Like Bees to Honey | gxg

13. Crushing

When Sabina got home from Marie's, Christina asked her why she was smiling so much.

"You've been wearing your grumpy face for weeks," her sister said, eyes narrowed suspiciously from where she was draped over the kitchen table because the living room was still occupied by the dusty contents of the attic. "What did you do?"

"Nothing." Sabina immediately twisted her face into a frown. "It was nice to see Marie, that's all."

"Oookay," Christina said, obviously not believing her for one second.

Upstairs, Sabina sat on her bed and looked at herself in the mirror. Her round cheeks were a little too pink and that stubborn smile popped out again.

She'd had fun, she realized. Spending time with Mel had actually been kind of fun.

She had expected working together to fix Marie's table would be frustrating at best, but despite Mel's complaints, she'd been right - they had made a good team. Well, an okay one. They'd managed to fix the table, anyway. Plus she'd discovered that she thought Mel was sort of funny sometimes.

Getting closer to Mel had never been part of her plan. And she still wasn't sure whether Mel had been flirting with her. Sabina didn't have a lot of experience with flirting. Her opportunities for romance had always been limited by the smallness of High Valley. But-

She flopped back onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling without seeing it.

Mel was still annoying, and she was still a Verger, and she was still her competition for the Best Vendor prize. And they were definitely one hundred percent incompatible.

But in spite of all that, maybe she kind of, just a little bit, wanted Mel to have been flirting with her.

It was only then that she finally realized she might be in trouble.

She was still fretting about this revelation as she set up for the next market day, stacking jars of honey into the crate shelves on her table. Crushing on a Verger cousin was probably the stupidest thing she had ever done. Besides, Mel was only here for the summer. Anything they could have would be doomed from the start.

And yet... there was step four: have her first kiss.

"Are you okay?" From their seat behind the table, Riley yawned and propped their chin in their hand. "You look a little red and the sun's barely up."

"I'm fine," Sabina squeaked, turning away and busying herself with today's samples so that she couldn't think about whether Mel might be a good kisser. Or what she smelled like. Or how soft her hair would be if Sabina ran her fingers through it. What did it even mean to be a good kisser, anyway?

"Are you sure you're alright? You just put your phone in one of the sample cups."

Sabina looked where Riley was pointing to find that she had indeed put her phone into one of the sample cups. Lost inside her head, she had even drizzled honey all over it. With a yelp, she pulled it out and grabbed a fistful of napkins to scrub the screen.

This was ridiculous. She needed to pull it together. Mel probably hadn't even been flirting with her. And it absolutely did not matter what she smelled like.

Besides, step four was the least important step in her plan.

Riley fiddled with the green dinosaur-shaped enamel pin they'd fixed to the collar of their shirt. "Grandma would say you're out of sorts, Bina. Did something happen this weekend?"

"Nothing happened," she said, but it came out too forcefully and Riley's eyebrows crept up their forehead. "Okay, not nothing, but I don't want to talk about it. It's embarrassing."