“I’m Evie,” I add, because apparently once I begin embarrassing myself, I prefer to build a whole structure and apply for zoning approval. “I run Sweet Tooth Bakery. The sign with the flickering blue tooth that looks haunted? Very classy establishment. Health inspectors only cry sometimes.”
His gaze flicks past me toward the direction of the bakery. He knows it. I can tell. Something in his expression changes, almost too quickly to name.
Before I can decide whether to invite him in for coffee, a skiff horn blares at the edge of the plaza and breaks whatever strange little spell has formed between us. The Vakutan flinches so subtly most people would miss it, but I see his shoulders tense beneath the jacket. His attention snaps toward the sound with soldier-sharp focus, and the sadness vanishes behind something colder.
Then he pulls his hood lower and turns away.
“Hey,” I call, more gently this time.
He pauses but does not look back.
“You don’t have to be a stranger, okay?”
The words leave my mouth before I can inspect them for wisdom. Once they are out, they hang in the damp air between us, ridiculous and earnest and maybe too much for a man who has not even told me his name.
His hand flexes once at his side. Those fingers are huge, tipped with claws he keeps carefully curled inward. Then he walks into the rain, passing beneath the dead laundromat signand disappearing into the alley’s gray throat without a single word.
The plaza resumes breathing. People move again. The mother hurries her son away. The dockworkers pretend they were never watching. My cargo disk bumps my heel a second time, harder now, because machinery has no respect for complicated emotional moments.
I stand there long enough for mist to gather on my cheeks and make it look like I have been crying, which is deeply unfair because I have not. I am simply cold, under-caffeinated, financially doomed, and apparently invested in the social well-being of a terrifying alien man who communicates primarily through brooding.
“Great,” I mutter, tugging the cargo disk back toward the bakery. “That seems healthy.”
By the time I reach Sweet Tooth, the lunch crowd has started gathering and Darlene is glaring through the front window like she plans to accuse me of personally inventing delay. The bakery’s warmth wraps around me the second I step inside, all coffee, sugar, soup stock, and human noise. It should pull me back fully into my life.
It almost does.
Darlene takes one look at my face while I unload the supplies and narrows her eyes. “You saw him again.”
I freeze with a bag of flour in both arms. “Who?”
“The enormous walking war crime in the hoodie.”
“He is not a war crime.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Smart man.”
I set the flour down harder than necessary. “He looks lonely.”
Darlene stares at me as if I have announced plans to hand-feed a shark because its eyes seemed sad. “So do abandoned mine shafts. Doesn’t mean you climb in with a picnic basket.”
“That is a very specific warning.”
“I’ve lived a full life.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Neither has a plasma stove until somebody sticks their hand on it.” She points a soup ladle at me. “You have a soft heart and a broken picker. That combination is how women end up crying in kitchens while old ladies resist the urge to say obvious things.”
“My picker is not broken.”
Darlene’s silence is immediate, eloquent, and deeply offensive.
“Garrett was a fluke,” I say.
