She looks at me. Her eyes hold too many things at once, pain, gratitude, and something that looks a little like faith.
“Thank you,” she says. “For making this happen. For fighting for it.”
“I just made some calls.”
“You made a lot of calls. And probably argued with people. And definitely pulled strings you weren’t supposed to pull.” She tilts her head, studying me. “You do that a lot. The extra stuff. The things that aren’t in the job description.”
I shrug. Try to deflect. “The job description is flexible.”
“The job description is keeping me alive. This.” She gestures at the kitchen, the bakery, all of it. “This is something else.”
She’s right, and we both know it, and saying it out loud makes it something we’d have to deal with.
So I don’t say anything.
And then she crosses the kitchen and wraps her arms around me.
It’s not a long hug. Not at first. Just a quick embrace, the kind of thank-you hug that people give each other all the time.
But she doesn’t let go. And I don’t either.
My arms come up around her, settling against her back, and she’s warm and solid and real against my chest. I can feel her breathing. Can smell her shampoo, something new, something Colorado, not the generic stuff from before.
She fits.
That’s the thought that undoes me. She fits against me like she was designed to be there. Like all the empty spaces I’ve been carrying around for years were just waiting for her to fill them.
I should step back. Should maintain some kind of professional distance. Should remember that I’m leaving in five days and getting attached is the worst thing I could do to either of us.
But she’s holding on like I’m the only solid thing in her world. And I can’t make myself let go.
We stand there for a long time. Long enough that it stops being a thank-you hug and becomes something else.
When she finally pulls back, her eyes are wet but she’s almost smiling.
“Sorry,” she says. “I just needed to hug someone who smells like competence and didn’t leave me emotionally devastated via baked goods. You were nearby.”
“I know.” My voice comes out rough. “I know.”
She wipes her eyes. Takes a breath. Squares her shoulders like she’s preparing for battle.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s finish setting up.”
We go back to work. But something has shifted.
And I spend the rest of the day hyperaware of every time she passes close to me, every accidental brush of shoulders, every moment when our eyes meet and hold a beat too long.
Five days.
I’m not going to survive five days.
Day three, she laughs.
Not the broken laugh from before, the one that sounded like it hurt coming out. This one is real. Surprised out of her by something stupid I said about the ancient cash register, how it looks like it belongs in a museum exhibit about the Before Times.
The sound fills the bakery like sunlight.
I stand there, receipt paper in my hands, completely frozen.
