I look at her. She's not waiting for me to say it back. She's not standing there with expectation or need or any of the things that would make this a transaction. She said it because it's true and she wanted me to know and that's enough for her. She'll walk back to her stool and drink her mule and tell me more about the fire and she won't bring it up again because Zoe doesn't need reciprocity on a timeline. She just needs to say what's true.
"Zoe."
"Yeah?"
"I love you too."
Her face does something I've never seen it do before. It goes still. Completely still. The broadcasting stops for one second, two seconds, and I see the underneath, the part she doesn't show because she's always showing everything else, and the underneath is a girl who's been loud her whole life and justheard the quietest, most important thing anyone has ever said to her.
Then the grin comes back, wider than before, and she walks back to her stool and sits down and picks up her mug and she's glowing, full broadcast, every frequency, and I'm standing behind the bar I'm going to own someday and I just told a twenty-two-year-old firefighter I love her and I meant it.
After closing, after the register count and the chairs up and the last glass washed, I walk to the door with her. She's got her bag over her shoulder and her jacket zipped and she's sleepy now, the adrenaline finally gone, the day landing on her in full.
"Stay at my place tonight," I say.
"I was going to anyway."
"I know."
We walk. The streets are quiet and the air is cool and she leans into me as we walk and I let her because I've stopped keeping score of who leans first. We pass the laundromat, dark now, machines quiet, and we go up the stairs and I unlock the door and her sneakers are by the entrance where she left them and her toothbrush is in the bathroom and her charger is plugged in by the bed.
She brushes her teeth. I brush mine. We stand side by side at the sink and the mirror shows us together, pink mohawk and dark hair, rings and clean nails, and I look at the two toothbrushes in the cup and I don't examine it anymore. I just let it be.
She turns to me. Toothbrush still in the cup, mint on her breath, and her eyes are doing the thing, the full broadcast, but it's different now. Darker. Focused. She's looking at me withintention and I recognize it because I've been on the other side of it twice and both times we didn’t come back from it.
"You told me you love me."
"I did."
"I want to take you to bed now."
She doesn't ask. She states. This is what's changed. The first time she was trembling and breathless and I led her through it. This time she walks me backward out of the bathroom with her hands on my hips and her mouth on my jaw and there's nothing tentative in her.
She pushes me onto the bed. I sit and she follows, one knee on either side of my hips, settling into my lap. Her weight is warm and solid and she's still in the t-shirt from the bar and she smells like smoke underneath the soap and I pull her down and kiss her.
This kiss is different from the one in the bar. That one was public, careful, a declaration in front of witnesses. This one is private and open-mouthed and her tongue finds mine and her hands are in my hair, pulling the mohawk, not gently, and the sting of it sends a line of heat down my spine into my hips. She rolls against me, grinding down, and the pressure of her through two layers of cotton is enough to make my fingers dig into her thighs.
I pull her shirt off. She lifts her arms and it's gone and she's in a sports bra, dark skin, and I put my mouth on her collarbone and taste soap and salt and the faint residual smoke that's still in her skin no matter how many times she showered. I bite down. She gasps and her hips jerk forward and I feel the heat of her against my stomach.
"You taste like the fire," I say against her throat.
"Good or bad?"
"Good. Come here." I pull her closer by the hips and grind up against her and she drops her head back and exhales hard.
She pulls at my shirt. I raise my arms and she takes it off and her hands are on my ribs, on the geometric tattoo, tracing the lines with her thumbs. She does this every time, maps the ink before she maps the skin, and I let her because her hands on my tattoos feel like being read.
"I love these," she says. She traces the edge of the geometric piece where it meets bare skin. "I love that you chose them. I love that Vanessa put them on you. I love that I get to touch them."
She pushes me back against the pillows. Leans over me, hands planted on either side of my head, and looks down at me with a focus that makes my breath catch. She's twenty-two and she's been doing this for weeks and she reads me like I'm the only text she's ever wanted to get right.
She unhooks my bra. Pulls it off. Cups my breast in her hand and runs her thumb over my nipple and watches it harden under her touch. Then she pinches, slow and precise, rolling the nipple between her fingers, and my hips buck up off the bed.
"Fuck," I breathe.
"Tell me what you want," she says. Her voice is low, confident, a voice she didn't have a few weeks ago.
"Your mouth. On my tits. Now."
