’ve only kissed one person, but I know what this means. I know he’s giving me a chance to say no. To sit back or turn away.
I bring both of my legs onto the sofa, and shift so I’m facing him. He still stops with his hand near my face. “Penelope,” he says softly.
I raise my hand to his wrist and push his hand against my cheek. He smiles. The dimple in his bottom lip flattens out, and you can see almost all of his teeth. He could smile at anyone, and they’d want this. He could smile at anyone …
He’s smiling at me.
What wouldn’t I do to keep Shepard smiling at me?
He’s tall—he can reach me without any work. He bends at the waist, and his smile gets closer. “Yeah?” he asks when his mouth is nearly touching mine.
“Yeah,” I say, and it’s more of a noise than a word.
Shepard kisses me.
He’s still smiling.
His lips are soft. They cover mine. And it’s so much better than I was expecting. It’s better than I thought kissing was supposed to be.
It’s magic.
It’s better.
SHEPARD
Holy shit, this is …
This is not something I thought would happen. Penelope …
She’s going to be mad about this, right? Like, this is not something she wanted to occur. But the way she was looking at me—like, if I didn’t kiss her, she was going to turn me into a frog—what was I supposed to do?
Penelope …
We can stop if you want to.
She tilts her head and pushes closer. Our glasses tap against each other. I take mine off and set them as far away as I can reach, and then I bring my hand up to her shoulder. Her cheek is round and soft. Her shoulder is round and soft. I have a good feeling about the rest of her.
Penelope kisses like someone who hasn’t done this very much. And that isn’t to say it’s bad—it’s very not bad. She just doesn’t seem to know what to do first. I hold her face in both hands and let her kiss me like she has a lot of questions about this whole scenario.