That Feeling When

1

My heart is pounding and my mouth feels dry.

This is it. It’s happening. I’m actually going to do it.

We’re standing together in the narrow corridor. The lights are low out here and the hum of the party in the next room feels distant, muted. Like it’s just the two of us.

He leans in closer with a smile that’s a borderline smirk on his handsome face and caresses my jaw with his hand.

My breath catches. I can’t believe it’s finally about to happen, after all this time.

After months of flirting back and forth, going from tentative acquaintances, to friends, to now this . . .

The air is charged, electric, and my whole body is alight with it. If he leans in any closer, he’ll be able to feel me trembling. The nerves, the excitement, the anticipation—­it’s all exactly as I imagined it.

He brushes my hair back from my face. It came loose from my braids when I was dancing.

“You’re so beautiful,” he tells me, his voice low.

A thousand and one responses jumble together on the tip of my tongue, but my throat is too thick for me to speak. Nodding is all I feel capable of right now.

Then, in slow motion, he closes the last scrap of distance between us, his strong hand tilting my chin up. His body is hot against mine and when I press a palm flat against his chest I can feel his heart beating every bit as wildly—­

And that’s when I slip a dagger from the folds of my dress and stab him neatly between the ribs.

Hot, sticky blood cascades over my fingers as he stumbles back. “What the—­!”

As I look into his vivid green eyes, they turn entirely to black. His face seems to shimmer and his huge wings flicker out of existence as the mystical façade begins to fall away. He staggers once, twice, drops to his knees and fumbles at his belt for the blades that were confiscated on our way into the ball.

“Traitor,” I hiss as he collapses at my feet.

I lift the skirts of my ball gown to make sure I don’t get blood on my pretty dress and run deeper into the castle to find the rest of my adventuring party.

There’s a sudden cacophony: shocked exclamations, stunned stammering, and cries of outrage from the people at my table. We draw a few looks, making such a commotion at a café on a Sunday afternoon, but my friends are too riled up to notice.

Jake throws his dice desperately, hoping to save his character from imminent death, but to no avail. He buries his face in his hands with a groan and, next to him, Max pats his shoulder in commiseration.

“Don’t comfort him!” shouts Cerys, looking like she’s going to lunge across the table to slap Max’s hand away. She upsets an empty glass and mutters a quick apology before sitting back down. She settles for jabbing a finger toward Jake instead. “You’re a traitor! A shifter in our own ranks, a spy! And to think we trusted you! I gave you my scrying opal—­”

Jake lifts his head with a sheepish smile and shrugs. “I couldn’t have you finding me out, could I?”

“And to think I was rooting for your and Anissa’s characters to get together, ugh!”

I’m about to gush about how proud I am of double-­bluffing by going along with that subplot when Max adds, “Seriously! I thought you were going to have to actually kiss for a second there.”

Jake snorts and, though the idea of kissing my very platonic friend is genuinely laughable, my stomach swoops uncomfortably—­as if me kissing anyone is so funny to them.

“HAHAHA!” I blurt. “TOTALLY. CAN YOU IMAGINE?”

Cerys gives me an odd look but the boys have already moved on, and she falls into the rhythm of their conversation, bickering about all the times that Lord Syxos—­Jake’s character in our tabletop role-­playing game—­had pulled the wool over their eyes. My own character, Mida, a sorceress and former palace servant turned rebel spy, had clocked him from the start but, since I’m the gamemaster, I decided it was way more fun to wait for the perfect moment to pull the big reveal—­for maximum effect.

Which, judging by the reactions around me, was exactly the right decision.

I take a sip of my coffee and find it’s gone cold; I got too caught up in the gameplay, and Mida and Lord Syxos’s fauxmance.

Although to be fair, it’s easy for me to get lost in anything related to Of Wrath and Rune. It’s been my favorite fantasy series for seven years and counting, with more books in the works and the latest season of the TV show about to start filming. It’s even got its own Dungeons & Dragons–­esque role-­playing game, which Jake and I persuaded the others to play now that our junior year is over and summer’s finally here.

Being gamemaster is basically a dream for me. I get to flex my deep-­cut knowledge of OWAR lore, craft exciting adventures for us to embark on, and develop new characters to fit seamlessly into this fantasy universe—­and I have friends to do it all with.

I’m still getting used to that last part. This is the first time I’ve ever really had friends.

It’s surreal to realize just how drastically being part of the OWAR fandom has changed my life. But it’s amazing, being surrounded by people I probably wouldn’t have ever called friends if not for our mutual love of the books and the show. I’m no longer the weirdo outcast at school, the chronic loner nobody cared to really get to know.

Jake leans back in his seat with a sigh and says, “Fair play, Anissa, you really pulled that off. I was dead convinced I’d be able to use Mida as a hostage to blackmail the others.”

“Now you’re just dead,” I say, and everyone laughs. A little bubble of warmth rises in my chest at the sound.

“At least now we don’t have to do all that pretend flirting.” He chuckles, pulling a face. “It was getting kind of weird, right?”

And just like that, the bubble bursts, my heart plummets, and my smile freezes. I think I say something blithe in agreement, but my head is clamoring: Wait, why was it weird? Did I mess it up? Was it that obvious I have no idea how to flirt? Did I make a complete idiot of myself?

Max imitates my character in a breathy, exaggerated voice: “Oh, but my lord, you already have half my heart; what can I do but pledge you the rest?” He raises a thick, dark eyebrow at Cerys and says playfully, “I think if you spoke to me like that in real life, I’d have to break up with you.”

“A total ick,” she agrees, giggling, but she must catch something on my face because she quickly grabs my hand to squeeze. “But it totally worked in the gameplay! It felt so on-­brand for the world of OWAR!”

I turn my weak smile on her, not so sure I’m convinced.

If it’s this obvious to my closest friends what a complete amateur I am when it comes to romance, how am I ever going to pull it off in the real world, when it matters?

I’m a little relieved I killed off Lord Syxos, if I’m honest. Not just because I had to play a double-­bluff in character, or because the fake flirting was making me feel a bit sweaty, but because I find it so easy to get caught up in sweeping, epic romances when it comes to fiction. In real life? It’s another story.

And as much as I love this fandom, it would’ve been really sad if my first kiss had all been part of some fantasy.