To her left: Izzy, two older women, Charlie, and May, all in some kind of seated Avengers-style formation. Izzy’s already cracking her knuckles.
“Let me repeat the question,” Annie says, stepping out into the aisle and towards the dude, hair loose and flowing behind her. Under my hoodie? She’s wearing the gold dress, a majestic punctuation of fire and splendor. With combat boots. A glorious and resplendent angel of wrath, stepped out from a myth and ready for battle. “Did you just come to an event hosted by an independent bookstore, where an author is promoting a deeply personal cookbook, to ask if he was sexually intimate with a pie?”
The guy starts to sputter, backpedaling with his phone half-raised. “No—I mean, I was just joking?—”
“Oh, thank god you were only joking,” the old lady next to Charlie calls out sweetly, “because there’s a cast iron pan over there and I was about to show you what one feels like.”
“I call the butter knife,” May announces.
“Let’s caramelize him,” my sister declares, and I refrain from getting into the specifics of human flesh technically qualifying for the Maillard reaction.
The crowd loses it.
The guy mumbles something and quickly exits, chased out by raucous applause and my mom yelling, “That’sourchef, you crusty little meatball!”
I’m still in my chair, gaping like a fish, when Annie turns toward the crowd, serene and steady and strong.
“Hi, everyone. I’m Annie Li. I’m the one who wrote this illiterate gorilla’s cookbook.” she says. “Because he can’t write for shit.”
A beat. The bookstore falls silent again.
She turns to me. Our eyes lock. “But we can’t all be perfect,” she shrugs. “Otherwise, this illiterate gorilla is the bravest, most intelligent, beautiful por—adult content creator I’ve ever met.”
I look around and make sure this bookstore isn’t actually heaven. “Annie isn’t perfect either,” I manage to get out. “She thinks a cobbler is the same thing as a pie. Otherwise, she’s fuckin’ perfect.”
“I’m proud of this book,” she tells the crowd, but she says it directly to me. “And I’m proud of him.”
I don’t realize I’ve stood until I’m already walking toward her.
“She’s not just the writer,” I say, voice scratchy. “She’s the reason I had anything worth freakin’ saying.”
I think the bookstore owner is saying something into the mic, looking like he’s going to cry, but I’m not sure, because My Annie Li is where she belongs. Home. In my arms.
“Thank Jeebus,” I say into her hair.
“I know,” she says into my chest. “Let’s finish this together.”
Applause. Camera flashes. Someone yells, “KISS!” but we ignore it. For now.
She leans back and smiles at me, small and private, and I take her hand, brushing my thumb against the tattoos on her knuckles, love and a little bit of chaos, guiding her back and into the chair that’s appeared next to mine.
“We’re taking a few more questions,” I say, and this time, I’m not nervous at all.
The bookstore’s back room smells like cardboard and old paperbacks and hope. A crooked folding chair slouches in the corner beside a plastic storage bin overflowing with buttons and bookmarks labeledLocal Author Swag. On the wall, a faded poster of a very famous fantasy author dons a Sharpie mustache.
I’m pacing like a lunatic.
The second the door clicks shut, I stop.
I don’t turn around right away, but I feel her behind me. Her heat. Her breath. The hush of something fragile and alive between us. I rest my hands on the back of a folding chair and close my eyes, just for a second.
“I, uh… thanks,” I say, throat dry. “For what you said. Out there.”
“You lost a lot of color pretty fast. You were turning the same shade as the bread,” she replies, and I can hear the grin in her voice.
I turn.
There she fuckin’ is.
