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She gives me a small smile.
She takes a bite of her mofongo and closes her eyes.
“Good?” I ask softly.
She opens her eyes and nods.“Really good.”
There’s something tender in her voice, something that makes me want to pull her into my arms and kiss the fuck out of her.
Instead, I steal a tostón from her plate.
Her head snaps toward me.
“Now, that’s rude.”
I grin around my bite.
“What?”
“That’s mine. Don’t steal my food.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law, baby.”
“That’s not how food works, Stephen.”
“It is in my culture.”
She stares at me for a second before laughing so hard she has to put her fork down.
I love that sound.
Fuck, I love that sound.
She steals a piece of pernil from my plate in retaliation, and I let her, even though she gives me a triumphant little smile as she chews.
“Now we’re even,” she teases.
I laugh with her, and for a while, that’s all we do. Eat, tease each other, and sample everything Maria prepared for us.
The snow keeps falling around us, softening the edges of the street and dusting the truck’s roof. The city keeps moving around us, cars pass, people hurry home, joyful music spills from the storefronts.
And the best part?
My Artemis is happy.
And watching her like this, listening to her switch between English and Spanish, seeing her smile whenever the Maria calls her mija, I realize that there are so many pieces of her I have yet to discover.
Her childhood. Her dreams. The traditions she grew up with and the ones she’s still learning to claim as her own.
I want to know everything.
I want to sit at tables crowded with her family, listen to stories I’ve never heard, and learn the names of dishes I can’t pronounce without making her laugh. I want to see her in every place that made her who she is. I want to have with her what I never had.
And maybe, one day, I want her to show me her enchanted island, Puerto Rico.
I want everything with her.
I glance at her as she dips another tostón into the sauce, her cheeks pink from the cold and her honey eyes bright with laughter.
