It's become a ritual, this evening hour. We started doing it in the first week, when we could barely stand to be in the same room, and somehow it became the one time of day when we could set aside our differences. Now it's something more—a moment of connection, a shared pause in the chaos.
Iris is quiet tonight, her gaze fixed on the horizon. She's been different since the call with her mother—softer, somehow, but sadder too. Like she's grieving something she never actually had.
"Mathilde offered me the job again today," I say into the quiet. "For real this time. Head chef."
Iris turns to look at me. "Are you going to take it?"
"I think I already have. In my head." I turn the glass in my hands. "I keep waiting to find the catch, the reason to say no. I can't find one."
"Then that's your answer."
"Maybe." The truth is stupider and harder than that, and she's the only person I'd admit it to. "I'm not good at wanting things, Iris. Wanting things is how you end up with your heart handed back to you in pieces. It's safer to keep it casual. Never let anywhere matter too much."
"And this matters too much."
"This place matters too much." I don't look at her when I say it, because the sentence is doing double duty and we both know it.
Iris is quiet a moment. "Take it, Cat." Her voice is soft but certain. "Whatever else is complicated, that part isn't. You're allowed to want things. You're allowed to keep them."
"Speak from experience?"
"Unfortunately." She gives a laugh that's almost real. Then, quieter: "I'm trying to learn it too."
"What would make you happy?" I ask.
She looks at me, her eyes very dark in the fading light. "I'm starting to figure that out."
The air between us changes. I'm suddenly hyperaware of how close we're sitting, the warmth of her arm against mine, the way her lips part slightly as she breathes.
"Iris—"
"I'm scared," she says, barely a whisper. "Of what I'm feeling. Of what it means. Of—"
"Of me?"
"No." She shakes her head. "Never of you. I'm scared of myself. Of what I might do if I stop holding back."
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. "What would you do?"
She doesn't answer. Instead she reaches out and takes my hand, lacing her fingers through mine. Her palm is warm, her grip sure.
"I'm not ready," she says. "Not yet. There's too much I'm still untangling, and I don't want to start something and not be able to give you all of it."
"I understand."
"But I need you to know—" She squeezes my hand. "It's not that I don't want to. It's that I want to too much. And I want to do it right."
I lift our joined hands and press a kiss to her knuckles. She inhales sharply, but she doesn't pull away.
"Take all the time you need," I say. "I'm not going anywhere. This is my home too, remember?"
Something in her face softens at that—at themy home, at thetoo.
The church bells start up in the distance—midnight, carried on the warm night air. Iris looks toward the sound, then back at me.
"I should sleep," she says. "Early start. Jacques wants to get into the south field before the heat."
"Right. Yeah."
