Frog Meets Girl

Chapter 23--Sweaty Hands and Other Awkward Moments

Howdy all! I've got all the plot lines in the air and I'm trying to juggle them all now. It's hard! When will they kiss? Will it be the answer? Where is the queen and when is the wedding? Who will Gabby choose? What about the war?

Some of these questions will be answered here. Others will take a little time. Read on!

            During breakfast, Gabby looked at Will. It wasn’t just the regular my-eyeballs-are-resting-on-you kind of looking. She really looked.

            What would it be like to kiss him? How different could it be?

            His lips were thin as they made a wide arc across his face. Their color wouldn’t make a difference in how they felt, but even a brief comparison to normal human lips illuminated features that would make a kiss on his lips a little unpleasant. Without warmth or softness, Will’s lips had little to offer for kissing enjoyment, if that’s what kissing was supposed to be about.

            That must be why Isabella thought the idea of a kiss was funny.

            During her studies, though, she thought that maybe there might be something else about the kissing idea that she hadn’t considered.

They were studying Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which was an interesting, if not useless, complement to her research with Will. Everyone seemed to have been transformed by one of the gods or by merely wishing it. If wishing were enough to change Will back, she was pretty sure he would not have been a frog for long.

            This started her thinking again about what Will might be like in human form. Were his human lips soft? She kept sneaking looks at him while her tutor was reading passages aloud, trying to imagine what his human lips would look like. The thought of Will having soft, warm lips distracted her so that she didn’t hear the tutor’s question.

            “Princess Gabriella?” he said again.

            Isabella poked her arm.

            “Oh,” Gabby’s face took on the shade of a perfect strawberry. “I, um, could you ask me that again?” The tips of her ears tingled in synchrony with her red cheeks.

            The tutor pinched his thin lips before repeating his question, “Why was it so important for Daphne to avoid Apollo?”

            Gabby’s lips twitched involuntarily. “Um,” she stalled, glancing down at the manuscript in front of her, trying her best to decipher the Greek. The actual story was not very helpful, briefly describing Apollo’s amorous intentions and Daphne’s last second escape by transformation into a tree. Clearly, the tutor was trying to use some advanced analytical thinking tricks on her.

            Isabella came to her rescue, “I think it’s because what Apollo wanted was a very personal thing to Daphne. It was something she was willing to give up everything to keep control of. Anyway, it could be that she loved someone else.”

            A few of Isabella’s words reverberated in her still-burning ears, especially the word personal, and the idea that some things were worth giving up everything for. Although it was very apparent the story was about attempted rape, Gabby was struck by the idea that a kiss could be another such deeply personal thing. After all, it was powerful enough to break the curse on her grandmother.

            She looked again at Will, laying flat on his belly with his chin resting on the top of his hands as he stared off into space. Perhaps what she wanted to try that afternoon was a powerful antidote after all. Fluttering tickled her insides.