Page 39 of Honeyfires

The ivy behind her shifted in the breeze. The afternoon light did what afternoon light always did around Vera, which was make everything around her into a supporting cast. "Someone who brought you onion rings," I said. "And will probably keep doing it."

She smiled and didn't push it further. We sat in the shade and she told me about a seven-year-old named Marcus who'd come in that morning and checked out four books about volcanoes and one about butterflies, and when she'd asked about the butterfly book, he'd said I like things that change, and she'd almost cried at the reference desk.

"You almost cried at the reference desk," I repeated.

"He was seven and he said he liked things that change." She looked at me. "You try keeping it together."

"I would've been fine."

"You kissed a scar on my shoulder the other night and then immediately tried to act like you hadn't. Don't talk to me about composure."

I had nothing to say to that. She was entirely correct. I ate the last onion ring.

By the end of the third week, we had a routine.

I hadn't had a routine since before the Army. I hadn't particularly wanted one. And now I had one, and the most alarming thing about it was that it felt completely inevitable, like the routine had always been there waiting, and we'd just walked into it.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I brought coffee to the library on my way to the station. She was always already there, fifteen minutes before opening. I handed the coffee through the staff entrance; she handed back the previous night's book if she'd borrowed one, or a new Post-it with a passage she'd flagged, which I kept in the breast pocket of my jacket. I was not examining why. I had made a decision not to examine why.

Wednesday evenings, she came to mine and supervised my cooking with that bossy authority of someone who had strong feelings about knife angles and heat management and the moral necessity of fresh herbs. I julienned things correctly now. I didn't love that this was a sentence I could say with a straight face.

"You're cutting against the grain," she'd told me the first time.

"Carrots don't have a grain."

"Everything has a grain." She'd moved around behind me, hands over mine on the knife, adjusting the angle, her chin near my shoulder. "There. Feel the difference?"

"I'm being corrected by a librarian about a root vegetable."

"Feel the difference?"

"Yes," I admitted.

She kissed the back of my neck and went back to the couch. I stood at the counter holding a correctly julienned carrot and conducted a brief survey of the trajectory of my life and concluded: no notes.

Weekends had no structure, which mostly meant she ended up on my couch in her pajamas and one of my hoodies—the Station 19 one was her current favorite, which I was registering a protest about and not acting on—reading while I did gear maintenance or paperwork.

"You're reading it wrong," she said one Saturday, lying across the foot of my bed with Housekeeping held above her head.

"I haven't said anything yet."

"You made a face."

"I was thinking."

"Your thinking face on that passage specifically means you're about to say something reductive about the ending. Don't."

"I was going to say it was sad."

"It's supposed to be sad. That's the point." She turned a page. "The leaving is the point. You of all people should understand choosing to go rather than staying in something that doesn't fit."

I looked at her.

She went back to her book like she hadn't just quietly dismantled something I'd been carrying for years.

"You read me too well," I said.

"You're in the system," she said absently, turning another page. "I've been thorough."