“That all?”
“For now.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“It is journalism.”
We eat on the floor until the cartons are half-empty and the beer has gone warm beside my knee. Peyton steals a dumplingfrom my carton even though she has her own, then denies doing it with the dumpling still in her hand.
“You are a criminal,” I say.
“I am a journalist. The distinction is mostly paperwork.”
“You have sauce on your thumb.”
She looks down.
Licks it off.
My body makes a decision my brain does not authorize.
Peyton notices because Peyton notices everything.
Her mouth curves. “Focused?”
“Weaponized focused.”
Her laugh breaks something loose in the room.
I take the empty cartons to the counter because if I stay on the floor watching her mouth, dinner is going to stop being dinner.
When I come back, she is at the kitchen island. Laptop open. Bare feet on the rung of the stool. My hoodie still slipping off one shoulder.
I come up behind her and put one hand on the counter, not touching. She still leans back into me.
“I am working,” she says.
“I can see that.”
“This is you respecting journalism?”
“This is me respecting the neck of a journalist.”
I kiss the side of her neck. Her typing stops.
Her laugh breaks when my mouth finds the spot beneath her ear.
After, I make bad coffee because it is the only kind I own, and Peyton drinks it with the grim loyalty of a woman who loves a doomed cause.
“This coffee is terrible,” she says.
“You keep drinking it.”
“I’m studying adversity.”
Her laptop is still open when I reach for the mug beside it.
I do not mean to read.
