Page 16 of Honeyfires

She looked back.

"Next time you hear me losing a battle with my keys—"

"Yes?"

"Don't wait so long."

She looked at me for a moment. The smile that crossed her face was slow and warm and knowing, the kind that arrived like the nighttime darkened into midnight blue in the desert. Quiet, and somehow bigger than you expected.

"Only if you promise to keep being worth waiting up for."

The door clicked shut behind her.

I stood in my kitchen in the dark, the tremor finally gone from my fingers, the adrenaline fully metabolized, my body having remembered at some point in the last hour that it was safe.

I looked down at my hands.

Steady.

She Knew Exactly What She'd Asked For. Probably.

Chapter Five

I woke to warmth. The gentle, honeyed kind, not the roaring, consumptive kind I'd spent yesterday trying to outrun and put out.

Sunlight filtered between the blinds in thin stripes across my bedroom ceiling. I lay still, taking inventory. No smoke in my lungs. No leftover adrenaline making my fingers twitch. Sheets soft instead of the over-starched ones from the station. The absence of a major catastrophe, which in my line of work always felt like a minor miracle worth noting.

The fire felt distant. Like it had happened to someone else, in another lifetime.

Vera, on the other hand, felt immediate. Electric. Like she was still standing in my kitchen in those Powerpuff Girls shorts, violet glasses perched on her nose, holding up a mystery key and looking at me like I was a book she'd already decided to finish.

Ask me tomorrow, she'd said.

Ask what?

Whether you can kiss me.

I stared at the ceiling for approximately four seconds before getting up with more purpose than I'd had in years.

I showered twice. Once for the smoke, once for myself. Then I stood in front of my closet with the rigid intensity I normally reserved for pre-fire briefings.

The options were not inspiring. Military surplus. Work gear. Three identical black t-shirts. A flannel I'd had since the Army that had been one wash away from retirement for three years and kept surviving out of sheer spite.

Dark jeans. Black v-neck. The embroidered leather jacket. If I was walking into Vera's world, I was going in looking like myself. She'd invited this. She'd looked at me with those softened eyes and asked me to check with her tomorrow, like she knew for certain that I would.

She knew exactly what she'd asked for.

Probably.

The San Jacinto Public Library sat at the heart of downtown, a converted adobe building with tall windows and climbing ivy that made it look like something from a story someone wrote down because they didn't want to forget it. I'd ridden past it a thousand times without once thinking about going in. I hadn't stepped foot in it since I'd been a tiny kid, gap-toothed before braces, with that Portuguese accent I'd since lost to the passage of time.

Libraries weren't my scene. Too still. Too orderly. Too much like the inside of my head on a day when nothing was on fire, which I wouldn't know what to do with.

But Vera's scene, as of approximately forty-eight hours ago, was now extremely relevant to my interests.

I parked out front, pulled off my helmet, and shook my hair out. A woman walking past with a tote bag clocked the motorcycle, clocked me, and walked slightly faster. Standard San Jacinto response to my existence.

The heavy glass door opened into cool, paper-scented air. Sunlight came in at long, warm angles through the tall windows, casting the stacks in a honeyed amber glow that had no right being as beautiful as it was.