Page 20 of Marginally Yours
"Holy shit," I whisper, and she lets out a cackle. She pulls the hoodie back on and I shoot out of my seat so I can watch the change. The bottom of her dress morphs back into her shorts like, well… likemagic. I rub my eyes hard like a fucking cartoon character, half expecting her to disappear like a transient hallucination, but she's still sitting there, hair pale blonde again, face split into a wide grin.
"Okay, wait. That's not even the best part." She holds up a fortune cookie from the desk in front of my face. "What is your absolute favorite kind of cookie?"
"Um..." I think I know where this is going, and I'm debating between letting her show off and trying to trip her up. I decide to land somewhere in the middle. "Salted caramel macaron," I say with a smirk. She opens the cellophane around the cookie in midair and, when it plops out onto the desk, it's the most perfectly shaped caramel-colored macaron I've ever seen in my life. She picks it up and cracks in half, handing me a piece and scarfing the other down herself.
I'm still staring at my piece when she huffs out a laugh. "You can eat it. It won't bite," she tells me. I shake my head a bit and focus my gaze on her before popping it in my mouth.
"This is the best fucking macaron I've ever had," I mumble around the bite, and she beams at me. "Can you make anything you want?"
"Well, there are definitely limits. Like I could probably change that into any kind of cookie you asked for as long as I knew what it was. I couldn't turn it into a full five course dinner, though. It has to be..."
"An equivalent exchange?" I interrupt her, wiggling my eyebrows at the reference. I realize too late that an immortal being who lives on a mountain probably hasn’t seenFullmetalAlchemist, but at least I can appreciate my own joke. Then she shocks the absolute shit out of me.
"Well, to obtain, something of equal value must be lost. Obviously," she says with a smirk.Well, fuck.“The library is a full collection of past and present written works. That includes manga,” she explains.
"Aren't you just full of surprises," I say, tossing the trash in the takeout bag and clearing some space for my notebook. "So... about this first draft."
We spend the next few days brainstorming, writing, and nesting. I've written another twenty chapters or so, and I've got six more planned to wrap everything up. I'm so close I can taste it, and now I'm terrified to finish it. What if they take her from me anyway? What if, no matter what we do, I lose her? What the fuck am I supposed to do against literal gods?
The next morning, I insist on taking a break and typing up what I have written so far instead of writing more. I tell her it’s because my hand is cramping from all the writing, which isn’t a lie. I probably should have been typing this all to begin with. Callie eyes me suspiciously at the suggestion, but her qualms are quickly forgotten when I set a full home cooked breakfast spread and coffee in front of her. I bring my laptop in from the living room and spend all afternoon typing, occasionally tossing lines out at her for critique.
She spends the day curled up in my bed reading again, surrounded by a nest of blankets and snacks. I go back and forth between my desk and the bed, trying to be productive enough that she doesn't notice I'm dragging my feet. I'm not sure if it's just her presence or if she's actively using her powers on me, but I'm continuously getting new ideas as I type up my own words. Different ways to word things, minor details to expound on... This story seems to get better with every addition and change.
By the time we reconvene at my desk to scarf down somedinner, I'm a little over halfway done typing everything up. It was something I'd have to do eventually, but it was doubling as a procrastination effort and it's quickly outliving its plausibility.
"It's not as good as real Italian food," she says, pushing the remnants of a meatball around her nearly empty plate. "But it was pretty damn good." She leans back in her chair and pats a hand on her stomach with a groan that I've learned indicates an incoming food coma. Sure enough, she crawls back into bed and dozes off while I take a break from typing to play some video games.
I choose a simple 16-bit farming sim to give my brain a break, but it just keeps spinning in circles around all the insane information I've crammed into it over the last week. Gods are real. Greek mythology is real. Muses are real. Magic is real.Callieis real, and mine, and laying in my bed, and I'm... not in it with her?Because I'm a fucking idiot, right.
I abandon my game, sliding out of my sweats and slipping under the blanket behind her. I press a kiss to the side of her neck, and she hums. I can see the corner of her mouth tip up in her sleep, so I plant another one there before burying my face in her hair and pulling her tight to me. There's no way in hell I'll be able to sleep, but being wrapped around her like this calms my nerves enough to stop the tailspin I was putting myself into.
I need a plan.
We’ve been so wrapped up in my book that we haven’t left the apartment in days. The weather is supposed to be tolerable tomorrow, and the farm is open all day for the general public. I'll take her to go see the cows, and then we can get Mexican for dinner. That should eat up most of the day. I'm sure I can think of some otherextracurricular activitiesto take up the evening. We can fill up on dinner, but I'm sure I'll still be starving for her.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as we pull into the parking lot, we're stopped by a teenager in a reflective vest. He holds a little orange cone in his hand, halting incoming traffic to let an employee walk one of the cows from the barns to the petting area. She's got a little fleece coat laid over her back with her name embroidered on it. Callie is literally vibrating with excitement in the passenger seat, and I can't help the grin that spreads across my face when I glance over at her.
"Her name is Daisy," she whispers, her hands balled in little fists in her lap. I suspect it's to keep her from jumping out of the car and running for Daisy.
Once Daisy has been safely escorted to the petting area, we park and head in. There's a hot cocoa table set up outside of the barn, so I grab a cup for each of us while Callie waits in line by the outdoor heaters. Despite being perfectly capable of morphing her clothes into something warmer, she insisted on stealing one of my old high school hoodies. Something about seeing her wearing my clothes makes me a little bit feral, so I'm not complaining.
When I join her in line, we're next to go in. She inhalesher first gulp of hot chocolate and immediately sucks cold air in to soothe her burnt mouth.
"It's literally in the name," I laugh. "Hotcocoa." She sticks her bright red tongue out at me, and I pull her head towards me, pressing a kiss to her temple. She takes another sip, smaller this time, and her grimace turns to a grin. The elderly woman at the door waves us forward and Callie beams at me.
There are cows lined up at the inner fence, ready for their scritches and treats. A young girl with 4H patches on her jacket walks around with a calf on a harness, supervising her while she butts her head into any available hand. Callie pounces on the opportunity, crouching down to run her hands over the calf's fuzzy snout and scratching behind her ears.
We spend a little under an hour in the barn before Callie's nose starts to turn red. I'm having fun just watching her enjoy herself, but she's got to be freezing by now. She's deep in conversation with one of the cows behind the fence, so I slip my hand into the one hanging at her side and tug lightly until she's facing me.
"I think you've successfully made friends with every cow in the barn," I tell her. "You ready to get some food? Next stop on the Seven Wonders tour is full of tacos." She glances over her shoulder at the cow for a moment before turning back to me.
"I suppose," she says slowly, pointing a finger at me with a stern glare. "But wewillbe coming back to see all my new friends." She squints at me until I nod in agreement. As if I could deny her anything. A smile breaks out across her face, and she surges up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on my cheek.
We head back to town and grab some lunch at the Mexican restaurant. We get a whole sampler feast, from chips and queso all the way to deep fried ice cream and a bunch of things in between that I can't hope to pronounce properly. She orders it all for us, expertly and in Spanish, because offucking course she can speak Spanish. I can tell when she really likes whatever she's eating because she does her little happy dance in her seat, and I want to make her feel like that all the time.
When we're so full I think they're going to have to roll us out the door, we pack up the leftovers in boxes and go home.
