A Little Night Magic Page 0,1

talk about it?"

"I'd be happy to, but I don't know what you're talking about." Swish swish. I hope your ear hair grows freakishly long. Swish.

"Bullshit."

I stopped mopping and looked at him. "If you're trying to get on my good side, you suck at it."

"I'm not trying to get on your good side," he said. "I just want us to be like we used to be. You know. Before you got all mad."

Grow a clubfoot. "I'm not mad."

He hopped off the table and grabbed my arm, and I felt the electricity rush through me, the way it always did at his touch. I pulled my arm away and forced myself to look at him, doing my best to maintain an expression of steely indifference, but likely landing somewhere between abject adoration and poorly suppressed rage.

"You're saying we're fine, then?" he asked, his tone thick with skepticism.

"Yep."

He crossed his arms over his chest, challenging me. "Then come over tonight and watch The Holy Grail."

I looked at him, softening for a moment, remembering all the nights we'd spent over the last year and a half watching stupid movies, talking for hours about nothing and everything. Then those memories had a head-on collision with the memory of what happened during Movie Night last Friday, and I stopped softening.

A clubfoot and a hunchback. "Can't. I have to pack."

He released my arm. "Pack? For where?"

I took a breath, feeling a little nervous but keeping what I hoped was an air of confidence in my tone. "Scotland."

He drew back in surprise. "Scotland? Why?"

"Because that's where the dart landed," I said, keeping a sharp tone of defiance in my voice. "I'm starting in Scotland, anyway. I'm going to travel all over Europe. You know, like college kids do after graduation."

"What? Backpacking?"

"Yeah. The idea just popped in my head, and at first I thought, Wow, that's insane, but the more I think about it the more awesome it sounds. I've got money saved up, and between that and the sale of the house - "

"You're selling your house?"

" - I should have a good six months before I have to settle down and get a job somewhere, but by then I figure I'll know where I want to be. I'll waitress again, maybe, but this time in Italy, or Vienna. Or, if I have to come back to the States, maybe Atlanta, or San Diego. Somewhere warm, I think."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

I stopped to look at him, taking him in. He was broadly built, and had the kind of quiet strength about him that no one ever tested. He was smart, confident, and thoughtfully quiet, until you got him talking about the things that fascinated him, like sci-fi/fantasy novels and the way conspiracy theories spread like viruses of the intellect. He was the simultaneous symbol of everything that was right with my life and everything that was wrong.

And it was time to let him go.

"I'm talking about leaving. Going. Good-bye."

He absorbed this for a moment. "If this is because of what happened between us last week - "

I snorted, a little too loudly. "Back it up, Superego. Not everything is about you."

"The timing seems a little conspicuous, that's all."

I shrugged. "I mean, yeah, sure, throwing myself at you after a year and a half of waiting for you to make the first move, only to be rejected and then completely ignored for three days - "

"Christ, Liv, I said I was sorry."

" - might or might not have inspired me to print out a picture of you and put it on my corkboard, and I might or might not have thrown a dart at you and missed, hitting my world map poster by mistake."

"Well," he said flatly. "At least you're not mad."

"I will neither confirm nor deny any of that, but the fact is, when I blew the plaster dust off my world map and saw that gaping hole next to Edinburgh, it hit me what a great idea it was." I sighed and looked at him. "I'm twenty-eight, Tobias. I'm tired of waiting for my life to come find me, so I'm gonna go find it."

He stared at me. "This doesn't make any sense."

And suddenly, insanely, I felt tears come to my eyes. "I have to leave first."

He shook his head. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you." The terror on his face sent a jolt of pain through me, and I held up my hand to keep him from saying anything,