Page 36 of Honeyfires

For the first time in longer than I could name, I wasn't bracing for something to end.

I was thinking about what came next.

Le Guin, Patron Saint

Chapter Seven

Three blissfully beautiful weeks had passed since that first night, and somewhere along the way, the line between my apartment and Vera's had blurred into something remarkably indistinct.

It had started with her lavender-colored electric toothbrush.

She'd left it in my bathroom holder after staying over, and when I'd texted her about it the next morning, her response had been characteristically Vera.

Guess I'll just have to come back tonight then (:

Is that right?

Damn straight :P

She came back that night. And the one after. And every one after that.

The toothbrush was now the least of it.

Her vanilla-coconut shampoo lived in my shower caddy. Her sundresses hung in my closet between my work uniforms and band t-shirts—an explosion of florals and pastels that made me smile like an idiot every time I opened the door, which I was doing with suspiciously increasing frequency. My leather jacket had taken up permanent residence on her coat rack. My boots lined up next to her collection of Mary Janes and modest heels by her front door, like they'd always been there, like they belonged.

Which, apparently, they did.

It was the small things I noticed first. The way she'd reorganized my kitchen after the third time she couldn't find the colander, leaving a sticky note on the new cabinet that said colander lives here now, you're welcome with a little drawing of what appeared to be a triumphant stick figure holding a pasta strainer. The way I'd started buying oat milk without being asked because she made a specific face when she had to use regular milk in her tea, a face I could only describe as personally betrayed. The way she left books everywhere: on my nightstand, on my kitchen counter, once memorably on top of the toaster, which I told her was a fire hazard, and she'd smiled, patted my arm, and poured me another cup of coffee.

She never did it again.

These were the soft, unremarkable things I'd never known I wanted.

Then there were the other things. The way she looked at me across a room when neither of us was saying anything and said everything anyway. The sounds she made when I bent her over the kitchen counter at seven in the morning before either of us had properly woken up, my fingers curling inside her, making her shatter all over my palm before we'd even gotten coffee in us. The distinct way she said my name when she was about to ask for something, and was deploying a calculated level of charm to get it. The look on her face—patient, fond, entirely aware of her own power—when she'd figured out exactly how to make me absolutely come apart.

Three weeks. We'd known each other for three weeks, and she'd already unlocked me like she had a key.

I was, to put it plainly, absolutely done for.

"Listen to this one," she said one evening, cross-legged on my couch in her pajamas, glasses on, a worn copy of The Dispossessed open across her knees.

"Is this homework?"

"This is culture. Pay attention." She cleared her throat and read a passage about revolution and the nature of freedom, her voice doing the thing it did with text she loved, going slightly slower, letting the weight of the words settle properly.

I looked up from the gear report I was not successfully completing. "Le Guin."

She pointed at me with one finger without looking up. "Le Guin. Who, I'll remind you, witnessed our first kiss."

"Le Guin was not a factor in that equation."

"She absolutely was. It's a cherished memory. She was right there." Vera turned a page. "I've also decided she's your patron saint. The hawk tattoo, the Rilke, the fact that you kissed me in her section—"

"You made me come around that shelf."

"Collaborative effort. Le Guin, patron saint. I've filed it."

"You've filed my patron saint."