“I do not brood.”
Darlene makes a strangled sound from behind the register.
I ignore her with heroic discipline. “Come back if you’re hungry.”
His eyes move over my bruised face again. Something fierce and ashamed passes through him. “Lock the rear door.”
“I will.”
“And the upstairs window.”
“I will.”
“And rest.”
“Now you’re pushing it.”
He almost smiles again. Almost.
“Goodbye, Evie,” he says.
“Goodbye, Kauss.”
He leaves with the same careful heaviness he brought in, ducking under the doorframe and stepping back into the gray rain. The bell jingles after him, impossibly cheerful. Conversations resume, louder this time, and the bakery returns to itself. But I keep looking at the door after it closes.
Darlene appears beside me.
I do not look at her. “Don’t.”
“Honey,” she says, voice dry as burnt toast, “that alien’s already halfway gone over you.”
Heat climbs my neck. “He ate breakfast.”
“He looked at you like you personally invented sunrise and then apologized for needing it.”
“That is absurdly poetic for you.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“He barely talks.”
“Good. You talk enough for two.”
I turn toward her, indignant despite the flutter in my chest. “He is traumatized, isolated, and probably hungry. That is not romance. That is a community care concern.”
Darlene’s mouth curves with ancient, terrible knowledge. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“I will.”
“Fine. While you’re lying to yourself, do it sitting down before Nurse Nara comes back and murders both of us.”
I lower myself carefully onto the stool and stare at the rain-streaked front window. Outside, Kauss has already disappeared into Halo’s wet gray arteries, but the place he occupied at the counter still feels warm.
I tell myself I only want him to come back so I can thank him properly.
I tell myself feeding him is simple gratitude.
I tell myself a lot of things.
