Sofia grabbed his arms to stop him. “Nope. He still owes me one for letting slip about my karaoke phobia to you in the first place. This one’s for you and only you.”
Isaiah leaned against the desk in the lobby and crossed his arms, grinning.
Let’s get this over with.She needed to get on with it before she got too distracted by that smile and went on her tiptoes for a kiss.
“So, the story starts in elementary school. You know how we used to all have roles in those little class plays?”
Isaiah nodded, and she continued, “I used to love those. I’d audition for the starring role, and most times, I got it.”
Isaiah looked as if that fact didn’t surprise him.
“Then in middle school, I joined the drama club, and we put on a production ofGrease.”
He rubbed his hands together like things were about to get juicy.
Sofia gave him a little shove. “Isaiah, this is a core embarrassing memory!”
“Sorry,” he said, putting up his hands placatingly. “Continue.”
“I didn’t get the role of Sandy, but I was cast as her understudy.”
“I’m sure that girl had a target on her back because of that.” Isaiah smirked again.
“Apparently, you don’t want to hear this story after all.” Sofia started to turn away.
But Isaiah tugged her back. “I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet this time.”
Sofia raised her eyebrows, not believing him, but she was determined to get it over with.
“So anyway, rehearsals had been going well, and I was killing it in my smaller role while also keeping up with all my understudy duties. But on opening night, the girl who was supposed to play Sandy got a wicked case of food poisoning, and I had to step in. Everything was going fine, but toward the end, when we were performing the final number and I was wearing those tight leather pants…”
Isaiah covered a laugh with his hands, and Sofia groaned.
“We were similar in size, so they didn’t make a spare costume for the understudy. But the original girl was a bit less curvy than I was, and I was doing a dance move when the pants split right down the middle, exposing my hot-pink underwear to the entire gymnasium.”
“Nooo,” Isaiah said, playing along with her horror.
“Yep. It was all anyone could talk about for at least a month, until the next middle school scandal came along.”
“So the embarrassment didn’t have anything to do with singing? It was all about a costume malfunction? And all this time, I thought you were afraid you had a terrible voice and had been booed off the stage as a child.” Isaiah’s eyes were sparkling, his grin devilish, and Sofia smacked him.
“Honestly, ever since, I had no idea if I had a good voice or not. Performing live and showing my underwear to half the town were basically synonymous events in my brain.”
“Until Valentine’s Day,” Isaiah said, grabbing her hand and tugging her toward him.
“Until Valentine’s Day,” she said with a grin. Then she stood on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
Epilogue
In a boutique curio shop in Ashland, Oregon, a Kringle elf stared out the window after closing the shop for the night. As a couple laughed and crossed the street, her thoughts drifted to a different couple who had visited that spring. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the incident since, and the scene ran through her head once again.
A couple paused outside her window, seemingly eying a pink kite that she had collected years before. After a brief conversation, the two stepped inside. The man did a quick look over the shop, but the woman went straight to the window, her eyes drawn instantly to the kite.
The Kringle elf watched as the young woman picked up the old fuchsia kite, wondering with a surprising sense of melancholy if she was going to sell it at last. The woman had freckles spattered across her nose like beautiful constellations, and the man looked at her as if she were the brightest star in the sky. A smile touched the elf’s lips, then surprise jolted her.
An old, familiar prickling rushed through her veins, and she suppressed a gasp as the kite glowed with the type of magic that only elves could see. The elf gripped the edge of her cashier’s counter, letting the feeling of the magic wash over her.
The kite had been sitting on her shelf for years. It had been picked up by a child or two, and it had never given any indication of containing traces of magic.So why is this happening now?
