Page 88 of Top Shelf

Me: Later.

Viktor: Later is not food.

My thumb hovers over my screen with a reply, but the contractor interrupts to ask if I can select between matte black or brushed steel, and I put the phone down.

I look at the samples in his hands and feel my brain slip. They’re both fine. They’re both terrible. One will show fingerprints, and the other will look too cold. Neither probably matters, but every choice opens another choice behind it, and I’m suddenly furious at the existence of metal.

Usually I can rank decisions whether they’re important, less important, or can be dealt with later. Right now, my brain has stopped assigning weight to anything. Brushed steel feels as urgent as flooring delays, which feels as urgent as Sweden, which feels as urgent as my parents, and I know that’s ridiculous while being completely unable to make it stop.

By the time the contractors leave, the studio floor is scattered with samples, and I’ve lost my tape measure while I’m holding it. Twice. I check the time, convinced I’ve been standing here for only a few minutes, but nearly twenty minutes have passed. The late light through the windows is too gold and too beautiful for the chaos swirling inside me.

I manage to answer another email, then read my reply three times without understanding it. I write “call supplier” on a list that already says “call supplier”, then aggressively delete a sentence of launch copy because the word “empowering” makes me angry for reasons that feel both valid and impossible to explain.

Everything is too bright and dusty, too quiet and loud all at once. My phone buzzes again, and I jump.

Viktor: I’m outside.

Through the front glass, Priscilla sits at the curb while Viktor stands beside her in dark jeans and a leather jacket, his helmet already off and a white bakery box balanced in his hand. All I can do is stare as relief washes over me, and I move to unlock the door to let him in.

“I brought food,” he says, stepping in.

His gaze moves over my face to the floor, to the unopened protein bar and my untouched water. My lists and samples, and the laptop open to a paragraph with a sentence highlighted.

Light blue eyes flick back to mine, and then he sets the bakery box on the counter and opens it.

Inside is a pistachio croissant. A pistachio éclair and cookie and tart. Something round and glossy with crushed pistachios over cream, and something dusted in sugar that I can’t identify, except that it’s green.

“You brought the entire pistachio population of Denver?”

“You said pistachio is your flavor.”

“That was one sentence in a courthouse hallway.”

“Yes.”

I look up at him. “Viktor.”

“What? You were not specific.”

I laugh, but it snags in my throat on the way out. He notices, but instead of reacting to the sound, he picks up my water bottle, opens it, and hands it to me. “Drink first.”

“I’m not a houseplant.”

“No. You are so much more. So—drink.”

Those words should not make me want to cry, but they do. He waits until I swallow twice before he turns to choose a pastry, tears it neatly in half, and passes me the larger piece.

“I’m fine,” I say as I take it from him, fooling neither of us.

“I did not ask.”

I take a bite. Butter and pistachio cream hit my tongue, sweet and rich enough that my body remembers it’s been running on coffee and spite since noon. For a minute, there is only food. Water. The rustle of the bakery paper. Viktor standing between me and the room, large enough to block some of the noise of the day.

Then my mouth opens, and everything spills out.

“The flooring might be late, and the mirror quote is insulting, and if one more person says commercial grade as if that magically means suitable for return-to-sport work, I’m gonna scream. My mother called. Then my father called, because missing the opportunity to judge me for my life choices is a family emergency. They saw our marriage thing online and wanted to know why I didn’t tell them, and then Mom said she was glad I married a man, as if you have somehow heroically cleaned up my sexuality by existing with a penis.”

Viktor’s face changes, but I continue.