Free For Sure & Certain by Anya Monroe Page B

said.
    “Don’t go blabbing about your score either, okay?” she said shutting the door on them.
    Abel suppressed a smile, as Lily left, but one look at Marigold and he smiled. A few dates and he was smitten, a few more days and he’d be done for.
     
    Marigold
     
    They went to a greasy pizza place on campus and ate slices folded in half while sitting on a park bench.
    “Another date, another game. This time twenty questions,” she said.
    “Favorite dessert?” he asked without skipping a beat, bringing a smile to her face. Question one. She was tired of guys more interested in their image or their careers or their phones than the girl sitting next to them at a park.
    Abel was everything everyone else wasn’t.
    “Homemade cherry pie,” she answered.
    “Who makes it?” Two.
    “Me, of course.”
    You bake?” he asked. Three.
    “Yes, lots, but you aren’t answering the questions. Not fair.”
    “You’re right. Peach cobbler, made by my mom and I don’t cook anything other than toast.”
    She wiped grease off his chin as if she’d done it a million times.
    “Favorite holiday?” Four.
    “Thanksgiving, only if I cook it.”
    His eyes brightened, “So you’re a serious cook, ja?” Five.
    “Very,” she said. “But you can’t keep avoiding the questions.”
    “I’m not meaning to,” he said sheepishly.
    “Then why are you?” Six.
    “You’re distracting me.”
    “That’s a good answer.”
    The game was deserted, but they kept talking, and walking the neighborhood as if they had known one another for ages. Marigold had forgotten what it felt like not to be judged.
    She liked it.
     
     
    Abel
     
    He wanted to hold her hand on the way back, but didn’t want to be too forward. Last time he’d taken her soft, milky hands out of instinct, this time he was more self-conscious.
    Marigold caused him to blush, to stammer, to act shy. She caused him to laugh, and say more than he ought, to say all the things he should. His family would take one look at her and think she was wrong for him, but he didn’t think anything could be wrong that felt this right.
    He bought her frozen yogurt and all he could think was, this girl is rainbow sprinkles and my life has been vanilla.
    He walked her home, wanting to kiss her, to taste the lingering sugar on her lips.
    He didn’t, but he wanted to.
     
     
     
    Marigold
     
    She wanted him to lean down and kiss her hands or her cheek or her anything. Instead he stepped away, as if an invisible wall shot up between them the moment Lily walked through the front door.
    “Tomorrow?” he asked as they stood on her front steps.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll be here, Marigold.”
    “You guys are so creepy,” Lily said, dismissing them. Marigold was used to it, and she didn’t care.
    She sat on her stoop, watching him walk away with Lily, not quite believing this boy who landed in her life. He turned back and gave her a smile.
    She waved good-bye, blushing. Pulling her hair into a braid, twisting it around in her fingers, she looked out at the neighborhood she’d known her whole life. Her heart beat hard as she realized this boy she’d met was going to change things for her, for always.
    He wasn’t just some boy she met one summer. It was his chocolate eyes and chestnut hair and his heavy hands and his soft laugh, and she knew she had no claim to him. He had an entire life she know nothing about, and that was the one in the city when he took classes at Jamestown -- not to mention the one in Lancaster. But somehow none of that mattered.
    Some things are clear even if they’d make no sense to anyone else. Like not going to Machu Picchu with Tabby or not enrolling in college for the fall. She knew people believed her to be a floater, flighty, an attention-grabbing girl that had never been comfortable in her own skin.
    What they didn’t see was that this past year, after she left high school, she emerged a new mariposa. She had crashed after the near arrest, but now she’d