Page 64 of Honeyfires

He got about twelve words into those opinions.

Vera stepped in front of me.

I had never, in my life, heard the voice that came out of her next. It was not the library voice, patient and redirecting. It was not the crew-visit voice, warm and curious. It was something colder and more definite, the voice of someone who had decided on a target and had excellent aim.

"She's a helitack crew forewoman," Vera snapped rapidly. "She rappels out of helicopters into active wildfires. She's saved more lives before breakfast than you will manage in your entire existence. So unless you have something intelligent to contribute, I suggest you move."

"Listen, lady—"

"She's saved entire communities from burning to the ground. What exactly is it you do again? Besides take up space in the produce section?"

He left, and a small crowd cheered.

I had never been more attracted to anyone in my life. Including the first time I saw Vera in that hallway in a flower-print dress. This was a new ceiling. This was a reclassification of the ceiling.

She turned back to me, still vibrating slightly with righteous energy. "Are you okay? God, the absolute—"

I kissed her. Right there in front of the stone fruit display and all the people who cheered again, I pulled her against me and kissed her like the words I kept not saying had to go somewhere.

When we broke apart, she was flushed and breathless and her grocery list was crumpled in her hand.

"What was that for?" she asked.

I love you, I thought. I love you so much it sits in my chest like a second heartbeat, and I cannot believe I am in a grocery store failing to say it.

"For being exactly who you are," I said.

She beamed. Maybe I'd said the right thing. Just not all of it.

That night, with the cool desert air drifting through her open window and her fingers tracing the phoenix on my ribs, she said, "Tell me about this one."

I'd been waiting for her to ask again. The first time she'd asked, I'd promised later. She'd let it be later without question, because Vera understood that later was a real time that existed.

Later, it turned out, was now.

"After Afghanistan," I said. Her hand was warm and still on my ribs. "I was pretty destroyed when I came home. Couldn't sleep, couldn't adjust, still operating like I was in a combat zone. The firefighting helped eventually. Gave me somewhere for the adrenaline to go that didn't hurt anyone." I swallowed hard and tried to clear my throat. "This tattoo was me trying to tell myself I could be more than what the war made me."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Thank you for telling me," she said.

"Thank you for asking."

She kissed the tattoo. Pressed her lips to the phoenix's wings. Then she looked up at me with the most tender expression I'd ever seen on her face.

"You know what I see when I look at you?"

My throat closed up, but I forced myself to talk. "Tell me."

"Someone who keeps choosing to rise." Her thumb traced my jaw. "No matter how many times. Someone worth holding onto."

The words pressed against my lips with so much force I was surprised she couldn't feel them.

I love you. I'm in love with you. I have been in love with you since you guessed my name in a hallway and sang Etta James off-key to a complete stranger and made me feel like something I didn't know I'd been waiting for had finally arrived. I've been carrying it for months. I almost said it over soup. I almost said it in the grocery store. I almost said it seventeen times during the cookie afternoon and once specifically when Miller texted you his grandmother's recipe and you just received it like it was normal, like of course he did, like you'd known all along that he would.

I kissed her instead. Tried to put all of it into the press of my mouth against hers, into every breath between us in the dark.

She fell asleep with her face against my collarbone, her fingers curled into my shirt, her breath slow and even.