EVIE
Happiness sneaks up on me disguised as routine.
Not dramatic routine. Not cinematic montage routine with swelling music and perfectly timed sunsets. Real routine. Flour on Kauss’s forearms at six in the morning because he tried to carry two open sacks at once and underestimated physics. Darlene screaming at both of us for flirting near the ovens because “sexual tension is not a food-safe temperature.” Kauss standing outside the bakery after closing with a grocery bag in one hand and a look on his face like he still cannot believe somebody expects him to come back tomorrow.
That kind of happiness.
The dangerous kind.
Three weeks after our first date, Sweet Tooth feels different.
Warmer.
Not because the heaters suddenly work better. They still complain every time the weather shifts. The warmth comes from smaller things. Halo residents stop asking whether Kauss is “helping out” and start saying things like your man fixed the side door or your boyfriend scared a drunk into apologizing to Mrs. Pell. Children wave at him openly now. Someone painted a little black dragon with red eyes on the alley wall beside thebakery logo. Darlene claims it looks “too emotionally stable” to be accurate.
Kauss pretends all of this embarrasses him.
He secretly loves every second.
I know because I watch his face when he thinks nobody notices.
Like this morning.
The bakery smells heavenly enough to qualify as organized religion. Cinnamon rolls cool beneath glaze near the prep station while butter crisps along the edges of fresh biscuits. Coffee burbles behind the counter. Outside, Halo wakes slowly beneath gray skies and harbor fog, patched holo-signs flickering weakly through mist and drizzle. Freight engines growl somewhere near the docks while pedestrians shuffle toward work in heavy coats.
Inside, Kauss is kneeling beside the lower refrigeration panel with a wrench in one hand and reading glasses perched awkwardly on his nose.
I stop mid-step carrying a tray of pastries.
“Oh my God.”
He looks up immediately. “What?”
“The glasses.”
His brow furrows. “What about them?”
Darlene, smoking by the rear door, snorts loud enough to qualify as a medical event. “Honey, his hotness just developed a librarian subclass.”
Kauss removes the glasses at once. “I only need them for wiring precision.”
“That is somehow worse,” I whisper.
He stares at me cautiously. “Worse?”
“You can’t just casually become attractive in additional categories.”
“I do not understand this conversation.”
“That’s because you’re a giant alien mechanic warrior baking assistant with reading glasses.”
“Yes.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I hear you.”
Darlene points her cigarette at me. “She’s one sentence away from climbing him like industrial equipment.”
