City of Lost Souls

And neither one of them was the sort of girl you said no to. Warily he moved around the counter toward Isabelle. He was a few steps away when she reached out and pulled him toward her by the wrists. Her hands slid up his arms, over the swell of his biceps, the muscles of his shoulders. His heartbeat quickened. He could feel the warmth coming off her and could smell her perfume and sweet tequila. “You’re gorgeous,” she said. Her hands slid around to flatten themselves against his chest. “You know that, right?”


Jordan wondered if she could feel his heart beating through his shirt. He knew the way girls looked at him on the street—boys, too, sometimes—knew what he saw in the mirror every day, but he never thought about it much. He had been so focused on Maia for so long that it never seemed to matter beyond whether she would still find him attractive if they ever saw each other again. He’d been chatted up plenty, but not often by girls who looked like Isabelle, and never by anyone so blunt. He wondered if she was going to kiss him. He hadn’t kissed anyone but Maia since he was fifteen. But Isabelle was looking up at him, and her eyes were big and dark, and her lips were slightly parted and the color of strawberries. He wondered if they would taste like strawberries if he kissed her.

“And I just don’t care,” she said.

“Isabelle, I don’t think—Wait. What?”

“I should care,” she said. “I mean, there’s Maia to think about, so I probably wouldn’t just rip your clothes off blithely anyway, but the thing is, I don’t want to. Normally I would want to.”

“Ah,” Jordan said. He felt relief, and also the tiniest twinge of disappointment. “Well… that’s good?”

“I think about him all the time,” she said. “It’s awful. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“You mean Simon?”

“Scrawny little mundane bastard,” she said, and took her hands off Jordan’s chest. “Except he isn’t. Scrawny, anymore. Or a mundane. And I like spending time with him. He makes me laugh. And I like the way he smiles. You know, one side of his mouth goes up before the other one—Well, you live with him. You must have noticed.”

“Not really,” said Jordan.

“I miss him when he’s not around,” Isabelle confessed. “I thought… I don’t know, after what happened that night with Lilith, things changed between us. But now he’s with Clary all the time. And I can’t even be angry with her.”

“You lost your brother.”

Isabelle looked up at him. “What?”

“Well, he’s knocking himself out to make Clary feel better because she lost Jace,” said Jordan. “But Jace is your brother. Shouldn’t Simon be knocking himself out to make you feel better too? Maybe you’re not mad at her, but you could be mad at him.”

Isabelle looked at him for a long moment. “But we’re not anything,” she said. “He’s not my boyfriend. I just like him.” She frowned. “Crap. I can’t believe I said that. I must be drunker than I thought.”

“I kind of figured it out from what you were saying before.” He smiled at her.

She didn’t smile back, but she lowered her lashes and looked up at him through them. “You’re not so bad,” she said. “If you want, I can say nice things to Maia about you.”

“No, thanks,” said Jordan, who wasn’t sure what Izzy’s version of nice things was, and feared finding out. “You know, it’s normal, when you’re going through a tough time, to want to be with the person you—” He was about to say “love,” realized she had never used the word, and switched gears. “Care about. But I don’t think Simon knows you feel that way about him.”

Her lashes fluttered back up. “Does he ever say anything about me?”

“He thinks you’re really strong,” Jordan said. “And that you don’t need him at all. I think he feels… superfluous to your life. Like, what can he give you when you’re already perfect? Why would you want a guy like him?” Jordan blinked; he hadn’t meant to run on like that, and he wasn’t sure how much of what he’d said applied to Simon, and how much to himself and Maia.

“So you mean I should tell him how I feel?” said Isabelle in a small voice.

“Yes. Definitely. Tell him how you feel.”

“Okay.” She grabbed for the tequila bottle and took a swig. “I’ll go over to Clary’s right now and I’ll tell him.”

A small flower of alarm blossomed in his chest. “You can’t. It’s practically three in the morning—”

“If I wait, I’ll lose my nerve,” she said, in that reasonable tone that only very drunk people ever employed. She took another swig out of the bottle. “I’ll just go over there, and I’ll knock on the window, and I’ll tell him how I feel.”

“Do you even know which window is Clary’s?”

She squinted. “Nooo.”

The horrible vision of a drunk Isabelle waking up Jocelyn and Luke floated through Jordan’s head. “Isabelle, no.” He reached up to take the tequila bottle from her, and she jerked it away from him.

“I think I’m changing my mind about you,” she said in a semi-threatening tone that would have been more frightening if she’d been able to focus her eyes on him directly. “I don’t think I like you so much after all.” She stood up, looked down at her feet with a surprised expression—and fell over backward. Only Jordan’s quick reflexes allowed him to catch her before she hit the floor.





7

A SEA CHANGE