He took it without argument.
The vendor at the peach stand waved him over and refused to take his money. The woman selling kettle corn asked after his garden. A small child in a yellow raincoat, despite the complete absence of rain, waved at him from across the street and he waved back with the solemnity of someone taking the gesture seriously.
I fell into step beside him after the fourth interaction and looked up at him. "You're like the mayor."
"Gods, no," he said, with more feeling than I had heard from him about almost anything. "That sounds exhausting."
Debbie and May were somewhere behind us, which I knew because I could hear Debbie narrating her opinions on various cheeses at a volume that carried. Azrael had, at some point I had not tracked precisely, accumulated a considerable amount of cargo. He was carrying my flowers and my peaches and Debbie's kettle corn and May's honey and a pumpkin that I was genuinely uncertain anyone had actually purchased, all balanced on one arm with the effortless calm of someone who did not consider this worth remarking on.
I shook my head and kept walking.
Behind me, Debbie's voice dropped to what she apparently considered a whisper, which meant I could still hear approximately seventy percent of it.
"Look at him," she said to May.
May made a sound that communicated volumes.
"I'm telling you," Debbie continued.
I slowed down. "What?"
Both of them looked up with expressions of coordinated innocence that I did not believe for a single second.
"Nothing," Debbie said.
"That was not nothing."
"We were just talking," May said.
"About me."
Debbie sighed with the dramatic weight of someone who had been waiting to have this conversation. She nodded toward Azrael, who was currently stopped a few feet ahead of us, politely listening to an elderly man explain something about heirloom tomatoes while holding six bags and a pumpkin. "We were tryingto figure out how long before he starts keeping clothes at your house."
I nearly dropped my flowers. "What?"
May laughed. "Girl. He is carrying your groceries."
"He's just helping."
Debbie looked at me with the specific patience of a woman who had been married for twenty-seven years and knew things. "Honey. My husband did not carry my groceries until after we got engaged."
I looked at Azrael, who was now nodding seriously at whatever the tomato man was saying, still holding everything, unbothered. I looked back at Debbie.
"You’re both ridiculous," I said, and walked ahead to rejoin him before either of them could say anything else that I would have to think about later.
As I caughtup to him, I also caught a whiff of something frying from one of the food vendors. My stomach turned instantly.
"Oh..."
I stopped walking and Azrael looked over immediately. "What?"
I swallowed hard. "I don't..."
Another wave rolled through me, “…I suddenly don't feel so great."
The smell of fried dough seemed to wrap itself around me, as if it were trying to claw its way inside of my veins. My stomach lurched so violently I slapped a hand over my mouth.
"Lila!” Azrael was beside me before I'd even realized he'd moved.
