She picks her knife back up and returns to the salmon, but her energy has changed. She’s thinking. I watch her but pretend I’m not, admiring every inch of her. How she moves, the breathing that picks up, the rise and fall of her chest. I’m absolutely smitten with her.
“You’d have a line,” she says. “Every day. Before you opened.”
“That’s the plan.”
“I’d be in that line.” She admits it matter-of-factly, like it’s just information she’s providing. “Annoyingly early.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
She grins at the salmon. “You’d hate me for it.”
I chuckle, imagining how good it would be. “I’d put up with it.” Then I reach across for the pineapple on the far end of the board. My arm passes inches above hers, and the air between us is electric and insistent. Neither of us moves for a half second longer.
I pull back.
She exhales quietly and goes back to her salmon, then I quarter the pineapple and don’t look at the way the sunlight from outside is catching the exposed line of her throat.
“Your turn,” I say.
She’s now slicing cucumbers, neat little movements. “For what?”
“Dreams.”
A soft huff leaves her. “Mine are boring.”
“Try me.”
She goes quiet for a second, the knife still moving, and I watch the concentration settle over her face. There’s a tiny line between her brows when she’s thinking. I’ve started noticing things like that without meaning to. The way she presses her lips together before she says anything real. The small beauty spotjust above the edge of her bikini top, near the curve of her breast, barely there, dark against her skin. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now it’s all I can fucking see.
“I want to make jewelry,” she says finally.
I glance up at her face, dragging my attention to where it belongs.
“I know,” she says, stretching out the word.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You went quiet.”
“I’m cutting pineapple,” I say, keeping my voice even.
That gets a smile out of her.
I set triangle pieces of pineapple on the board. “Tell me about the jewelry.”
Her shoulders ease a little. “Handmade,” she answers. “Completely original. Not the same three designs at every market stall.” She shrugs. “I want a small online store at first, then eventually a physical shop somewhere beautiful, and I can just be creative.”
She says it like she’s trying to keep it casual, but I hear the shape of the dream in her voice anyway. “It’s the opposite of the corporate brand-strategy world I’ve been living in,” she adds.
“It sounds exactly like you.”
For a second, she just stares at me, then her gaze drops to the cucumber. “You’d wear my jewelry,” she says. “Unwillingly. It would probably look incredible on you, and you’d be unbearable about that.”
I grin. “I’d be gracious.”
“You’d be smug.” She laughs under her breath, then sets the knife down and turns toward me, folding one hip against the bench. “What would be your favorite stone to use in jewelry?”
“I have no idea.”
