“I will remember that compliment forever.”
I laugh softly. The kitchen is still messy. There’s flour everywhere and it may take forever to clean it.
But sitting here with cake and warm light and his quiet smile across the table—it somehow feels perfect.
10. INK AND IVORY
ADITYA
Morning at Ink & Ivory Press always carries a particular kind of quiet.
Not the sleepy quiet of an empty place, but the focused quiet of people who work with words for a living. Pages turning somewhere in the editorial room. The faint tapping of keyboards behind glass partitions. A printer humming occasionally like it’s clearing its throat before releasing another stack of manuscripts.
I push open the glass door of my office and set my bag on the chair beside the desk.
The room smells faintly of paper and coffee.
It’s a scent I’ve always liked.
My office sits at the end of the hallway overlooking the main floor of the publishing house. Through the glass wall I can see the long worktable where the editorial team usually gathers, manuscripts spread in uneven piles like quiet little battles waiting to be fought.
For a moment I just stand there.
Watching. Listening.
This place has always felt like the only corner of the world that made sense to me. Books stacked against the walls. Proof pages clipped to boards. Editors arguing passionately about punctuation like it might change the fate of civilization which to be honest it might.
Most people would probably find this atmosphere boring.
I’ve always found it peaceful.
I shrug off my jacket and hang it on the back of the chair before sitting down at my desk. A stack of manuscripts is already waiting there—three novels, two nonfiction submissions, and a report from the design team about upcoming covers.
Work.
Actual work.
I open the first file and start reading.
Or at least I try to.
Because the moment my eyes reach the third paragraph of the manuscript, my brain decides it would rather replay a completely different scene.
Flour on the kitchen counter.
Divya glaring at me with her arms crossed.
'You provoked me.'
I blink and look back down at the page.
Focus.
I try again.
Two paragraphs later I’m remembering the exact moment she threw flour at me. The memory makes something warm curl inside my chest.
I lean back slightly in the chair and rub my hand across my mouth.
