“Always have been,” I said, and finished reaching for him, wrapping my fingers solidly around his before looking back to Evie. “I wish you’d told me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“Given the pictures we have of what happened to your brain after your injury, and what happened to this cuckoo’s brain around her time of death, we think she may have killed herself in the process of planting that trap in Artie’s subconscious,” said Kevin. “Her brain started to do what yours did, and then it, well, failed. It couldn’t expand again after it contracted.”
I stared at him. “Did my biology have to get weirder?”
“We’re pretty sure you evolved from insects,” said Annie. “There are lots of insects that metamorphize during their lives. Maybe the brain thing is like that. It’s a physiological change triggered by some outside factor, and it’s perfectly normal, and she just couldn’t cut it.”
“Not helping,” I said.
“Why does she have a rack like that if she used to be a bug?” asked Sam.
Annie hit him in the arm, her amusement coloring the air around the pair of them like sunlight.
“This is all really interesting, but what does it have to do with me?” I asked.
“Sarah . . .” Evie sighed. “Do you have any idea why this cuckoo would have been willing to risk her life for the sake of hurting you?”
I didn’t. Not only did I not know, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “She’s dead,” I said. “Does it matter?”
“Come on, nerd,” shouted Elsie, gesturing for Artie to follow her down the driveway. “You can text her like the sad geek you’ve always been.”
“I hate you,” Artie called back, conversationally. “I hate you like I have hated nothing else in my life. My hatred is the sun, and you are the fields which it will burn.”
“Love you, see you in a second,” chirped Elsie. She waved to me. “Later, Sarah. See you in the morning.”
“Bye, Elsie,” I called, before turning my attention back to Artie. “Um. So.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So.”
“Are we—?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at me, thoughts tinged with hope. “Are we?”
“We could be. I mean, if you wanted to. I mean . . .” I took a deep breath and stopped talking. I mean, I want to. I’ve wanted to for a long time.
He blinked. Why aren’t you talking out loud?
Because Evie’s right inside, and she’s listening to everything we say. She and Kevin were waiting by the front door for me to come back. They’d been willing to give me a little bit of privacy while I said goodbye to Artie and Elsie, but that was about all.
Ted and Jane were still in the barn, and probably would be for the rest of the night. There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was safely in for the night. I could hear Kevin thinking distantly of all the tests he wanted to run on the dead cuckoo’s tissues, now that they were reasonably sure she’d died of something I couldn’t catch.
Oh, thought Artie. Then: Kissing was nice. I liked kissing. Did you . . . I mean, can we do more of that? If you liked it?
I liked it a lot. I’d like to do more of it. Maybe not with our family watching, though. That’s a little bit much.
Yeah, thought Artie, with chagrin.
Elsie had reached her car. She leaned on the horn, sending it blasting through the night. I laughed before I could catch myself.
“Okay, you win,” I said. “Text me when you get home, Artie?”
“I’ll text you from the road,” he said, and leaned over to plant a glancing kiss on the corner of my mouth. The contact was brief, but long enough for me to feel his thoughts brush against mine, warm and familiar and suffused with a lemony brightness that I was coming to accept, finally, as love.
He loved me. Artie loved me. Artie loved me, and Artie had loved me for a long time, maybe as long as I’d loved him. We’d just been too stubborn and too stupid and too scared to tell each other.
Artie walked down the driveway and got into the car with Elsie. She pulled out,