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“You have to stop looking at me like that,” Lily said. Her hair was fanned back over the pillows, shining almost pink in the sunlight. One side of her bangs was falling into her eyes and she blew at it.
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” James said. He couldn’t have been looking at her like anything. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. She was a beautiful blur, lounging like she was, but even if he’d had his glasses on, he’d be looking at her like he always was.
Lily narrowed her eyes, even knowing he couldn’t read the expression on her face. “You are.”
“Okay, then. How am I looking at you?” James leaned forward, on his elbow, and Lily’s face came into focus just a little bit more.
“Like you love me.”
James laughed, breathy and surprised. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is a bad thing!” She sat up. “You love me and you never want me to leave. You’re going to give me that look all morning and it’s going to make me feel horrible when I’ve got to go this afternoon.”
James could hear the note of panic in her voice, and he reached over onto the nightstand for his glasses. This was an in-focus sort of conversation they were about to have. When they were on he could see the tension in her shoulders, and the deep violet bags under her eyes. “I don’t know how to stop looking at you like I’m looking at you.”
“Close your eyes.”
“I don’t want to close my eyes.”
Lily huffed, and her bangs puffed out again. “Stop loving me, then. Just for the afternoon.”
“Absolutely not.”
“An insufferable idiot, that’s who I have living in my flat with me. Maybe I’ll just move out, then, and you won’t be able to look at me at all.”
James clutched a hand against his chest, reeling back as though he’d been hexed. “Please don’t move out. I’ve never had anyone living with me that makes a better cup of coffee.”
“Yeah, well, I worked at a café during summers. I’m sure you can find another barista to date.”
When James pressed forward, Lily didn’t pull away. Instead she tilted her chin back and accepted the press of his mouth on hers, let out a happy little breath when he started working his way down to the hollow of her throat. “Give me your coworker’s numbers, then, if you’re so confident you want me to stop being in love with you.”
“There’s Sarah,” Lily said, managing to keep her voice even as James began to knead his thumbs against her hips. “She worked on Tuesday afternoons and she had a ring through one eyebrow.”
James pressed his face against Lily’s shoulder, sliding his glasses back up his nose. “I’m ambivalent about piercings, if you can believe it.”
“I also worked with Bethany. Bethany had braids all the way down to her bum, and she was taller than me by at least six inches. She was also very good at doing the little pictures on top with foam.”
“How tall are you?” James asked.
Lily gasped a little. He really wasn’t doing very much for keeping her on task. “About a hundred and sixty two centimeters.”
“Well then, there’s the problem with Bethany. I’m only interested in women that are about a hundred and sixty two centimeters. Shame, because I do love foam art.” And then he bit down on Lily’s shoulder, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
“I haven’t told you about Henderson or Angelique yet,” she said as he pressed her down and onto the pillows. She arched her back, straining into the feeling of him, and then her eyes flew open. “Wait. You’re just trying to distract me.”
James managed a look so innocent, even McGonagall might have believed him. But this was Lily, and she knew him better than anyone. It only took a raise of her eyebrows before he gave up, dropping his head so his forehead pressed into the space below her collarbone. “I wasn’t.”
“What were you doing, then?”
“I was trying to pretend you really did work in a café.”
Lily put her palms against James’ temples, drew his eyes up to hers. “I told you that I did , James, over summers– “
“No, I mean if you only worked at a café. If every time I said goodbye to you I knew you’d be making London fogs and grinding beans and flirting with the regulars for tips.”
“People don’t really tip in cafés. I only ever flirted because I meant it.”
“I hate that you have to leave.” James sighed and rolled over, flopping onto his back. Lily missed the weight of him but didn’t move to haul him back over. There was something about the way he’d landed on the bed, like his strings had all been cut, that made her think it wasn’t lighthearted morning fun anymore.
But then again, he was James, and she was Lily: “Aha! I knew you were looking at me like something!”
“I’m trying to memorize you,” he said. “Most of the time I don’t even notice I’m doing it. I think I’m trying to catch you before you go, keep you from slipping through my fingers.” He turned his head to face her, expression incredibly and adorably earnest. “I’d never actually stop you from going. You know that, right? You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t–”
“I know.”
“I miss you like mad. And I get terrified that I’ve forgotten some detail, like the fact that you can never screw the cap on the toothpaste right on the first try, or you scrunch your nose when you have to put on your slippers without socks because you don’t like the fuzz on your bare feet. I can’t stop thinking that you’ll never come back, and there will be this little thing you do that makes you you , and I won’t remember it and you’ll be gone forever in the most horrible way.”
Lily couldn’t think of what to say, so she just said, “I scrunch up my nose?”
And James reached out and stroked the bridge of it with his finger. “Yeah.”
“So,” Lily said. She rolled over onto her side so they were facing one another. “If I worked in a café, who would you be? The hotshot healer who comes in late after his night shifts?”
James smiled, wide. “No, of course not. I’d work there too. I’d mess up orders and you’d call me names like ‘oaf’ and ‘cretin,’ and we’d always get scheduled together no matter how many times you’d complain to the manager.”
“Or, if you worked at the café, I could be the literature student who comes in and reads enormous novels. You’d stare at me while I worked the register.”
“Of course I would. I’d also pay for all of your coffees and you would think I did that kind of thing for just any pretty girl who walked into my shop.”
Lily raised her eyebrows. “Oh, so it’s your shop now?”
“Well I’m assuming that, in this scenario, I still have parents who’ll support my every wish and dream, including ones limited to peddling hot drinks.”
“And scones.”
“How could I forget the scones?”
They came up with tens of lives by breakfast, hundreds by lunch. They were teachers of rival subjects and strangers who met on the train platform, black-and-white movie stars and eighteenth century novel protagonists.
But just before she left that afternoon, as she was always going to, Lily wrapped her arms around James and she said against his neck, “this one is my favorite. I promise I’ll be back, to see how it ends.”