Page 13 of Honeyfires

"I was sleeping soundly," she said, "until someone started rattling their keys like a raccoon in a wind chime." She padded over in bare feet, bent down in front of me to pick up my keys without being asked, and I had to look away because the shape of her in the dim moonlit hallway was almost too much to bear. "You have a lot of keys for someone who couldn't find the right one."

I swallowed thickly. "They're all important."

"What's this one?"

"Station locker."

"This one?"

"My Harley."

She held up a small, battered key with a piece of red electrical tape wrapped around the bow. "This one?"

I looked at it. Thought about it genuinely. "I… I don't actually know anymore."

She looked up at me. Her expression hadn't moved much, but her eyes were doing a lot. It was that quiet inventory she took of everything, organizing the details I hadn't said alongside the ones I had, like she was shelving a book she intended to read very carefully.

"How was the fire? I saw the smoke from the library. We could smell it before lunch."

"Contained." I said it the way I always said it. Flat, factual, a word that was designed to be the end of the subject.

She handed me my keys. "You're shaking."

"Adrenaline."

"Mm." She stepped slightly closer, tilting her head back to look at me properly. "How much did you drink?"

Not an accusation. Just a question, asked the way she asked everything, like the answer was something she intended to stay for regardless of what it turned out to be. I realized I liked that quality about her. A lot.

"Enough to take the edge off. Not enough to make bad decisions." A pause settled between us for a singular moment. "Debatable on the keys."

She was quiet, then, "Come inside. You look like you could use a cup of tea."

"I'm fine."

She gave me the look. I recognized it as the librarian look, the one that had probably silenced entire rooms of restless middle-schoolers and at least one man researching whether his neighbor was legally a ghost. The look that said: I have already assessed this situation, and my assessment is final.

"I'm fine," I said again, following her into my apartment.

She moved through my kitchen like she'd been doing it for years, turning the lights on, putting the kettle on, rummaging mugs out of the right cabinet without a single hesitation. I sat at the table and watched her hands and tried to breathe at a normal depth.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"I know."

"I've had bad fires before. I come home, I sleep it off, I'm fine in the morning."

"Okay."

"I'm serious. This isn't—I don't need—"

"Petra." She set a mug in front of me. Black tea, two sugars. Exactly how I took my coffee, which she had apparently documented from Rosie's like it was reference material. "I'm not doing this because I think you need saving. I'm doing it because I have a heart and nowhere else important to be." She sat across from me. "Drink your tea."

I wrapped my hands around the mug to hide the tremor, which was a completely transparent strategy because she had already seen it and elected not to say anything, which was somehow worse and better simultaneously.

"You remembered," I said. "Two sugars."

"You were very emphatic about it at Rosie's. I logged it."