Page 51 of Spiced!

“You’re stalling,” Brendan said.

“I’m timing it. There’s a difference. Amateurs move on the count. Professionals move on the one after.”

I dropped to the floor, planted my palms, and did the thing my body knew how to do better than it knew how to do almost anything. The first ripple started at my shoulders, traveled clean down the length of my spine, and pushed off through my feet. I moved across Brendan’s hardwood floor like water going somewhere on purpose. Chest, hips, knees, everything was one continuous wave. And then another. And then a third for the people in the back, gliding the full length of that strip of light without a single stutter, because I’m a professional, and because he dared to have questions.

I finished at his feet, popped up onto my knees, and threw my arms out. “Ta-da, cabrón.”

Dead silence.

Puck had gone completely still in Brendan’s arms, watching me with the electric focus of an animal witnessing the approach of an apex predator.

Mofongo had sat down.

And Brendan—Dr. B. Davis, DVM, precise man, man who did things correctly—was staring down at me with his mouth slightly open and a look on his face I would have driven across the whole city to see.

“Oh no,” he said quietly.

“Oh yes.”

“That was—” He stopped. Recalibrated. “That was genuinely upsetting. How did your spine do that? That’s not—vertebrae don’t—”

“You’re a doctor. You tell me.”

“I’m the wrong kind of doctor,” he said, a little dazed. “I treat animals with normal skeletons.”

“And yet.” I got to my feet and did a small, unnecessary bow. “I believe the phrase you’re looking for is, ‘I was wrong, Adrian. My life is changed.’”

“I’m not saying that.”

“You’re thinking it. I read rooms for a living. Your whole face is screaming it.”

Puck dook’d, once, which I chose to interpret as a standing ovation.

Worm argument settled more firmly than a court precedent, we moved to his small balcony and began to grill. His patio was large enough to hold two chairs and the grill and little else, which meant we were close enough together that our shoulders touched when we both reached for something at the same time.

That happened twice, not that I was counting.

Neither of us moved away after either time.

Brendan grilled chicken thighs with a simple marinade he’d put together while I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched. I ate a piece of pan dulce and reported on Puck and Mofongo’s ongoing diplomatic situation in the living room.

“Puck is back on him,” I said.

“Mofongo’s accepted it,” Brendan said, not turning from the grill.

“Mofongo hasn’t accepted it. He’s tolerating it.”

I watched the easy, unhurried way Brendan moved around the cramped balcony space, turning the chicken, checking without hovering. He was, I was noticing for the hundredth time, a person who did things properly. I didn’t think he was a perfectionist or had some organizational disorder in which he’d be rearranging my sock drawer or anything. He was simply deliberate, performing whatever task was at hand with the quiet satisfaction of someone who understood that doing things right carried its own reward.

I had been surrounded by warmth my whole life. It filled my abuela’s kitchen, hummed throughout Barbacks, and drifted on Doña Carmen’s dough-filled air at 4 a.m. It was a warmth that came from the stillness—no, that wasn’t the right word—the peace of Brendan’s movement that was different. His warmth was the kind you didn’t notice until you were already inside it, already enveloped by its soothing presence. It was unlike any I’d ever felt, and my heart told me I liked it far more than my head wanted to admit.

We ate at his kitchen table with the balcony door open. The food was simple but exactly right. The chicken and a salad he’d thrown together, followed by the pan dulce after, which he ate slowly, was the perfect complement to a most unusual and serene evening.

Mofongo and Puck continued reenacting some Edwardian battle in the living room.

Perhaps most striking, looking back, was how we talked the way we’d been texting. Words flowed easily and without gaps, the conversation finding its own level. He told me more about Marisol, the theory he was building, and the call he’d made to Peter. I told him about the panadería, about the bread that proved overnight, about Doña Carmen’s law of the end piece, which he thought was the funniest thing he’d heard in years. I really liked hearing him laugh, how it rolled around the room and settled somewhere deep behind my ribs.

He asked questions that meant he was listening.