A Little Night Magic Page 0,2

not that he was jumping at the chance. "Don't worry. I'm not going to kiss you again. I've learned my lesson."

"Liv - "

I held out my hand to stop him from talking. "You're not a small-town guy, Tobias. Someday you're going to leave, and when you do, if I haven't left first, I'm going to spend the rest of my life pining away for you. That's what happened to my mother with my father. I never even knew the son of a bitch, but whoever he was, he took part of her with him and she never got it back and that's not going to happen to me."

There was a long, horrible silence in which my heart sputtered along on the hope that he would take me in his arms, tell me that the rejection last Friday was all a misunderstanding, and wherever I went, he wanted to go with me. But all he said was, "When are you leaving?"

I curled the mop into my grip, holding it against my shoulder. "I'm giving myself some time to get the house on the market, and get all my stuff sold or into storage."

He took a step closer. "When?"

"My flight leaves on August tenth."

"You bought your ticket already?"

I shrugged. "Spontaneity without commitment is just wishful thinking."

"So ... six weeks, then?"

"Yeah."

He nodded, then leaned back against the table at Booth 9, one foot absently resting on the square as he did. I would have worried, but Tobias wasn't the kind to make idle wishes. If he wanted something, he just went after it.

And if he didn't, he didn't.

He cleared his throat. "Every time you see a goat, I want a picture. You with the goat."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said.

"Europe's lousy with goats. That way you won't forget."

Our eyes locked for a few moments, and I lost all reason. In a flash, a dozen scenarios rushed through my head. Him asking me to stay. Me asking him to come with me. Us together, giving the camera to a local, standing next to a goat, every scenario ending in a kiss ...

... but that kind of thinking was exactly what I was trying to get away from. I swished my mop over the magic square again, and wondered if I could wish this love away through the mop, rather than through my feet.

"Liv?"

I looked up at him. "Go home. I can't do this with you standing right there."

"Do what? Mop?"

I glanced down at the square, then back at him. "No. Wish."

"Wish for what?" he said, and then the bells on the front door jingled.

"Oh, thank god you're open!"

I looked past Tobias's shoulder to see a short, roundish, middle-aged black woman standing in the open door, a swoosh of hot summer air ruffling the skirt of her bright orange sundress as it went into battle with our underpowered air-conditioning. "I took the first exit I could off the Thruway, but there is not a single light on down Main Street except yours. Ten o'clock at night. Y'all have some kind of power outage or something?"

"Welcome to nightlife in Nodaway Falls," I said, then looked at Tobias and whispered, "I must have forgotten to lock the door."

The woman smiled. "Nice name for a town, Nodaway Falls. I like a town with a nice name." Her voice had a tinge of Southern honey, and her face sparkled with goodwill. "I'm so glad you're open, as I just happen to have the most unnatural craving for waffles."

She took a stool at the counter and without so much as a look toward me, Tobias headed for her.

"Menu's gonna be kind of limited," he said. "We were just about to close, so most everything is put away, but I can whip up some quick waffles for you. You'll be done before Liv finishes mopping, anyway."

He gave me a lame half-smile, and I returned it. Ordinarily, a comment like that would have warranted some sort of rude gesture, but there was no ordinary for us now. Where we had been comfortable and rude before, now we had awkward politeness between us. The realization made me so sad that I had a sudden strong urge to curl up under Booth 9 and cry for a little while.

The woman raised a dismissive hand in the air. "Don't you worry, baby. I don't even need a menu. You just give me the sugariest, most fattening thing you've got."

"That'd be the chocolate Belgians, with hot fudge, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream.