“You okay?”
I turn, and Liam is there, looking at me with that careful steadiness he uses when he’s trying to figure out how I feel. Flour dusts his forearms and there’s a faint smudge of sugar on his collar.
“I’m okay,” I say softly. “Maisie gave me something.”
He glances at the paper, then meets my eyes again. That look tells me he’s bracing for my reaction.
“She worked hard on it,” he says quietly.
“I love it,” I tell him. “It didn’t overwhelm me, it made me really happy.”
Some of the tension lifts from his shoulders. “Good.”
We stand there in a pocket of quiet while the festival buzzes around us. There’s a heaviness in the air, it’s not stifling though.
“You’ve been busy,” I say.
“So have you.”
“I’ll let you get back to it,” I tell him, but neither of us moves at first.
He gives me a small, warm look that tugs low in my stomach. “I’ll see you later.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes my pulse skip.
I step back into the festival, my chest strangely full.
By mid-afternoon, the event reaches full chaos. The list of problems grows by the minute, a balloon vendor loses half his stock to a sudden gust of wind, a couple argues loudly about the funnel cake line, and a man insists his dog should count as a paid participant in the couples photo booth.
I solve each problem one at a time, but through all of it, I catch myself glancing toward the bakery booth more often than I should.
Every time I look, I find Liam.
Sometimes he’s carrying trays, sometimes he’s talking to customers, sometimes he’s kneeling to hand a cupcake to a kid who dropped one. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, it always hits the same way-- a warm thrum in my chest.
When he catches me watching him, he gives me a small look that makes my stomach go warm and tight.
But there’s still a small distance in his eyes, a worry he hasn’t said out loud.
I feel it every time he hesitates before speaking. Every time he almost touches me but stops. Every time he looks at me like he wants something and is afraid of wanting it too much.
I understand that fear, but I also feel the pull between us getting stronger, deeper, harder to brush away.
The sun moves overhead, the shadows shift, and the festival only gets louder. In the middle of all that, the bakery booth stays steady. I must pass it a dozen times while bouncing between problems, and every time I do, I catch pieces of Liam’s voice or laughter, little reminders that he’s here, that we’re… whatever we are.
By the fifth pass, Chris has noticed.
He leans across the counter as I walk by. “You know you’re allowed to stop and take a breath, right?”
“I don’t have time for breathing.”
“You do if the person you want to breathe next to is standing ten feet away.”
I blink. “Chris.”
“I’m just saying,” he says with a shrug. “Festival romance. It’s a thing.”
From behind him, Mark nods. “He has a point,” he says. “People hook up at festivals all the time. Something about fried food and chaos.”
