Page 62 of Honeyfires

"Mm?"

I opened my mouth.

"If you say thank you for having us," she said without turning around, "I'm going to tell Miller you cried about the grandmother recipe."

"I did not cry about the grandmother recipe."

"You had wet eyes."

"That was flour dust."

"There wasn't any flour near your eyes."

"There was flour everywhere, Vera. It was a flour situation."

She turned around, dish towel in hand, looking at me with that expression, the one that saw everything and missed exactly nothing. "What were you going to say?"

I looked at her. Flour on her sleeve. The apron hook behind her. The mess of her kitchen that she'd made on purpose for my crew because she'd decided, somewhere in the last few months, that my people were also her people.

I love you, I thought. I am so completely in love with you that it's been reorganizing me from the inside out and I haven't said it yet because I'm terrified of what happens when it's real in the world, but it's already real, it's been real for weeks, and you almost wrote it on a piece of pink paper you tucked in my gear bag and I've been carrying it in my wallet since.

"Nothing," I said. "Thank you for today."

She looked at me for a moment longer. Then she turned back to the dishes. "You're welcome," she said, quietly, like she knew it wasn't nothing and was giving me time.

She was always giving me time.

The Humming Is Ambient

Chapter Eleven

The Saturday Vera was sewing, I woke to an empty bed and followed the sound of off-key humming to find her cross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by a clutter of fabric swatches and ribbon and an antique sewing machine that looked like it had survived several decades specifically to assist her.

She was in my faded Army t-shirt and the sleep shorts she'd worn to bed, violet glasses on, pink tongue just visible at the corner of her mouth in concentration. The morning light was coming in at a low angle through the yellow curtains and landing on her the way it always landed on Vera. She looked almost angelic.

I was so gone. I was so completely, irreparably gone on this woman.

I loved her.

The thought arrived fully formed and sat down in my chest like it had always been there and had simply been waiting for me to notice. Not the tentative, almost-thought I'd been navigating around for weeks. Not the I'm getting there I'd been telling myself. The whole, complete, unqualified thing.

I loved her cross-legged on the floor in my t-shirt. I loved her in the library in her Antique Bridal Whisper cardigan. I loved her standing in front of my crew with a jar of Nielsen-Massey vanilla and printed recipe cards in a font that was legible but charming. I loved her in Powerpuff Girls pajamas holding up a mystery key. I loved her in the crew-chief's seat of La Jefa going white-knuckled on the door frame and then saying show me the harness anyway.

I loved her, and she'd almost written it on a piece of pink paper, and I was standing in the doorway of her living room at eight in the morning having a complete internal reorganization about it.

"Morning," I managed, voice still thick with sleep.

She jumped and nearly stabbed herself with a needle. "Oh! You're awake. I was trying to be quiet."

"You were humming."

"I'm always quiet. The humming is ambient." She patted the cleared space beside her. "Come sit. Don't step on the blue fabric, that's the bodice."

I stepped carefully around the textile minefield and sat down beside her. "What's all this?"

She held up something that currently resembled three pieces of blush fabric with aspirations. "A new dress. From scratch."

"You're making a dress."