A full, settling breath.
She pulled away to say, “I have something I want to show you, too.”
Taking him by the hand, she led him around the counter, into the office, and up the stairs. When they reached the second story, she released his hand to turn on all the lamps, the twinkle lights above the windows. Dell looked around at the couch, the chairs, the tables. The plants and the flowers, the framed postcards and art prints. The things she’d acquired from Olive over the last few weeks, combined with bits from her life in Portland, from her life in Madison. From her lives in Brooklyn and North Carolina. Her storage unit was empty; she’d turned in the keys and brought home the last of it after her Christmas visit to Vik and Jackson’s. All of her bits were now here.
“What is this?”
“I…don’t know, exactly, yet,” Mae admitted. “But the more I talk to people, the longer I run the store…I don’t have the spoons to run a queer community center, to do what I used to do. But I think Greyfin Bay needs a space. Where people can hold book clubs, or study, or start a writing group, or read, or…be still. A space to just be.”
Mae tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“I also know it’s a liability, having a free open space, so I had the security system extended up here, and I’d probably only have it open a few nights a week, or?—”
“Mae.” Dell stepped toward her. “I think it’s lovely.”
Her eyes flashed toward his. “Yeah? Lovely was…kind of what I was going for.”
He glanced at the wall behind her.
“Gemma’s work too, I presume?”
“Yeah. That’s my favorite part.”
She turned to look at it with him. The mural took up the entire length of the far wall, just completed by Gemma a few days before. A field of California poppies. An expanse of orange and green and blue sky.
“Poppies,” Dell murmured.
“State flower of California,” Mae explained. “Jesus, originally…was one of those damn Californians.”
Dell, thankfully, grinned.
“I want it to feel like…how he always made people feel.”
Dell stepped closer. Kissed her temple.
“It already does, Mae,” he whispered. “But this reminds me.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans. “I got you something.”
He opened the tiny plastic bag and emptied the trinket into her palm. She brought it up to her face to examine.
“This is…”
“Apple blossom,” Dell said. “State flower of Michigan.”
Mae looked at him.
He lifted her gold chain from underneath her T-shirt.
“This okay?” he whispered. She nodded.
He had big hands, Dell McCleary, but he used them to make fine crafted, beautiful things. He didn’t struggle at all with the clasp. With gliding the new pendant down to meet the others. And maybe Mae had believed him downstairs, when he’d said he was back. But maybe shereallybelieved him when Michigan rested against her chest. Maybe she truly knew now that he’d still be with her, even when he had to leave again.
And maybe it was about time to get to that climbing like a tree part.
When she threw herself at him now, it wasn’t at all gentle and kind like it had been downstairs.
“Dell,” she said, yanking at his clothes, scratching at his neck. “Please.”
“Yes,” he answered, ripping away her cardigan, her skirt with equal abandon. “Fuck yes.”
