Page 58 of The Dandelion Princess
Ella leans forward, emerging from deep shadows. “I am.” At the sound of her voice, I feel an intense ripcord pull of attraction yank my whole body and all at once I’m fighting for air. Can I not just be normal around this girl?
Dahlia slides a glance back and forth between us. Finally, she whacks Yasmin in the arm and rises, grabbing her jacket and bag. “We have an appointment at Esther Hong’s ten minutes ago,” she says, pushing her friend ahead of her. “Toxins. Pores.”
Amidst the flurry of their departure, Ella and I stare at one another, just looking. No harm in looking at the curve of her cheek and the tilt of her eyelashes behind tortoiseshell frames. I don’t know what I want, but if Noah walked in right now, he would see his oldest friend and his little sister standing in a public space, a whole meter apart.
I’ve been on my best behavior since that kiss. No late-night texts. No calls. No asking Alix where they’re meeting. I’ve been holding my breath. My eyes trace a trail over her face and my fingers itch to touch her skin. Is this what fate feels like? I imagine a thin red string tying her wrist to mine. I imagine ravelling it into my hand, pulling her closer and closer.
“Can I join you for a drink?” I ask.
Her freckles wash with a rosy blush, barely visible in the shifting light of the tree cover, but she nods. Arne, always watching his domain, brings a pair of drinks consisting of soju, cranberries, soda, and salt, disappearing again.
“We haven’t seen much of you,” I say. We. I drag Alix and my people at Lindenholm in front of me like a shield.
“I’ve spoken to Alix everyday, either in Handsel or online, being the best maid of honor a girl ever had.” She shakes her head. “Only Alix could plan a wedding this way—”
“What way?” My thumb brushes a bead of moisture from the glass.
“When there’s no money, people kind of wing it. The DJ is a playlist. Someone gets a case of cheap beer and maybe a fight breaks out. If there’s a bit of money, people start freaking out if their second cousin sourced a similar napkin.”
“And you?”
She taps the table. “I’m a special case. A princess has to be dragged before Her Majesty’s government and bow to ancient laws.”
I grunt, amused. This feels like it used to…if I ignore the tightness in my stomach and the fever in my head when I think about Ella’s wedding.
“You have to be precisely as rich as Alix to throw a wedding together like she is.”
“Like what?” I just want to hear her talk.
She stretches her neck and a jolt of electricity sparks along my skin, “Like, ‘Babe, let’s ice skate down the aisle in midsummer. It’ll be a metaphor.’” She laughs. “I like that she’s having so much fun.”
I wish I was having fun. Instead, I have grown philosophical. I imagined putting Ella aside like a smooth stone at the beach, picked up on a whim, rolled between two palms for the novelty of it, and hurled back into the waves.
If wanting it could make it so, we would have greeted one another with the vague warmth I feel for her school friends. I have tried to bring it to pass. Since the day in the woods, I have lived the life of an ascetic, daily praying that we could get back to our old footing, or close enough. To want anything more is dangerous.
I slip a pair of sunglasses on, trying to mute this stirring of attraction. Stirring. A silent sigh escapes. We are beyond that. I thought it was simply a matter of exposure, of building up an immunity to it and developing a reliable course of treatment. Itwould take patience and exposure, but the effects would dwindle in slow and easy stages.
Kissing her compounded my problems, and now the only way out of it is through it. Her head tilts away. I feel the shortest reprieve known to man until my eyes fasten on the soft hollow below her ear.
“I’ve been remaking myself into a perfect princess,” she reports, expecting praise. “The new me wears sweater sets and sensible heels.”
I’ve noticed. Someone on social media made a fan edit of Ella set to “Hot Walk”. It’s just her, walking to and from several different events, the new silhouette swaying side to side. I’m on season thirty-seven of that particular Pixy short.
“This is your idea of working your way out of the monarchy?”
Ella pinches the frame of her glasses, pushing them up when they slip down the bridge of her nose. “I’ll lull everyone into relaxing their grip. It will get very quiet, and when I sense an opening—”
I loosen my tie. “It’s never going to work.”
She purses her lips around a straw and kicks me under the table. I grunt.
“Have you been in touch with Jang Mi?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“I’ve been thinking about the logistics—what a nightmare the north meadow can be,” she says.
“What makes you think I chose that location?” I break in. “Alix doesn’t even know.”
