“I’ll wait,” I tell her.
She studies me for a long moment, then steps close enough that her fingers graze my chest—just once, featherlight. “You’re going to ruin my peace.”
I grin. “You ruined mine first.”
Her lips curve, soft and dangerous. “Then I guess we’re even.”
She walks away before I can respond, keys jingling, taillights glowing red against the dark road. I stand there untilthey disappear, the night wind curling around me, carrying her scent and the taste of rain.
The morning smells like warm paper and cinnamon again, like the lighthouse baked something overnight and left it on the windowsill just to mess with me. I show up early, pretending I’m there to help her set out chairs for story hour. I’m terrible at pretending. Bailey’s already moving through the shop with that efficient grace, a stack of picture books balanced on one hip, hair twisted up with a pencil. The pencil is a hazard to my health. It makes me think about tugging it out and watching her hair fall.
“Left side needs three,” she says, pointing with the book. “We’ve got five toddlers and a baby who thinks books deserve a personal attack.”
“I can handle a baby,” I say.
“You can’t even handle me.”
“Accurate,” I admit, and she bites her lip like she wasn’t planning to smile, and her mouth betrayed her.
Parents drift in with little kids who look sticky and hopeful, the way small humans do when there’s a promise of crayons and sugar. I end up on the rug with a foam otter puppet someone thrust into my hands, the otter making eye contact with Bailey across the semicircle like he knows secrets. The cat decides I’m furniture and sits on my thigh, tail flicking, smug as a senator.
Bailey opens the first book, a lighthouse story naturally. Her voice changes when she reads—slower, warmer, like each sentence is a small boat she’s easing across the bay. Kids lean forward. One leans into me. The puppet leans back into him. I do the otter’s voice, and it’s ridiculous, and the room laughs. Bailey shoots me a look that saysyou’re a menaceanddon’t stop.The pencil in her hair is going to be the end of me.
Halfway through, a little girl crawls into Bailey’s lap and announces, “You’re pretty like my mom when she’s not mad,” then sticks a sticker to Bailey’s cheek. The entire row of adults tries not to cry, including myself. Bailey catches me swiping at my eye like a coward and tilts her head, a soft little question in the corner of her mouth. I shrug. The puppet nods solemnly on my knee, as if offering commentary.
When I read the second book—because someone asked and because I’d do anything if a small army of toddlers asked politely—my shoulder complains at the reach. Bailey notices. She drifts closer under the pretense of turning a page. Her hand lands lightly on my upper back, warm through cotton, just enough pressure to make the joint settle. It’s a tiny correction, the kind Marcus would make. It hits like a benediction, and the shoulder behaves. The room keeps breathing, and for a brief, profound moment, I can see the whole of a different life stretch out: me on this rug once a week, her next to me, this small chorus learning what light is. It’s all a new revelation I wasn’t ready for.
After parents scoop up kids and scatter crumbs like confetti, Sawyer arrives with a box of supplies and an entire weather system of smug. “Delivery,” he calls, stepping over a spilled cup with the grace of a man who’s dodged stickier threats.
“What is it?” Bailey asks.
“Tarps, twine, a new nozzle for your outdoor spigot.” He lifts the box onto the porch and winks at me.
We take the box around back to check the spigot, and I swear to God the nozzle is sentient. It waits until my hand is directly in front of it to cough a surprise jet of water straight into my face. Bailey claps a hand over her mouth, failing spectacularly to pretend she’s not delighted.
“You did this,” I accuse.
“I would never,” she says, eyes sparkling. “Nature did this.”
“Mother Nature’s cruel,” I say, flicking water off my chin.
Her smile turns into a dare. “Maybe she thinks you need cooling off.”
“Is that so?” I say, reaching for the nozzle. It obeys me once, streams politely in an arc. Then it sputters and decides on chaos, spraying both of us. We yelp, then laugh, then it devolves within seconds, the way these things do, into a war that’s mostly hands and shouting and the knowledge that if I look at her too long with water dripping from her jaw, I’ll forget the rules, the town, my name. She darts left, and I catch her with one hand on the small of her back. The water hits us both in a clean sheet, like the sky joined in. Her sweatshirt darkens, clinging. Her hair slips free of the pencil. I go still.
She does too.
The hose falls, thudding onto the grass and slumping into a harmless snake. My palm stays on her back, fingertips memorizing the scallop of bone, the heat, the yes. She’s looking up at me with rain-wide pupils, mouth parted, breath quick. We’re alone except for Sawyer, which is a lie—town is around us, the bay, the light, the history—but for a moment, every witness goes mercifully blind.
“Crew,” she says, warning and want and the last thread of a boundary.
“I know,” I say, and I do. I move my hand first because restraint is something I can offer when the rest of me is a lit match.
We stand side by side under a sun that can’t decide on full forgiveness. She flicks a drop from my ear with two fingers, carefully not. We call a truce without calling it. The nozzle surrenders as Sawyer fixes it, docile now that it has chaos to remember.
Inside, I hang her sweatshirt over the back of a chair while she changes upstairs. The fabric is heavy with water and hints of vanilla and something that is just her. I lay it flat, smoothing it without thinking, and have a brief, insane thought about sharing a drawer one day, about sweaters that hold the smell of two people’s days.
She comes down in a dry T-shirt, damp hair tucked behind her ears, bare feet whispering over the floorboards. We fall into work again—mending a loose hinge, re-shelving drying books, bickering about alphabetization while secretly re-ordering our lives.
