Any Way the Wind Blows

by Rainbow Rowell

  “Yeah … As soon as they left school. Mages get married young, but that’s really young. My mum says she knew what she wanted in life and didn’t see the sense in waiting.”

  “My parents were in their late twenties,” I say. “My dad might have been thirty.”

  “When did they get divorced?”

  “When I was eight.”

  She frowns. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” I rest an elbow on the back of the couch and pull one knee up, so I’m facing her. “You know how they always tell kids, ‘This divorce isn’t about you, it isn’t your fault’?”

  She nods. “Yeah…”

  “I remember thinking, Of course, it isn’t! Why would you even suggest that? Is someone out there pinning this on me?”

  Penelope laughs, and for once, she doesn’t try to hide it. “Did your parents fight a lot?”

  “If they did, I don’t remember. My dad was gone all the time, for work. And then, he was just gone.”

  “Did they get remarried?”

  “My mom did.”

  “Do you like your stepdad?”

  “He’s fine. My mom likes him.”

  “Do they know…” She glances down at my arms.

  I laugh. “Have I told my mom that I’m going to hell? No. She wouldn’t even let me play Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid because she didn’t think Jesus would approve. This would be way too much for her.”

  “So she doesn’t know you hang out with giants and fairies…”

  “She does not.”

  Penelope leans one shoulder against the back of the couch and refolds her legs, so she’s facing me. “Shepard…”

  I push up my glasses. “Penelope.”

  “Did you really go home with a fairy?”

  “I tried.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Fey.”

  She rolls her eyes. “That wasn’t her real name…”

  “It’s the name she told me.”

  “Why would a fairy name their kid Fey? That’s like a magician naming their kid Warlock!”

  “If I ever see her again, I’ll ask her.”

  Penelope gets another piece of red licorice, and spins it with one hand, watching the end whip around. “So you don’t keep in touch?”

  “We do not.”

  “Is there someone else you keep in touch with?”

  I clear my throat. I’m looking at Penelope. At her messy ponytail. And her excruciating knees. She isn’t looking at me. “Is that you asking if I have a girlfriend?”

  “Or a boyfriend,” she says quickly.

  “I usually date girls,” I say.

  “You usually date magical creatures—”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend, Penelope.”

  She looks at the wall. “I should probably add that to the list.”

  “What was your boyfriend like?” I ask, before I can process how stupid it is to bring him up.

  “Micah?”

  “Yeah.” Stupid, stupid. “Was he a magician?”

  “Of course.”

  I sigh. “Of course.”

  “We met at Watford. He was an exchange student. He was very bright.”

  “He’d have to be.”

  “And he was, um…” She shrugs. “Nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “Oh, I don’t know how to describe people.” She frowns and twirls her licorice. “He was a good listener. He was never cruel. He was a very gifted magician. Good with languages, an excellent ear. He never seemed to get tired of me … Until he did, and then I didn’t notice.”

  I’m wearing mint-green corduroy pants, and I run my thumb along my knee where the stripes are wearing off. These are the pants I was wearing in the desert. I still have these pants and one T-shirt and a few things I was carrying in my backpack that day. Everything else got left at our hotel in Vegas. Penelope had to buy me underwear and a change of clothes at the airport … Actually, she probably stole them.

  I clear my throat again. “Were you in love with him?”

  “I don’t know.” She seems irritated. I should definitely stop asking about her ex-boyfriend. (This isn’t how I ended up going home with a fairy.) “I thought I was…” she says. “I definitely cared about him. But if I was in love with Micah, I’d miss him now, right?”

  She looks up at me, like I’m supposed to answer. I stay quiet.

  “I don’t think I miss him,” she says, still irritated. “I feel rejected and humiliated and lost. But I don’t—” She shakes her head. “—long for him. Maybe I don’t have that chip. Maybe I don’t do longing.”

  “I probably wouldn’t decide that after one boyfriend…”

  “Have you been in love, then?” She says it like she assumes I have, like it’s part of my whole insufferable package.

  “Yeah,” I say anyway. “Once, for sure. And then I think I’ve been at least half in love, twice.”

  “You can’t be half in love, Shepard…”

  “How would you know?”

  Her face falls a little. I shouldn’t have said that. We’re going to need another chalkboard to keep track of all the things I shouldn’t have said tonight. Penelope shifts her weight, so she isn’t quite facing me anymore. “You probably don’t believe in soulmates, then. Magicians usually believe in soulmates. And destiny.”

  “I believe in everything,” I say.

  She makes a judgmental noise in the back of her throat, then picks up the bag of licorice and spins it closed.

  I want her to keep talking to me. Even if I keep saying the wrong things. “Did you think Micah was your soulmate?”

  She makes another disappointed noise. This one is for herself, I think. “Micah made sense for me … So I plugged him into all of my important equations. It was like I solved wrong for x, and it threw off the other variables.” She ties the top of the bag in a knot. “I must sound like a child to you.”

  “No … You sound like a person who doesn’t know everything about love. That’s most of us.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out. You’ve been in love three-point-five times or something.”

  “If I had it figured out, I wouldn’t be alone and engaged to a demon.”

  “It’s not a real engagement,” she says softly.

  “Thanks.”

  She turns her head towards me and looks into my eyes. Penelope only looks in your eyes when she expects something.

  I wait for her to tell me what it is.

  PENELOPE

  I’ve been in this room too long with no one but Shepard.

  He’s starting to feel more real than everything else. He’s starting to feel like the one thing that’s supposed to be here.

  It should be the opposite—it is the opposite. Shepard is a Normal. And Normals don’t matter. I mean, I’m sure they matter to other Normals—but they’re not supposed to matter to me. They’re supposed to be like ants. Or plants. Important to the overall ecosystem, but not important.

  My mother always said there was no sense in making friends with Normals, because what could you even talk about, if you couldn’t talk about magic? What’s left?

  (Have I ever said that?)

  (Is that what drove Simon away?)

  But Shep and I have been talking for days. And we’ve been talking so much about magic. And so much about everything.

  And I know that he’s a Normal, it’s not like I ever forget, but I can’t really imagine what would be different about being here with him if he had magic. I suppose he’d understand me a little better, he’d know what magic feels like … But magic feels different for everyone, even among mages. You can’t ever really know what it’s like to be someone else …

  “Shepard.”

  He pushes up his glasses. “Penelope.”

  “Do you wish that you could do magic?”

  He bites his lip. His bottom lip is pinker than the top, and there’s a dimple in the middle, so that the top of his bottom lip is shaped like the top of a heart. I o
nly noticed this yesterday, and now I can’t stop.

  “I feel sort of like you’re asking me whether I wish I could fly,” he says. “And the answer is—of course. Yes. I would love to do magic. But I don’t wish that I was something else. Does that make sense?”

  “Sort of…”

  “Like, I wouldn’t trade being who I am to be someone or something else that could do magic.”

  “You don’t mind being Normal?”

  He laughs at me.

  “Don’t laugh at me.”

  He smiles instead. “I don’t mind being what I am. We don’t call ourselves ‘Normal,’ you know?”

  “But, Shepard, you spend so much time trying to get close to magic, you must…”

  He looks like he’s going to laugh again, so I stop talking. He’s still holding the strawberry lace I gave him.

  “Do you even like strawberry laces?” I ask.

  “No, I’m sorry. They taste like cough syrup.”

  I take it from him and take a bite.

  His elbow is on the back of the couch, and he leans a little closer to me. “The thing is, I don’t feel apart from magic. The world is magickal, and it’s my world, too. Just because you think I’m not magickal—”

  “I don’t…” I want to say that I don’t think that. But I’m pretty sure I’ve said it out loud, multiple times.

  Shepard’s wearing his Keith Haring shirt again. He only has two shirts.

  His face is long, and his eyes are wide. His cheekbones shine even by lamplight.

  Whenever we leave the flat, strangers admire Shepard. He’s tall and handsome. He looks kind and interesting. And then he starts talking to them, and they like him even more. Because he’s even kinder than they were expecting, and he’s as interested as he is interesting. Almost no one is that.

  The man at the dumpling shop loves Shepard. My neighbours know his name. (My neighbours don’t know my name.)

  And all of these people don’t even realize that it just keeps getting worse, the more you know him. That he just keeps getting better. There are no diminishing returns with Shepard—you just like him more and more until your head explodes. Until you actually die from liking him so much.

  “Do you wish I was a magician?” he asks.

  “No,” I say, before I’ve even thought it through.

  Shepard looks down. Like that hurt him. Why? How was that the wrong answer? He just said he didn’t want to be—

  “I wouldn’t want to trade who you are,” I say, “for someone or something else who could do magic.”

  Shepard looks up into my eyes. “Penelope,” he says.

  I push up my glasses. “Shepard.”

  He’s moving his hand very slowly towards my face, and I know I’ve only kissed one person, but I know what this means. I know he’s giving me a chance to say no. To sit back or turn away.

  I bring both of my legs onto the sofa, and shift so I’m facing him. He still stops with his hand near my face. “Penelope,” he says softly.

  I raise my hand to his wrist and push his hand against my cheek. He smiles. The dimple in his bottom lip flattens out, and you can see almost all of his teeth. He could smile at anyone, and they’d want this. He could smile at anyone …

  He’s smiling at me.

  What wouldn’t I do to keep Shepard smiling at me?

  He’s tall—he can reach me without any work. He bends at the waist, and his smile gets closer. “Yeah?” he asks when his mouth is nearly touching mine.

  “Yeah,” I say, and it’s more of a noise than a word.

  Shepard kisses me.

  He’s still smiling.

  His lips are soft. They cover mine. And it’s so much better than I was expecting. It’s better than I thought kissing was supposed to be.

  It’s magic.

  It’s better.

  SHEPARD

  Holy shit, this is …

  This is not something I thought would happen. Penelope …

  She’s going to be mad about this, right? Like, this is not something she wanted to occur. But the way she was looking at me—like, if I didn’t kiss her, she was going to turn me into a frog—what was I supposed to do?

  Penelope …

  We can stop if you want to.

  She tilts her head and pushes closer. Our glasses tap against each other. I take mine off and set them as far away as I can reach, and then I bring my hand up to her shoulder. Her cheek is round and soft. Her shoulder is round and soft. I have a good feeling about the rest of her.

  Penelope kisses like someone who hasn’t done this very much. And that isn’t to say it’s bad—it’s very not bad. She just doesn’t seem to know what to do first. I hold her face in both hands and let her kiss me like she has a lot of questions about this whole scenario.

  A long time passes before she touches me—one hand on my shoulder—but then it’s both hands on my shoulders, then both hands on my neck, both hands in my hair, both hands on my ears. I laugh, I can’t help it.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” she whispers.

  I lick her mouth while it’s open—and groan. She tastes so sweet.

  Penelope has her hands on my shoulders again. She climbs into my lap and brackets my hips with her knees. She smooths down her skirt. And then she puts both arms around my neck.

  I lean back against the couch and hold her waist.

  I don’t know how much longer this can go on.

  I hope she doesn’t regret it.

  I’m glad she can’t make me forget it.

  PENELOPE

  Nicks and Slick, I’ve been wrong about everything.

  Wrong about love.

  Wrong about kissing, for certain.

  Wrong about Shepard—I was frightfully wrong about Shepard. And I’m so glad. What else could I have been wrong about? I hope he shows me. I want him to show me.

  I’ve been sitting in his lap for what feels like hours. We’re still kissing, and it’s still so soft. And he’s still smiling. I’m not sure he’s stopped smiling. I’m smiling, too. Shepard looks different without his glasses—even more open, even more vulnerable. His eyes are smaller, his face has more space. I kiss the spot between his eyebrows, and he laughs.

  My glasses are gone, too—Shepard took them off and set them somewhere. He tracks his thumbs along my eyebrows, down, over my cheekbones, and his smile fades. “Penelope … I need to ask you something.”

  I sit back a little on his thighs. “Okay.”

  He brings his hands to my waist, like he’s holding me steady. “Are you going to regret this?”

  “How would I know that now?” I ask.

  Shepard bites his lip. His bottom lip is even pinker than before. “I guess that’s fair.”

  “Are you?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Well, you don’t know that either…”

  He sits up a little. “No, I do. Without a doubt. I am never going to regret kissing you. I’m never going to regret a moment we’ve spent together, even though I regret the mistakes I’ve made…”

  “Oh,” I say.

  He pushes my hair out of my face. It falls back immediately. My ponytail must be nearly dead. “I need to tell you something,” he says, “just in case this is … happening.”

  “What do you mean? Obviously it’s happening.”

  He clears his throat. I reach down my T-shirt and find my gem, so I can summon him a glass of water. He just looks at the water for a second, then drinks half of it, and hands it back to me. I finish it, then disappear the glass. “A place for everything, and everything in its place!”

  Shepard clears his throat again. “I need to tell you something, a few somethings. Because now is the time to tell you. Before we get serious. But it’s going to make it seem like I think we’re more serious than we are. I just don’t want to miss my window for being honest with you.”

  “Shepard, you’re making me nervous.”

  He groans. “I’m sorry. Don’t be nervous.”

  My hands
were on his shoulders. I drop them into my lap.

  “Don’t pull away,” he says.

  “Just tell me, Shepard! Are you engaged to more than one demon?”

  “No! But … you know I’ve been in a lot of unusual magickal situations…”

  “Right.”

  “And you know about my thirdborn…”

  “I know that a giant you call a friend is going to eat your thirdborn.”

  He closes one eye and bites his bottom lip. “I may also have promised someone my firstborn.”

  “Shepard, your firstborn…”

  He squeezes my waist. “It’s all right, I told you—I’m not having kids.”

  “Who gets your firstborn?”

  “An imp. Or three.”

  “Aren’t imps the same as demons?”

  “Never say that to an imp.”

  “How did this even happen?”

  “We were playing impdice. I thought they were joking about the wager.”

  “We are going to kill these imps.”

  “Penelope…” He bites his lip again. “There’s more.”

  “More? Your secondborn?”

  “No, I’ve got dibs on that one…” He’s grimacing. “But I did lose my last name.”

  Every time he talks, my jaw drops lower and my eyebrows climb higher. “How on earth did you lose your last name?”

  “Told it to the wrong fairy.”

  My hands are in the air. “How have you met so many fairies!”

  “I fell in with a crew of them…”

  “Shepard—hell’s spells, is your name even Shepard?”

  “Yes! I only lost my last name. And I only ‘magickally and profoundly’ lost it; I can still say it, I can still wear name tags. There’s just one more thing—one more big thing…” He closes both eyes for a second. “I have a, um, well … I don’t have a sexually transmitted disease. But I am a carrier. Only other merpeople can get it. So it’s probably not relevant. Unless you want to sleep with a merperson. And also me. Me first. Which I’m not suggesting…”

  Hell’s spells …

  Shepard.

  I climb off his lap.

  55

  SHEPARD

  Penelope has the refrigerator door open. “I knew that Simon left some milk…”