Gravity Rises (S3)

AI: Part Eleven

He didn't know why he did it. He was just so happy, so relieved to see her. He'd been searching for her for two days, and his morale was quickly dropping. But then she was there. One moment, he'd been searching the forest for her; the next, he was standing in front of her.

It was her. It was her!

"Mabel!" He hugged her; and when she pulled back, he got a good look at her face.

Kiss her! cried his brain in a rush of excitement.

So he did.

It was a moment of bliss. His lips on hers, his hands on her shoulders, his brain on fire as the hormones rushed through it. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before.

But then it was over. Mabel pushed him away and jumped back. "What are you doing?" she asked. Her voice was alarmed, even a bit horrified.

Gideon's bliss evaporated. He stared at her. "I. . . I wanted to kiss you," he said lamely.

She blinked as she processed this. "You need to ask," she said, as if this were obvious. As if he had broken a well-known social rule.

"What?"

"You need to ask before you kiss me," she said. She still looked shocked, but her eyes were firm.

"Oh." He hadn't thought of that. He'd thought. . . well, he didn't know what he'd thought. He'd just acted. Not something he usually did.

In his rising embarrassment, he said, "Then. . . can I kiss you?"

"No," she said vehemently.

He stared at her.

She deflated. "No," she said again, much quieter this time. "I'm sorry, but. . . no. I'm not ready for that."

"Oh," he said again. He wished he could be more eloquent, but his brain could only think in single syllables at the moment.

His excitement at seeing Mabel was gone. He was still really happy to see her, but that feeling was crowded out by his embarrassment. And by a touch of resentment. Why couldn't she just kiss him?

"Can we, um, go?" she asked. "I — I'm ready."

For the first time, Gideon looked around him. They were outside the library. The metal door, with Gideon's flashlight still wedging it open, was right there. How. . . ?

He glanced back at Mabel's face and saw triumph there. "I got us both here," she said in response to his confused look. "This is my world."

Though he was still embarrassed, he found himself smiling. "You saved yourself."

"Don't sound so surprised," she said. For a moment, he worried he'd broken another social rule and offended her, but then she smiled again. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. But I couldn't have done it without you to snap me out of whatever spell was on my mind."

They smiled at each other for a moment — though they couldn't seem to meet each other's eyes. Mabel's cheeks were flushed; Gideon probably looked the same, based on the heat in his face.

His unwelcome kiss — what was he thinking? — was only made more awkward by the next thing he had to say. "Well," he said, "um, well, I. . . I can only levitate one person at a time. As — as you know. So, um, I have to — to carry you."

Her pink cheeks turned red in the awkwardness. "Oh. Um. Oh."

"You can ride on my back," he said. "If. . . if you want."

"Oh. Okay."

He turned around, cursing himself as he did so. What an idiot. He'd seen that she didn't want to be in a relationship with him. He'd seen it in her own perfect fantasy world! What had possessed him to kiss her?