Page 19 of Honeyfires

"Browsing."

"You're holding a book about robotic consciousness upside down in a library you've never been inside."

"I've been in this library before. And I've been inside lots of libraries, I'll have you know."

"Name one."

"The one I'm currently inside, like I said."

"That doesn't count, it's this one."

"I also went to a school that had a library."

"When."

"Various years."

She stared at me. "That is the least specific thing anyone has ever said to me."

"Library science degree. You should be able to extrapolate."

She bit her lip. Hard. The effort required to not laugh was genuinely visible on her face. "Petra."

"Yeah?"

"Why are you actually here?"

I looked at her through the gap between Le Guin and Asimov, at this woman who had walked into a hallway two days ago and proceeded to Dewey Decimal me and wait up in adorable pajamas and say ask me tomorrow like it was nothing, like she hadn't handed me something I'd been turning over in my hands ever since.

"You told me to ask you something today," I said. "And I decided I'd better do it before you revoke my library card."

"You don't own a library card."

"You're losing focus here. I have something to ask you."

Her breath caught. Not dramatically, but just a small catch. Her fingers, still linked through mine, tightened slightly.

"I think," she said, her voice a fraction quieter than it had been, "you should come around to this side of the shelf."

"Yeah?"

"I think so."

I released her hand and walked around the end of the row.

She was waiting for me, back against the books, cheeks already warm, her face tilted up. Not performing composure. Not performing anything. Just standing there in the amber light, with her escaped curl and her black cat-eye glasses, looking at me like I'd parted the Red Sea for her and her people. Worshipful. Devoted.

How was I going to survive this woman?

I stepped into her space. Close enough to smell the vanilla-coconut of her shampoo. Close enough to watch her chest rise and fall faster than the library's quiet had any right to make a person breathe. Close enough to see that the exact shade of her eyes wasn't a single color at all—it shifted, depth and light rearranging themselves, impossible to fully land on.

But blue. Endlessly, beautifully, fiercely blue.

I braced one hand on the shelf beside her head.

"Vera."

"Yes."