It looked pretty good so she left it.
‘You peeked so that’s cheating,’ she said. ‘No bet. There are many new things about me.’
Crash shook his head, cleaning up sugar as he spoke. ‘Nobody knows you like I do, Mare. I know you, the real you, the part that doesn’t change. There’s nobody else in the world like you. And I know because I’ve looked.’
‘Knew me, maybe,’ Mare said. ‘But not anymore. There’s a lot new about me, like…’ Her voice trailed off as she realized there wasn’t anything new if you didn’t count being able to move sugar granules. ‘I have a new tattoo,’ she lied, and watched with satisfaction as his eyebrows went up.
‘Where?’ he said, grinning, and the light in his eyes made her want to grin back at him. ‘Give me a map and a flashlight. I’ll find it.’
Kim sang on in the background and Mare thought, Do not get sucked into him again, he left you, and said, ‘You’ll never know. So why did you come back?’
‘For you,’ he said, and she went very still. ‘I miss you, Mare. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything, but there’s nothing and nobody like you.’
Mare took her hands off the table and put them in her lap. ‘Oh.’ Concentrate on the sugar. She tried to make the sugar swirl, thinking of each separate grain. It gave her a hell of a headache but that beat heartache any day. I love you so much. I never stopped loving you. I never will stop loving you.
‘I didn’t have anything when I was here.’ He pushed his coffee cup away to lean across the table to her. ‘I was just Crash the Loser who almost killed you on my bike on your prom night. But things are different now. I’ve got my own business in Italy. I was roaming around over there and I met this guy, he’s as nuts about bikes as I am, and Mare, the Italians, they really know motorcycles, they’re an art form over there, and this guy, Leo, he loves the old ones and he’s been restoring them and he showed me how.’ Mare nodded and Crash went on. ‘I’ve been working on this bike for you. It’s back in Italy, all done, ready to go. Here.’ He got out his wallet and took out a photograph and handed it to her.
The bike was a thing of beauty, a moped on steroids, sleek and black with a baby blue tank and seat and piping.
‘It’s a Kreidler Florett,’ Crash said. ‘Built in 1964, 49cc, but it moves like you wouldn’t believe. Lightweight but fast, just like you. Took me a long time to find all the parts but it’s cherry now…’ His voice trailed off.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, trying to keep her voice flat.
‘The Florett is considered the best 50 cc bike ever made,’ he said, pulling back, clearing his throat. ‘It’s a real collector’s bike.’
‘I like the blue,’ Mare said.
‘It’s your color,’ he said.
‘And the logo thingy, that’s cool.’
‘That’s the Florett logo.’
Mare nodded. ‘The seat looks like leather.’
‘It is.’
‘Baby-blue leather.’
‘Yep.’
Mare nodded again. The bike was perfect. She handed the picture back to him, glad she had her sunglasses on. Her eyes were probably glowing.
Crash put the picture back in his wallet. ‘The thing is, I have a business there. I just bought a house. And it’s beautiful there, you’d love it. I can just see you riding that bike through the hills, and the Italians, they’d love you. I can take care of you now, Mare.’ He swallowed and then took a deep breath. ‘I think we should try it again. I’ll do better this time. Come back with me.’ He looked into her eyes, the blue depths of his aching with honesty. ‘We belong together. Come to Italy with me, Mare.’
Yes, she thought, but she sat back and tried to be cool. ‘Just like that. Five years go by, you don’t call, you don’t write, and just like that it’s “Come to Italy with me.”‘ God, yes.
I know’ He ducked his head a little. ‘I was going to try to take it slow, but we never did that.’ He looked at her, solid as ever. ‘We were always going ninety miles an hour, Mare.’
‘Yeah, that’s how we hit the trash can,’ Mare said, trying not to think, Italy. With Crash. She stared at the sugar dispenser, watching the granules inside start to stir. Italy. Where the sky was as blue as his eyes and he’d built a perfect bike just for her.
‘I know you need time to think about it,’ he said. ‘I have time. I don’t have to leave until Monday-’
‘Monday?’ The sugar dispenser rocked as Mare sat up, and she slapped her hand over it so Crash wouldn’t notice. ‘You think I can decide to just run off to another country with you in a weekend?’ She leaned forward, trying to make him understand. ‘I have a job here, I just got offered a great promotion, I’m on my way to the top, Crash. And by the way, have you met my sisters?’
‘You’re twenty-three,’ he said. ‘You can leave your sisters. I want to show you Italy. I can take care of you, Mare.’
‘You can’t.’ She took her hand off the sugar dispenser where the sugar granules were heaving on their own now, peppered with little blue sparks, probably because her heart was beating like crazy because she was leaning so close to him, kissing distance, and the excitement had to go somewhere. I can move that sugar with my mind. How are you going to deal with that?
‘I can,’ he said, leaning closer to her, too. ‘I love you, Mare.’
She pulled back at that, and he leaned to follow her, into the space where she’d been, and then his nose twitched and he shivered hard, three times.
‘Crash?’ she said, alarmed.
‘Marry me,’ he said.
Mare was the runner in the family, but Lizzie knew how to make tracks when she needed to, and the last thing she wanted was for a gorgeous, pissed-off, soaking wet wizard to catch up with her. She couldn’t believe she’d lost her temper enough to actually throw the water at him, and for half a moment she’d been paralyzed, half expecting him to dissolve into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West. He’d just blinked at her as the soapy water landed, and she’d disappeared, racing out the front door before he could try any of his fancy tricks.
The sky was cloudy with the approaching storm, and the wind was growing stronger as she made her way up the cliffs outside of town.
She saw the huge oak first with nothing beneath it – no wet wizards lying in wait for her – and then she went into the stone circle, slightly out of breath, and started to climb up onto the great lump of boulder affectionately known as the Great Big Rock. Some ancient glacier had dragged it down, but now it was smooth and rounded by thousands of years of weather, and she reached the top of it easily enough, hunkering down, trying to catch her breath.
Something was definitely wrong, and Dee must have been right to call for the vote this morning. She’d been a fool to abstain.
She shoved her tangled hair out of her face, lifting her head to look down at the peaceful little town beneath her. No sign of any mysteriously colorful wizard searching for her -maybe his powers were like electricity and he’d shorted out. Maybe he’d given up…
‘I’m sorry.’
She almost fell off the boulder, but he reached out his hand to catch her. Touching him was even worse, but she managed to regain her balance on the rock without it, turning to look at him, fighting the impulse to run once more.
‘You’re not wet,’ she said.
He shook his head. He didn’t look the least bit ruffled -however he’d managed to follow her, it clearly hadn’t been at the same dead run. ‘I could see what you were going to do. It was easy enough to put up a barrier. I’m afraid your floor’s a mess.’