6. Clem
CLEM
The bakery has been open for three weeks.
I open at six. He walks in at six. He sits at the corner table by the window and reads—he reads now, an actual book, hardcover, which is a thing he started doing the second week. He leaves at seven-forty when his car arrives, and he comes back at four when I close.
I’ve put a smiley face on a hundred and five cups in the last three weeks. He’s put fifty-seven dollars in tips. The fives go in a jar I’ll never spend.
And nothing has happened. That’s the part I keep turning over.
Three weeks open and not one brick, not one note, not one man on the corner at night.
The block feels different—lighter, like a weather system moved off it.
The landlord who used to “stop by” about the lease doesn’t anymore.
The empty storefront two doors down has a lease sign in the window and a couple walking it with a contractor.
Stellan never tells me what he did or who he saw.
He just made the thing that was eating my street quietly go away, the way he said he would in a dark car in Queens, and now I get to run my bakery like it’s only a bakery.
I didn’t know that was a thing a person could give you.
I’m also six days late. Which, for me, is a whole conversation. I’m regular as the sunrise. You could set the ovens by me.
I haven’t said the word out loud to him because I haven’t taken a test, and I’m not going to lie to him before I’ve stopped lying to myself.
I bought the test on the way to work this morning.
It’s in the drawer in my back room with the takeout napkins and the rolls of receipt paper.
I’ll take it after we close. Until then I’m going to make muffins.
It’s what I do when I don’t know what else to do.
Other people spiral. I bake. The whole damn neighborhood eats like kings during my worst weeks.
It’s four o’clock now. The last customer left at three forty-five—Mr. Onyebuchi, the building inspector who lives two blocks down and stops in for the cardamom roll on his way home from the office.
The bell jingled after him. I flipped the sign, drew the shade on the door, and sat behind the counter for a second to breathe.
Stellan walks in at four oh-two.
He doesn’t knock. He has a key. He had a key made the second day I reopened—the locksmith was in by ten AM and there were two keys on the counter at noon, with a small note that said spare for me, original for you, please don’t argue.
I didn’t argue.
He locks the door behind him. He pulls the inside shade so the bakery goes dim and warm, lit only by the small pendants over the case and the soft yellow of the kitchen behind. He puts his coat over the back of the corner table chair. He looks at me.
“Clementine.”
“Stellan.”
“You’re holding something.”
“What?”
“You’ve been holding something all day.”
I look at him. Three weeks in and I still can’t believe how much of me he sees. He pays attention the way other men breathe—without thinking, all the time.
“I’ll tell you,” I say, “but not yet. After I close. Is that okay?”
He nods.
“Thank you.”
He doesn’t push. He never pushes. He just watches me with that steady grey-green patience that makes me want to tell him everything at once.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Are you well?”
“Yes. Yes, I am—I’m well. It’s nothing bad.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
He comes behind the counter. He waits while I pull the last of the muffins from the case to box for the shelter run.
He carries the box to the back. He takes the trash out the side door—Antonin will pick it up, the way Antonin has been picking up the trash for the last three weeks, because Stellan decided I’m not lifting heavy bags out into the alley anymore. He comes back in. He looks at me.
“Apron.”
“Yes.”
“Off.”
I undo the strings. He takes the apron from me. He hangs it on the hook.
“On the prep counter.”
“Stellan.”
He looks at me.
I’m already reaching back to untie the strings before my mouth has finished arguing.
“This is the third apron this month.”
He nods once.
“I have to start ordering more.”
“Antonin already did.”
I get on the prep counter.
He takes me there hard. This is three weeks of him sitting at the corner table watching me do my job, three weeks of him going home at four and not letting himself touch me until the shop was closed, because we agreed: the bakery is the bakery, the apartment is the apartment.
He bends me over the prep counter first, the steel cold against my forearms, and pushes my dress up over my hips. He doesn’t ask if I’m wet. He finds out—two fingers dragging up through me, coming away soaked, and the low sound he makes behind me goes all the way up my spine.
“Three weeks,” he says. “And you’re already dripping for me.”
“Stellan—“
“I know. I’ve been hard since I turned the lock.”
He pushes into me in one long slide, wet enough to take all of him, and it still pulls a gasp out of me—the stretch, how deep he gets bent over like this. One hand holds me down to the steel. The other comes around front, two fingers bracketing my clit, making me wait.
Then he fucks me. Hard. The counter takes both our weight, every thrust driving the air out of me, the head of his cock hitting the spot that makes my legs stop working. His fingers find my clit on the downstroke and stay.
“Come on my cock,” he says. “I want to feel it before I let go.”
I come on the first press of his thumb, crying out into my own shoulder, and he covers my mouth with his palm because he likes me to come into his hand.
My pussy clenches so hard he curses, low, the one time his voice slips.
He works me straight into the next one, slower, deeper, soaked enough that I hear it each time he draws back.
“One more. You can give me one more.”
I give him one more. It breaks over me harder than the first, and on the back of it he finally lets go—a rough curse bitten off against my shoulder, both hands clamped on my hips, dragging me back onto him as he empties himself in deep jerking pulses, the wet of us loud in the dark shop.
I clench through the whole of his orgasm, milking it out of him the way he taught me without either of us ever saying so.
He stays in me. We don’t part anymore. In three weeks I’ve turned into someone who lives some part of every day with her partner inside her, and I’m not even surprised by it.
“Stellan.”
His arm tightens.
“Window booth.”
“Now?”
“It’s the only one I haven’t put your cock in.”
He laughs. Soft. Into my hair.
“Lights off?”
“Lights off. The shade up. The booth’s in shadow. Nobody passes after four-thirty. The street is dead.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“For three weeks.”
His mouth curves against my hair.
He carries me—still on him—through the kitchen to the booth in the front window. The shop is on a one-way side street nobody uses, and after four PM nobody walks past at all. I’ve watched this street for two and a half years. I know its patterns.
He turns off the pendants, then the kitchen light. He turns the shade up—up, not down, because the only way anyone could see the booth would be to climb the front steps and press their face to the glass. The booth is set back, the table putting us deeper in shadow.
I straddle him on the bench. We fit, barely. He gets in first, pulls me into his lap, my back against his chest, and guides me down on him—slow, because I’m still tender from the prep counter—until I sink onto him with a shaky breath.
“There,” he says.
Three weeks ago this booth was where I sat alone at the end of a sixteen-hour day, feet aching, till counted, nobody waiting for me anywhere.
Now I’m in it with him filling me up and the whole dark shop wrapped around us.
I don’t say the enormous thing I’m thinking.
There isn’t enough light in here for it.
“Stellan.”
“Mm.”
“It’s so quiet.”
His arms close a little tighter around me.
The clock above the cases ticks. Somewhere on the avenue a cab honks once and is gone.
“Anyone could?—“
“No one’s going to.”
“But—“
“You picked this booth because no one’s going to. Tell me the truth. You watched the street for three weeks. You know who passes.”
I press my forehead into the spot where his throat meets his collar.
“Yes.”
“Good girl. You picked it because it feels public and isn’t.”
“Yes.”
He fits his hands over my hips. The window in front of me is my own bakery’s, the gold-leaf cursive of Bishop’s across it backwards from in here.
He had it regilded the first night, before I asked.
This is mine, and so is he, and he made sure of both.
The street is empty. There’s a cat on the stoop of the brownstone across the way. No humans.
He puts his forehead between my shoulder blades and wraps both arms around me and just holds—not moving, not taking, holding.
Nobody held me in this shop for two and a half years.
I fed everyone who came through the door and climbed the back stairs alone every night and called it fine.
He figured that out about me in a week and quietly decided it was finished. It’s finished.
“How long?” I say.
“Tell me when you want to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“Then we don’t stop.”
We don’t stop.
Time goes soft the way it does when I’m on him.
He’s a warm wall at my back, his palm wide and certain low on my stomach—over the exact place I’ve been not letting myself think about all day.
I have never felt as safe as I do right now.
It’s a strange thing to feel with a killer’s cock inside me.
The strangeness stopped mattering somewhere in the first week.
“Clementine.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve been holding?”
“I—yes.”
His hand spreads warm and wide over my belly, and I lose the thread of every careful way I’d planned to say it.
“Now or later?”
“Now.”
“Now.”
I put my hand over his hand on my belly. His is so much bigger than mine that mine fits inside the hollow of it. I’ve been six days late. I’m almost never late. I bought a test this morning and put it in the drawer with the takeout napkins. I haven’t taken it.
I put my hand over his hand and I press his hand down a little. As if the answer were already there.
He understands.
I feel him understand. His arms tighten. His mouth drops to my shoulder. He breathes in once, slow, and lets it out.
“Clementine.”
“Six days late.”
I can feel my own pulse where his chest presses against my back, too fast for how still we are.
“Have you?—“
“Not yet. After we close.”
“It’s after we close.”
“I know.”
He goes still around me, careful, his forehead heavy against the back of my neck.
“Why are you waiting?”
“I wanted you here.”
He turns me on his cock—until I’m sitting sideways across his lap, then facing him, my chest against his chest, my cheek on his shoulder. He puts his hand back on my belly, his other fisting gently in my hair at the nape.
“I’ll wait with you,” he says.
“Yes.”
His hand stays spread over my belly, warm through everything, and I cover it with mine.
“And if it is?”
“Then it is.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then it isn’t yet.”
“Yes.”
His arms tighten. The radiator clanks somewhere behind the kitchen wall.
“Stellan.”
His arm tightens.
“I’m not afraid.”
“I know.”
“I’m not afraid of any of this. I’ve been not afraid of any of this since the first muffin. I want you to know that.”
“I know.”
I press my hand harder against his on my belly.
“I want you to put a baby in me.”
“I know.”
“I want you to put a baby in me even if it isn’t this one yet.”
“I know, Clementine.”
I press back against him, taking him deeper, the fullness of him steadying something in me.
“Don’t pull out. Ever.”
“Never.”
He stays inside me in the dark of my own bakery. Just the empty street and a man holding me on his cock with both arms wrapped around me because I asked. No phone call to take. No target to confirm.
The cat across the street stretches and walks down the steps, toward the avenue.
“Stellan.”
“Yes.”
“Take me to the back.”
He kisses my temple.
He carries me—still on him—through the dark front to the back room and sets me on the small stool by the desk. He kneels, still inside me, his hands on my thighs.
“Drawer?” he says.
“Top one. Behind the takeout napkins.”
He reaches around me without separating, finds the box, puts it in my hand.
“Take it.”
“I will.”
“I’ll be right here.”
I take it.
I do what the box says. He stays where he is, still inside me at the front, his hand on my knee. I set the test on the edge of the desk.
We wait.
The clock on the wall ticks. Down the block, a delivery truck reverses.
The most dangerous man in the city is kneeling between my thighs, his cock buried in me, a pregnancy test on the edge of the desk.
I want to say I’m calm. The word fits. Underneath it is a low humming thing that might be joy or might be dread or might be the exact thing I’ve been waiting for.
Stellan puts his forehead against my forehead.
“Whatever it is,” he says.
“Yes.”
“I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“Look down with me.”
I look down with him.
The window says two lines.
I make a sound.
He does too—quiet, just a breath, but a sound. His hand comes up under my jaw, lifts my face, and he looks at me. For one full second the calm cracks open and what’s behind it is a man who’s been waiting for this with all of him.
“Clementine.”
“Yes.”
“Good girl.”
His thumb wipes the corner of my eye where I didn’t know I was crying.
“Stellan.”
His thumb passes over my cheekbone, catching the wet there.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Yes.”
The word lands in my own chest like something I dropped and caught.
“With your baby.”
“Yes.”
His hand spreads wide on my belly. He presses, slow, like he’s introducing himself.
“You’re going to be insane about this.”
His palm goes flatter against me, warm through everything.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
He carries me upstairs to the studio without pulling out.
Up the back stairs of my own building—I haven’t slept here in three weeks, I’ve been in his bed in Tribeca.
We lie down on the unmade bed I left. He stays inside me, folds himself around my back, both arms locked over me. We don’t move for a long time.
The studio is quiet. The streetlight through the curtain throws a yellow square on the wall. I can hear the bakery’s espresso machine ticking down below us through the floorboards. Stellan’s hand is hot on my belly. I’m cold everywhere else and hot where he’s touching me.
Mrs. Petrosyan calls me twice that night. I don’t answer. She leaves a message.
She says, in the third sentence of the message: “That nice quiet man, dear. You should keep him.”
Stellan, on speaker, smiles.
Three and a half weeks in, that’s the second time I’ve ever seen him smile.
He says, into my hair, “Mrs. Petrosyan is right.”
I say, “Yes.”