She rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand. “So,” she says. “Do you alphabetize your cookbooks?”
“I do not.”
Her eyes widen. “You absolutely do.”
“Categorized,” I argue. “There’s a difference.”
She smiles like she’s filing that away for later. “You’re a secret nerd.”
“I am not secret about it.”
She laughs, and I feel it low in my chest.
It hits harder than anything else today. Harder than it has any right to.
I roll onto my side to face her. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you sort your negatives by year?” I wind a slow curl of her hair around my finger.
“I do not.”
“You totally do.”
“Chronologically,” she argues. “There’s a difference.”
“You’re a secret nerd,” I tease.
Her smile widens, and she lightly slaps my chest. “I am not secret about it.”
I catch her arm and kiss her hand.
We stay there, tangled up, trading silly little confessions like we’ve known each other forever.
Talking about nothing. Talking about everything.
She tells me about mislabelling one of Tess’s shipments and realizing, too late, that she’d sent the wrong toy to the wrong address.
I tell her about the time my dog jumped on the counter during a live, and I bent down to pick her up, and the camera got a full-moon moment.
I listen.
She listens.
At some point, the conversation lapses into silence. But it’s not awkward or tense. It’s just quiet and nice.
At three o'clock, she drives to join me and bake sugar cookies with the class.
“Hey.” I catch her waist before we step into the kitchen.
“Yeah?”
I lean in and press a quick kiss to her cheek, tasting the spices from earlier still on her skin.
“You’re doing great today.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m doing terrible.”
