The Superbloom
Chapter One
The open-air hallway ran the length of the building, overlooking the parking lot below.
There had been a superbloom at Devil's Canyon, on the outskirts of the small Arizonan town of San Jacinto, a dot on the map that seemed so inconsequential, yet nearly my entire life had played out here.
Memories and moments and the mist of every unshed tear, every scream still trapped inside me.
Cornflower blue eyes behind vintage black cat-eye glasses, gold-spun hair the color of daisies, standing there in her pink floral-print dress, white Mary Janes clad on petite feet, stockings rising halfway up her toned thighs like they were personally designed to test my self-control.
God, I needed to look away.
I did a bad job at it.
I stuck my key into the lock, grocery bags hanging low on the same hand that held tight to my motorcycle helmet, sweat beading on my forehead. I couldn't look at her the way I was looking at her. Not like some wounded animal who felt owed something from the world.
"Hiya, neighbor."
My head jerked up. Her voice was like a rushing glacial stream, sweet and clean and cold, but not in a bad way. The way ice cream tasted on a hot day, actually. It moved through me the same way. Sudden and clarifying, a temperature I hadn't known I needed.
I opened my mouth. My brain, normally a sensibly functional organ, went completely thoughtless, one circuit at a time, like power failing in a storm.
"Hi," I said stupidly.
Groundbreaking. Someone alert the linguists.
"I-I'm Vera Montgomery," she said, with a slight stutter I found positively adorable. She walked over, those Mary Janes tap-tapping on the concrete floor, and stuck her hand out. She smiled at me, and the world tilted sideways.
I was not okay. I was so not going to be okay during this interaction.
I locked my muscles and stiffly shook her hand. Warm. Tiny. Manicured nails.
"Last name's Alves," I said slowly, like I was trying to communicate with an extraterrestrial.
"My Portuguese-immigrant parents cruelly named me Perpetua at the hospital in Braga where I was born thirty-four years ago, but no one, not even my parents in moments of extreme disappointment, actually uses that name. "
"That does seem unkind of them." She tilted her head. The hallway light caught the gold in her hair and made something magical of it. "Can I guess what they call you instead?"
"You can try."
"Perri."
"No."
"Pippa."
"No."
She squinted, visibly rearranging her thoughts. "Preppy."
I actually laughed out loud. "Okay, I'm sorry—what?" I gestured at myself. The motorcycle jacket, the ripped jeans, the Doc Martens held together mostly by stubbornness and old loyalty, the tattoos snaking up my arms and neck like smoke finding its way out. "What about this says yacht club to you?"
"You could be ironic about it," she said, completely unperturbed. "Maybe you're secretly in a polo league and the leather is a bit."
"Yeah. My Harley's moored next to the sailboats."
She giggled, and my pulse stuttered. "Okay. You're right. You look more motorcycle gang than country club."
"Motorcycle gang? That's a little harsh."
She shrugged one exquisite shoulder. "Maybe I read too many romance novels."
My heart sputtered like an old exhaust pipe. There was no way, no possible way, that this woman standing in this hallway in this dress, in this body, with this voice that sounded how a summer afternoon felt—liked women.
No way. Statistically improbable. The universe wasn't this generous to people like me. People like me got the cold ends of things, the empty parking lots, the long drives home with the radio off.
We didn't get this: pretty girls with hopeful eyes and a very dorky, entirely charming sense of humor.
"Give up?" I asked.
Her eyes lit up, sparkling. "Absolutely not." She studied me with more concentration than my very serious station captain at my last performance review, and I had the sudden sensation of being read. "Etta?"
I raised a brow. "I wish."
She gasped, pressing one hand to her chest like I'd told her the ending to something.
"Oh, I should have gotten that immediately.
" Then, breathily and entirely off-key, she sang the first few bars of At Last directly into the hallway, to me, a stranger, without a single ounce of embarrassment.
Her voice was imperfect and warm and completely, entirely genuine.
I stared at her.
She was the most ridiculous person I had ever met in my entire life. Both tours with rowdy combat soldiers overseas included.
"I know," she said, clicking back into focus. "Petra."
"Finally." I pressed a hand over my heart. "I was starting to think you'd finish the P's in the phonebook and circle back around."
She jumped once, clapping her hands together, delighted by herself, delighted by me, delighted by the whole improbable situation as though it were already a story she loved. "I knew I'd get it! And honestly? You look exactly like a Petra."
"Do I."
"Strong. Mysterious." She paused for what appeared to be dramatic effect. "Rocky."
"Rocky."
"Petra means rock in Latin. It suits you." She said it simply, the way people state things they believe in. The desert is hot. The sky tonight will be full of stars. You are exactly what you look like.
I stared at her. "You know Latin."
"Library science degree. We absorb an unfortunate amount of useless information." She smoothed the hem of her dress, completely composed, a woman entirely at peace inside her own particular orbit. "Though apparently speed-guessing nicknames isn't part of the curriculum."
"To be fair, Preppy was a low point. Even by experimental standards."
"I was testing the waters! There's a whole subculture of people who dress ironically. I couldn't rule it out."
"You thought I was doing ironic contrast. With the tattoos."
"The tattoos especially could have been ironic."
"These ones?" I held up my arm. The tattoos were of a hawk in flight, the Florian Cross for Station 19, a compass, a line from Rilke. The kind of marks you made when you were trying to write something down permanently, because everything else kept slipping away.
She peered at them. "A hawk."
"Yes."
"A compass."
"Yes."
"Is that… Rilke?"
I blinked. "You know Rilke."
"Library science degree." She said it the way some people say I have a lawyer. "Okay. In retrospect, definitely not ironic. These are the tattoos of someone who has feelings and chose skin over journaling."
"That's—"
"What's the duct tape situation on your boot?"
I looked down. Silver duct tape. Two inches. Wrapping the toe of my left Doc Marten. I had genuinely stopped seeing it four months ago.
"That's holding it together," I said.
"It's duct tape."
"I had limited options."
"You're an adult."
"An adult," I confirmed, "with limited options."
She looked at the boot. Then at me. "Okay. And the embroidery on your jacket—is that also for holding it together?"
I was going to die here in this hallway. I was going to die, and the duct tape was going to be in the obituary. "My coworker did it."
"Your coworker."
"Long shift. My coworker, Miller, he does embroidery to decompress—"
"Just like that?"
"—and before I could establish any firm boundaries, he had already started."
Vera stared at me. "He embroidered your jacket."
"He said the jacket had energy and that the red honored it."
"And you wore it."
"The deed was done," I said. "There was nothing left to do but wear it with conviction."
She paused, but only for a moment. "A man came into my library on Tuesday to research whether his neighbor was legally a ghost," Vera said. "I thought that was going to be the week's headline."
"Was he? Legally?"
"No. Spiritually?" She tilted her head. "We don't have the resources."
"Right call."
"Thank you." She smoothed her skirt. "I've also classified you, by the way."
"I'm sorry?"
"Library science." She said it again. "813.54. American fiction. Female protagonist. Complicated relationship with institutional loyalty and a boot with duct tape to hold it together."
I stared at her. "Did you just Dewey Decimal me?"
"How did it feel?"
I pretended to shudder. "Violating."
"Good. That's the system working." She tilted her head. "You're chaotic sincere, by the way. That's the subgenre. You could have gotten a cooler-looking tattoo. You chose Rilke."
I had nothing. It was too accurate, and she'd gotten there too fast.
"Is that a strawberry on your bag?" I said instead.
She glanced down. "Yes."
"Why?"
"Thematically consistent." She said it like I'd asked why the sky was blue. "It's a coquette bag."
"Is that French for—"
"It's a style. Vintage, romantic. A little flirty." She smoothed her skirt. "The visual language of a woman who has a window seat."
"Do you actually have a window seat?"
"I have a window seat, a reading pillow, and a blanket I will describe to you as cream-colored." She paused. "The real name of the color is Antique Bridal Whisper."
"I'm sorry, Bridal what?"
"Antique Bridal Whisper. From a paint catalog. I found it and knew immediately. I don't make the rules."
"Antique Bridal Whisper," I whispered dramatically.
"It sounds unhinged, I know. But it's the right color." She shrugged one shoulder. "Sometimes the universe hands you the answer in a ridiculous wrapper."
I was standing in a hallway with my groceries and my duct-taped boot and my fire-line embroidered jacket, and this woman had just said that completely sincerely, and I felt something happen in my brain that I had no framework for and absolutely no time to address.
"How long did the whole—" I gestured at her "—situation take."
"The aesthetic? Three years, ongoing. Today? Forty-five minutes. The hair was a whole thing."
"It looks good," I said.
She went slightly pink. Hadn't seen it coming. Neither had I, honestly.
"You're staring again," she said.
"I'm processing."
"Again, I see. You process quite a lot."
"Some inputs require more—"
"You've received: duct tape criticism, a Dewey Decimal classification, the ghost neighbor situation, and the information that my blanket sounds like a dead bride. What else does your brain need?"
"I genuinely don't know," I said. "I've never run this particular program before."
The corner of her mouth went up. Just barely. "Good."
She gestured at my groceries. "Go put those away."
"Are you sending me to my room?"
"I'm giving you a task so your hands have something to do while your brain catches up." She tilted her head. "Rosie's. Seven. I'll be the one not wearing duct tape."
"That's a low bar."
"And yet." She looked at my boot.
I laughed. Real, unplanned, from somewhere lower than my throat. It felt strange. Tender at the edges.
"Yeah," I said. "Seven."
"Perfect." She turned and walked back down the hallway. Paused at the corner. Looked back, the way women only do in paintings and old movies and moments you need to survive. "Oh, and Petra?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm asking you out on a date, in case it wasn't clear."
"It wasn't, not entirely."
She smiled. "I'm glad we clarified, then."
The Mary Janes clicked around the corner and she was gone, and I stood there in the empty hallway holding my groceries.
I had been outwitted, Dewey Decimaled, told the color beige is actually the color of a dead bride or whatever, and roasted about my footwear by a woman with a strawberry on her bag, and I had laughed more in the last six minutes than I had in six months.
I was so completely, comprehensively screwed.