Page 73 of Kill Feed

“They spent the entire day cooking. My mom baked bread from scratch; they made enough food to feed half the neighborhood, and then…” she snorts. “That cranberry pie.”

“They burnt cranberry pie,” I say, lifting a brow.

“It was only slightly burnt,” she protests, chuckling.

“It was charcoal,” I add, matching her casual grin.

She laughs louder. “I’ll never forget the look on their faces when you told them the crust had the texture of gravel.”

“I was trying to be polite.”

“You absolutely were not.”

I grin. “They thought you brought a boyfriend home.”

“They were so excited about it too.”

I shake my head. “I still don’t know what offended them more: the fact that we weren’t dating,” I pause, “or the fact that I criticized the pie.”

Amani wipes a tear from the corner of her eye from laughing. “Definitely the pie.”

“I figured.”

“They still love you, though.” The words settle between us. “They ask about you every time I go home.”

A comfortable quiet returns as Amani watches the traffic below.

“I miss when that was the biggest problem we had,” she exhales, throwing her legs back over the ledge and shifting off. “I just…” she exhales slowly, “I want things to feel like that again. I want things to be normal again.”

Normal.

The word catches somewhere inside me. It’s predictable and forgettable, yet comfortable.

Even to me. With the last few months filled with chaos and broken routine, this version of things is all I want. Amani and I seek the same thing.

Normality is my way of living that consisted of lectures, photography, motorcycle drives, and cream cinnamon coffee. Yet this unexpected lunch on a rooftop with Amani has been the closest to that way of living I’ve had in a long time.

It isn’t even the routine.

It’s just her.

She has always had this strange ability to pull the rest of the world into focus. No matter how chaotic everything became, she never changed.

She stayed exactly where I’d left her. The constant in an equation that refused to balance. Maybe that’s why I never minded when she showed up uninvited.

I look out across the city with a new conclusion: “I’ll fix it.”

Amani turns toward me. “What?”

“I’ll make things normal again,” I claim, getting off the ledge, joining her side. “Everything will go back to the way it was before. I promise.”

Chapter 20

Dante

Look at him. So serene in the way he moves when he is in his safe zone.

I lean my shoulder against the frame, hands loose at my sides, and watch. Adrian stands at the far end of the studio with his back to me, sleeves pushed up as he unplugs a few cords.