Page 61 of Honeyfires

"That's a compliment. But don't tell Jackson."

I resisted the urge to snort as I left.

When the crew finally cleared out, Stevens leaving last with a container of extras and a handwritten copy of the recipe Vera had written out specifically for him, the apartment was warm and flour-dusty and cheerfully destroyed.

Vera stood in the middle of it in her strawberry apron, hair half-fallen, a smear of brown butter on her forearm she hadn't noticed, looking at the mess with deep satisfaction.

"Your crew," she said, "is wonderful."

"They're disasters I manage," I said. "You've just given them sugar."

"Stevens is going to take those cookies to his mother."

"Stevens is going to burn his apartment down attempting to remake those cookies for everyone else."

"So I'll teach him again." She said it like it was obvious. Like teaching Stevens to bake was simply a thing she was going to do now, a standing item on her calendar. "He's a quick learner when he's not panicking."

I stared at her.

"What?" she said.

"You did the librarian focus thing on my entire crew."

"I pay attention to people I care about." She untied her apron and hung it on the hook by the fridge. She was entirely unbothered by this revelation. "Are you going to help me clean this up or just stand there?"

"Both," I said, "probably."

She threw a dish towel at me. I caught it without looking.

This was, I was realizing in the particular way you realized things that had been true for a while and were only now making themselves known to your conscious mind, a problem. Specifically—I was so in love with this woman that I was standing in a flour-covered kitchen catching dish towels without looking and thinking about how she'd said I'll teach him again with the casual certainty of someone who had already decided she was going to be in Stevens' life for the foreseeable future.

Which meant she intended to be in mine.

I already knew this. I'd known it since she'd tucked a note in my gear bag and almost written I lo before crossing it out and writing something safer. I'd known it since she'd waited up in pajamas when she heard my bike and said I happened to still be awake with a composure that convinced neither of us. I'd known it since the hallway, probably, if I was being honest, which I usually tried not to be.

I picked up a mixing bowl and started washing it, and Vera moved around me in the small kitchen with the ease of someone who had mapped the space and found her place in it, and neither of us said anything for a few minutes, just the sound of water and the radio she'd put on low.

"You know what I realized today?" she said.

"What?"

"Miller and Stevens like each other."

I turned to look at her. "They do not."

"Stevens asked Miller a question about the rope inspection schedule and Miller answered it in full sentences. That's affection, for Miller." She was washing a bowl with complete seriousness. "They're going to be very close in about six months."

"Miller does not get close to people in six months."

"He transcribed his grandmother's recipe on his phone during the second batch so he could send it to me," Vera said. "He did it when he thought no one was looking."

I stared at the dish in my hand.

"He texted it to me while Jackson was explaining the plot hole thing," she said. "It just came through. No message. Just the recipe."

I had nothing to say to that. I finished washing the dish in silence and handed it to her to dry, and she took it with the same matter-of-fact ease she took everything, and I thought: this. This is the thing I didn't know I needed. Not someone who could survive my world, but someone who would simply, quietly make it better and then wash the dishes afterward like it was nothing.

"Vera," I said.