Page 58 of Spiced!

My body had no respect for context.

It didn’t care that it was Monday. It didn’t care that I wasn’t in my own bed or that there was a very good reason to stay horizontal for a few more hours. It simply woke up at three fifty-eight, the same way it had every morning since I was nineteen, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Vamos, the bread isn’t going to make itself.”

I lay there for a minute and had a quiet mental argument with it.

My body won. The dumb thing always won.

It also won faster than usual because my mind was spinning. Once I started thinking, I was done sleeping regardless. Mind you, it wasn’t anxious thinking. It was the other kind, the kind where something good had happened and my brain wanted to hold it up and look at it from different angles, the way I held fresh bread up to check the crust.

I lay in Brendan’s bed in the dark and did exactly that, with his arm warm against mine and the city outside doing its 4 a.m. thing.

It felt like the moment after a proof came out right.

It wasn’t exciting, exactly.

It felt more . . . more like settled, as though something had been slightly off balance and had magically found its correct position.

I was, I realized, in a bit of trouble.

The good kind. Maybe the best kind.

That’s when I turned my head.

In the dark, I could just make out his face, and his hair, and—dios mío—his hair. Whatever the morning had done to it was something. The part that was usually only a little bushy had made life choices, multiple life choices, in various directions simultaneously. One section was attempting an angle that had no relationship with gravity or common sense, while another had given up entirely and flopped sideways across his forehead like it had somewhere to be and had reconsidered or run out of gas halfway there.

I had bedhead issues, as anyone with long-ish hair would understand, but Brendan? Sweet mother of pearl.

I stared at it for a moment longer than was necessary. I was probably going to be thinking about that hair for a while. That was painfully clear.

God, I was so screwed.

Reluctantly, I left the warmth of his arms, dressed in the dark with the practiced quiet of a man who had been not-waking people at 4 a.m. his entire adult life, and went to find the kitchen.

Gerald glared at me from the windowsill.

“Buenos días,” I said quietly.

He didn’t respond, because he was a succulent, likely an English-speaking one, and silence summed up his position on mornings. I respected that.

I found Brendan’s coffee maker by feel. The filters were above and the coffee canister beside, exactly where a logical person would put them. Lord knows, Brendan was nothing if not logical. I got the coffee going and leaned against the counter in the dark kitchen while it huffed and puffed.

Mofongo’s carrier was in the corner of the living room. Brendan had set it up the night before without being asked. He’d just found a corner and assembled the little bed inside without making a thing of it, the way he did everything that was simply the right thing to do.

I was thinking about that when Puck appeared.

He came in low and fast from the direction of the bedroom, assessed me, glanced around the kitchen, and climbed up my leg and onto the counter in one fluid motion, where he sat facing me with his bright, complete attention.

“Hey, little guy.”

He dook’d, soft, not wanting to wake Brendan. At least, that’s how I interpreted the ferret’s speech.

“Coffee’s almost ready,” I said. “You want some?”

He looked at Gerald, then he looked at me.

“I know it’s early,” I said. “It’s always early. This is just what mornings are.”

He dook’d again, and then he yawned, a gesture wider than his whole face, one in which his tiny arms reach toward the sky, and his itty-bitty fingers stretched in all directions.