My brain stalls. "Official."
"A ceremony. Small. Stupid. The kitten can officiate since it's basically responsible for this whole mess anyway."
I acknowledge her. She fidgets, picking at her apron.
"Is that. Do orcs even do ceremonies? I don't want to assume. We can skip it if it's weird or if you think it's too fast or?—"
I kiss her. Hard and sudden and probably too rough but she makes a small sound and kisses me back and I pour everything I can't say into it. All the terror and hope and stupid desperate love that I've been carrying since the first time I saw her scowl at a hissing kitten.
When we break apart, she's breathless.
"Is that a yes?" she asks.
"That's a yes to everything. The home. The ceremony. The kitten's visiting rights. All of it."
Her smile could power the entire city.
"Good." She straightens my collar, which I didn't realize was crooked. "Because I already told my best friend and she's planning something involving flower crowns and possibly a folk band."
"Flower crowns."
"You're going to look ridiculous."
"I don't care."
And I don't. I'd wear a thousand flower crowns if it meant I got to keep this. Keep her.
She kisses me again, softer this time. The party continues beyond the door. The kitten probably needs rescuing from overeager admirers. There's cleanup to do, plans to make, a future to build.
But for now, in this small cluttered storeroom that smells like coffee beans and cardboard, I let myself have this moment.
I let myself have her.
The last ofthe guests trickle out near midnight. Maris locks the door behind them and leans against it with a long exhale.
"Never again," she says.
"You said that after the fundraiser."
"This time I mean it." She turns, surveying the chaos. Plates and cups everywhere. Champagne stains on the floor. The kitten asleep in a nest of napkins.
I start gathering dishes. She joins me, and we work in comfortable silence, establishing a rhythm. She washes, I dry. The hot water makes her cheeks flush.
"Leave the rest," she says eventually. "I can't look at another fork."
"You sure?"
"Positive." She dries her hands on a towel, then looks at me. Really looks. Something shifts in her expression. Softens and sharpens all at once.
My pulse kicks up.
"Come here," she says quietly.
I set down the dish I'm holding and cross to her. She tilts her head back to meet my eyes, and I'm struck again by how small she is. How perfectly she fits against me when I pull her close.
"We're really doing this," she says. Not a question.
"We're really doing this."
