In many ways, Ava was no different than the children who clambered around the wooden figures of the carousel, mesmerized by the lights and the music and the ambience of a glittering world that would continue to move with or without her presence, so long as someone else was there to push a button. Sometimes she felt small, a bystander watching a life that was not her own, adrift and immature and out of her depth. Surrounded by beings well over five centuries old, she wondered if she’d ever catch up, wondered if she could be the adult she pretended to be. She had been naive to think that this — the playful tackle, the accidental innuendos, the sheer intimacy of two bodies in close proximity — was anything other than an expression of friendship, and in her innocence she forgot herself entirely.
Inexperienced as she was, she knew a kiss when she felt one, and for a moment she wasn’t a mudfight participant slick with sweat and dirt, wasn’t the perennially cheerful carousel operator who smiled too much and knew too little; she was just a girl, a girl with a boy whose touch briefly singed like firecrackers and whose lips tasted like the earth after a sunshower.
But that boy was Jade, and he was her friend and —
She drew in a shuddering breath and lowered her eyes. She hadn’t stopped him when she felt his palm against her rib cage, steady and supportive; she hadn’t stopped him when his hand ghosted feather-soft across her neck or cradled her face with a tenderness that surprised her. Ava wasn’t certain she had even wanted to stop him, and that scared her more than she thought possible. Witty and kind, with his tent full of miraculous flowers and his characteristic smile, he was too good for her. The fact that he considered her a friend was unbelievable as it was.
“You...y-you kissed me,” she whispered. If she repeated the obvious, maybe she could make sense of it, explain it in terms she could understand. “Hokey fae tradition or not, you really didn’t have to. I never...I mean, a roustie kissed me once, but it was on a dare. He didn’t mean nothin’ by it, I don’t think he even knew my name.”
She laughed without humor, treading unfamiliar waters. “I, uh, I guess I forfeit. Can't top that move. You win this round.”