A Magic Beyond - Karri Justina Shea

sorry for the pheels

She dropped her phone and keys on the table and closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against the cool fiberglass of the cello case as she fell into the kitchen chair. She rolled her shoulder and winced. It had been a long day of rehearsals, and she’d been playing with too much tension.

Leaning back, her eyes fell on her cell phone, slim and black and far too silent.

“Chinese,” she told the empty room. “I’ll order Chinese.”

Portland must have some good Chinese, right?

She picked up her phone and, by habit, looked at the last texts he’d sent her.

You wouldn’t believe who I’m working with this week. Sometimes I think dreams really do come true. Too sentimental?

And then,

I’ll try to make it to Portland soon. Thinking of you.

They were dated three days ago.

Just as she was deciding that opening a can of soup sounded like less work than finding a good Chinese place, the doorbell rang.

Phil, she thought, even as her heart knew differently.

Tony Stark was standing on her front porch, dressed a little too formally, looking a little too unsure of himself. She had never met him before. Television images alone would never have prepared her for the compassion in his eyes. At his elbow was a woman with red hair and a sad face.

Quietly she invited them inside.

“The first thing you need to know,” Tony said, once they were all seated at her sparse kitchen table, no pretense of coffee or canned soup between them, “Is that he died a hero.”

okay see when I was a kid Fruit Loops were pink, orange and yellow