Pg. 210 during Calliope's test

Quinced wiped the sweat from his forehead as he sat cross-legged across from Lily, anticipating their next Challenge. He was familiar with working long days in the sun beating down at the lumberyard, but sitting on the beach now was a different kind of Florida heat.

"Let me first explain the rules of my test," Calliope began, flipping through a clipboard to read from it. "During the execution of the I Say, You Say test, participants must remain facing each other, they must maintain eye contact while making each proclamation, and they must continue until the Challenge administrator deems the test complete. Understood?"

Quince maintained eye contact with Lily as instructed, nodding. But she looked as confused as he did.

"Excellent. Now here is what we're going to do. First, I would like each of you to say three positive things about the other. It may be a compliment or an encouragement or just something to like or admire."

Once she finished talking, Quince took in the assignment. Three positive things about Lily. It seemed easy enough. Once she decided that Lily would go first, he settled himself, relaxing the way he sat.

"I, uh…" she started, eyes locked on Quince's oceanic eyes. Several seconds passed before she finally finished. "He has pretty eyes."

Quince smiled at him, his heart practically singing at such a genuine compliment from here. Hell, even a superficial compliment meant something.

"That's very good, Lily. But I'd like you to use his name when you make your statement. Don't anonymize him with a generic pronoun."

"Quince has pretty eyes," Lily corrected herself, still looking seriously into his eyes.

"Wonderful," Calliope said. "Your turn," she told Quince.

As soon as she said so, Quince took his turn. Still looking into her deep green eyes, he said, "Lily is fiercely loyal."

Based on her reaction, he knows that compliment caught her off guard.

Calliope declared it back to Lily's turn.

"Quince can be very tender."

Look at that, he thought to himself, smiling and winking at her. Quince felt reassured by that compliment, the proof that she had paid any attention. She was taking this seriously. He spoke up, immediately taking his turn, "Lily has no sense of fashion."

"Hey, you're supposed to say something nice," she immediately replied, her face screwed up in response.

Calliope interrupted her, but Quince ignored whatever it was that she said, keeping that steady eye contact with Lily. He needed to explain his compliment. "That was nice. I can't stand trend chasers and wannabe supermodels. I like girls who are fresh and unique. Individual. Like you."

Once Calliope turned it back over to Lily, she took her sweet time to think about her next compliment. Even if he expected her to struggle to come up with nice things to say about him, it still stung a little for Quince.

"Quince doesn't care what others think of him," she said, finally.

Even though he was still making eye contact with her, his mind was no longer fixated on looking at Lily. She thinks I don't care? She thinks I don't care about what people think of me? He cared. He cared what Lily thought of him, what her friends thought, how her father felt about him, hell, everyone he was coming into contact with lately seemed like someone important that he needed to impress.

Her voice interrupted his thoughts, "I just meant that you-"

"I care," he said, a bit of frustration shining through in his tone. "Sometimes I think I care too much," Quince explained, allowing his eyes to wander down to the sand where he drew a circle in the sand with one finger.

"Eye contact," Calliope reminded him. "Quince, it's your turn."

Quince continued to circle his finger in the sand absentmindedly for several more seconds, throwing out his initial third compliment that he'd planned to say. Instead, he looked back up at her and said, "Lily doesn't think before she speaks."

Lily ignored Calliope, and really, as did Quince.

"Hey, we were supposed to say positive things. I bought your 'no fashion sense' argument, but how was that last thing a compliment?"

Again, Calliope said something, but Quince didn't pay any attention.

"You don't have a filter. You're honest, sometimes to a fault, and straightforward. Too many people say what they think others want to hear."

He felt her doubt, but Calliope was eager to move on anyway.

"Now that we've established things you admire about each other, it's time to address the other side. I would like each of you to share one thing you would change about the other person. Try to make it a positive criticism instead of an attack. If you like, you might also touch on how you can help them achieve that change."

Lily's relief at the next assignment was clear to Quince. When it was his turn, though, it was a little harder.

If only to fill the silence, he started. "If I could change one thing about Lily," Quince paused, thinking. He loved her loyalty, and how much she cared for the people she loved. He admired her tenacity and fierce attitude. He loved her chaos and her banter, the way she fought back with him. He truly did love her fashion. He wanted to look at her beautiful face all the time and count up each of her freckles in that cheesy way that people did. Quince still treasured the feeling of his hand on her waist, the kisses they had shared. There was so much about Lily that he loved and wanted to get closer to, always. But the one trait that bugged her was intertwined with that determined nature of hers, and he carefully considered how to phrase it. "I'd want her to see beneath the surface of the people around her."

Lily's feelings were guarded at first, but he could see it in her eyes. She was hurt.

Quince didn't regret saying it, though. It was the only honest answer to that question.

"Is this about Brody?" she snapped at him.

"Explore that, Quince. Why do you think that needs to change?"

He sighed, admitting to himself that he knew Lily did not want to hear this. It wasn't going to earn him any points with her. Still, he was being forced into this. "Sometimes I think Lily is too…" he had to pause, self-absorbed? Distracted? "...self-involved to see more than-"

"Excuse me?" the princess jumped in.

"-what she wants to see," Quince finished, still looking at her eyes, which were now on the offense.

"Self-involved? Self-involved?!" Lily repeated, jumping to her feet on the sand. "Let's talk about self-involved, Mr. Kissing Unsuspecting Girls in Libraries."

Calliope tried to calm Lily, but it was no use. She remained standing.

Quince started to speak from where he sat on the sand, "I didn't mean it like that, Lily," he explained, grunting slightly as he pushed to stand up. "It's just that you've been so caught up in Brody for so long and…" self conscious and nervous for how his words would be taken, he combed his hand through his hair. "You don't really know him. You're in love with an image. And honestly, it's a little…"

"What, Quince? It's a little what?"

That fierceness was back.

Quince's heart sunk in his chest. Honest conversations like this were hard, and he didn't enjoy this. He groaned and reached both hands around into the back pockets of his cargo shorts. "Shallow."

The hurt stings, and Quince regrets it. He wants to take it back. The pain and emotional stab that he just gave her was deep.

"Lily, I-"

"No," the princess said. "It's fine."

But she's not.

When Calliope turns it over to her turn, her answer is clear. "You want to know the one thing that I would change about Quince? The fact that he's bonded to me."

There it was. The sting. He knew that she meant to hurt him, and that was different from Quince's answer. He felt bad for what he said. He didn't want to hurt her, he didn't want to talk about this. But Lily's answer was easy, it came naturally for her. And he could feel that there were so many other things she wanted to change about him, but this was the biggest, most pressing one. This was the most essential for her to change. She couldn't even evaluate or think about the other things that were wrong with him, because they weren't worth changing. Lily couldn't stand the idea of being bonded to him.

Calliope excused herself and gathered her things and dove back into the ocean. Quince took several minutes to consider everything that had been said, to think about what happened. He knew and saw that discrepancy behind both of their negative answers, but he didn't think she did.

"Can I explain?" he asked finally, still keeping his gaze trained on the horizon. Lily was stood just a few feet from him.

"I don't think there's anything to explain."

"There is," Quince instinctively answered. He knew she wouldn't want to hear more. He could feel her resistance. She didn't want to be persuaded. "I know what I said hurt you, and that's the last thing I want."

"Then why?" she asked, genuinely, tears building in her eyes.

Quince's chest hurt her for. It was back to that day in the school where she was crying about Brody, only now he'd been the one to do it to her.

"I'm not sure. It's just that…" he trailed off, squinting, looking at her very seriously. "There are so many things I like about you. Your generous heart and crooked smile and zillions of freckles," getting lost in the thought, he started to raise his palm toward her cheek, but he dropped it back to his side. "How you always smell like lime and coconut. The list could go on forever. What I said...that was the only thing I could think of that I wish was different."

Her tears, her sadness, started to erode, and Quince let a breath out that he hadn't realized he'd been holding.