Chapter Five — Things Worth Keeping (continued)

By seven on Sunday, Luna Reyes had cleaned her apartment twice, burned one piece of garlic bread, and moved the Boston fern away from the window because it appeared to be judging her.

She moved it back. The bathroom light was better for it, and she'd already promised the plant that its new home wouldn't be governed by spite.

Her doorbell rang.

“Asher?” she called.

“Unless somebody else has arrived with enough lemon tart to bribe a minor government.”

She opened the door.

He was wearing dark trousers and a charcoal shirt beneath an unbuttoned overshirt, sleeves pushed up to his forearms. In his hands was a bakery box decorated with a yellow ribbon. He looked down at her, and whatever line he'd prepared disappeared behind a smile.

“You look...” he began.

“Like a woman who has spent forty minutes making her kitchen look as though she hasn't spent forty minutes making her kitchen look nice?”

“I was going to say beautiful.”

“You've got to stop rewarding my worst behavior.”

“I'm beginning to suspect that's why you invite me places.”

She stepped aside. “The fern's on probation. Don't make eye contact.”

Asher crossed the threshold and found it perched beside the bathroom door in a ceramic pot, an aggressively handmade label tucked into its soil.

FERNANDO. TEMPORARY RESIDENT. NO COMMENT ON HOUSEHOLD AFFAIRS.

He studied it solemnly. “I've been informed this one was nameless.”

“Probation ended this morning. He survived his first night without dying in protest.”

“An excellent reference.”

“Your jade?”

“Alive. Unnamed. I'm refusing to rush the relationship.”

Luna snorted and took his jacket. He gave her the bakery box, warm enough that she could smell toasted sugar and lemon through the cardboard. Underneath the lid, the tart was crowned with uneven peaks of meringue.

“That's practically architecture,” she said.

“I'm relieved you approve. I considered building a tiny embassy for it, but our building inspector has a terrible reputation.”

She turned toward the kitchen before he could see how much that callback pleased her.

Dinner was a pan of pasta with blistered tomatoes, basil, and enough garlic to make a vampire reconsider its career. Luna had put out two mismatched plates because the third matching one was chipped. She expected Asher to notice the mismatch. He noticed instead the hand-lettered card tucked beside his fork.

GUEST ARTIFACT: ASHER. HANDLE WITH CARE.

“Should I be worried about the glass case?” he asked.

“Only if you misbehave. My father charged admission to kitchen exhibitions. I've decided to waive the fee.”

“Extremely generous.” He placed a coin from his pocket beside the card. “For preservation.”

She looked at the coin, then at him. He wasn't treating the story she'd told him as a charming detail to be forgotten after the date. He'd kept it.

Something inside her went quiet in the best possible way.

They ate at her small table with their knees nearly touching. Asher insisted on helping with the dishes and proved surprisingly competent, except when Luna caught him trying to find a second clean towel in a cupboard devoted entirely to batteries and loose screws.

“You have a system,” he said.

“I have several systems. Some are visible to civilians.”

“I'll need a map.”

“Earn one.”

Afterward they split the tart. The meringue cracked beneath Luna's fork and left a white smudge at the corner of her mouth. Asher looked at it, looked away, then looked back with an expression she recognized from the paper-lantern market.

“What?” she asked.

“You've got a little...”

She wiped the wrong side of her mouth.

“Other side.”

She wiped again, deliberately missing.

“Luna.”

“Yes?”

“You're doing that on purpose.”

“That's a very serious allegation.”

“I'm prepared to provide evidence.”

He reached across with his thumb and wiped the meringue away. She caught his wrist before he could withdraw it. The gesture was small, but her pulse was suddenly loud enough to make the little kitchen feel crowded.

“Evidence accepted,” she said.

For a moment neither of them moved. Then Asher lowered his hand, not because he wanted to, she thought, but because dessert was cooling between them and they still hadn't said what both of them were thinking.

She was no longer certain she wanted to keep pretending.

At nine, they sat on the sofa with their shoes off, watching a documentary about a man restoring mechanical clocks. Luna had picked it for Asher's mother and her tin of watch parts. He recognized an escapement mechanism before the narrator explained it, then became indignant when the film skipped the difficult part of the repair.

“You really are your mother's son,” Luna said.

“She's a formidable woman. Once kept a broken alarm clock on the mantel for seven years because she was certain its spring would be useful.”

“Was it?”

“In year eight. She was insufferable about it.”

“Good for her.”

“That's exactly what she said.”

When the credits rolled, Asher glanced at the time and rose. He had an early studio call the next day. He didn't pretend he had nowhere else to be, and Luna appreciated that more than another hour of increasingly transparent excuses.

She walked him to the doorway. The hall beyond was quiet except for a distant elevator motor. He stopped on the threshold and turned back.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” she echoed.

“You first.”

“First at what?”

“Saying goodnight.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I have excellent manners and will allow you the honor.”

“You're terrified.”

“Of your fern, certainly.”

“Of saying goodnight,” she said, stepping closer. “Because the last time we tried this, you had to compete with public transportation.”

He glanced toward the ceiling. “I checked. Your building has no scheduled announcements.”

“There's still the elevator.”

“I'll take my chances.”

Luna felt herself smile, but the joke stopped there. He was looking at her as he had beneath the station lights, with none of his easy confidence missing and all of his attention turned unmistakably toward her.

“You know,” she said, “I've been waiting for you to finish something for a while now.”

“Your mother's clock documentary?”

“Wrong answer.”

“The radiator story?”

“Also wrong.”

He took a step nearer. “Then perhaps you should demonstrate.”

She could have teased him again. She could have turned it into another competition, bought herself a few more delicious seconds of control. Instead she reached for the front of his overshirt, drew him gently toward her, and kissed him.

For one suspended heartbeat he was utterly still. Then his hand came to her waist and he kissed her back, warm and certain and not remotely careful in the way she had feared he might be. The hallway, the clock, the stupid fern, all the elaborate reasons they'd invented to avoid this moment vanished behind the simple fact that he wanted her just as badly.

She had imagined a first kiss like a victory: something to win and gloat about. This was not a victory. It was the dizzying discovery that she had started something neither of them wanted to stop.

They parted only far enough to breathe.

“Oh,” she said.

Asher's forehead came to rest against hers. “That's an unusually concise review.”

“I'm collecting data.”

“Need another sample?”

“Obviously.”

He laughed against her mouth as she kissed him again. This time there was no startled hesitation. Her hands settled at his shoulders, and his thumb traced a slow line at her waist through the fabric of her shirt. She felt his smile between kisses and answered it with one of her own.

When they finally drew apart, Asher looked genuinely dazed.

“I had a whole speech,” he admitted.

“Was it good?”

“Impeccable. Seven minutes. A strong opening, devastating conclusion.”

“Tragic loss for public speaking.”

She didn't release his overshirt. Not yet.

He brushed a curl from her cheek. “I want to see you again, Luna. Not because I'm trying to win something.”

Her throat tightened. “Good. Because I'm not a prize.”

“I noticed that when you made me lose at skee-ball.”

“You won at skee-ball.”

“And somehow I still ended up carrying a pigeon.”

She laughed, the sound embarrassingly shaky. “I want to see you again too.”

They stood there a little longer, close enough that another kiss was an option rather than a mystery. Then Luna let go and stepped back into the apartment. Asher didn't press for more. He touched her hand once, smiled like he was trying and failing to behave, and headed toward the elevator.

When the doors closed, Luna shut her own and leaned against it.

The apartment was exactly as she'd left it. Two plates drying in the rack. A half-eaten lemon tart in its box. Fernando silently holding court outside the bathroom.

Nothing had changed.

Everything had, and she was smiling too hard to pretend otherwise.