11. Enoch
ENOCH
Iarrive at Daisy's apartment near the bakery eleven minutes early, which means I walk past the building twice, stop to read a community bulletin board I have no interest in, and spend four minutes pretending to check my phone outside the dry cleaner's two doors down.
By the time I finally allow myself to ring the bell, I've had entirely too much time to imagine everything that could go wrong: how I might say precisely the wrong thing, or how Daisy, realizing the true nature of my intentions, might suddenly develop a rare allergy to demonic energy and ghost me for all eternity.
Her apartment sits above one of the old storefronts just off Main Street, only a short walk from the bakery.
A narrow flight of stairs leads to the front door, each step creaking with the accumulated weight of a century's worth of tenants.
I can hear her on the other side before I even knock.
There's a frantic shuffle, something plastic clattering against the tile, a hissed, "Dammit," and then, after a pause, a long exhale.
The door cracks open.
Daisy peers out wearing an expression of studied nonchalance, one immediately betrayed by the tiny curl of her mouth and the faint lift of her eyebrows.
"Enoch," she says. "You made it."
She's barefoot, wearing a blue dress beneath an oversized apron, her hair loose around her shoulders.
It isn't so much a waterfall as a tidal force.
In the hallway light, the color shifts into a different shade of gold entirely, something warm and luminous that only mortals seem capable of producing.
"Of course," I reply, only to discover I have absolutely no clever follow-up prepared. "You look...very nice."
I hate myself for the banality of it, for the inadequacy. Daisy, however, seems to find it charming. She beams, swings the door open the rest of the way, and waves me inside.
The apartment is organized chaos: shelves where books compete with baking supplies for space, tiny succulents squeezed between stacks of magazines held together by melted candle wax, and a faint, ever-present haze of flour that makes the sunset streaming through the windows seem almost alive.
A table barely large enough for two has already been set with mismatched plates, cloth napkins, and a bottle of white wine sweating quietly into its own glass.
Before I can say a word, Daisy uncorks the bottle, pours me a glass, and offers it with one arched eyebrow.
"You don't have to drink," she says, "but I thought it might help with..." She gestures vaguely. "...the evening."
I glance at the wine, then at her, and accept the glass before following her onto the tiny balcony overlooking the street.
The evening air smells of honeysuckle and distant rain.
Somewhere below, people carry on conversations over the rumble of traffic, and the ordinary sounds of the neighborhood somehow make everything happening between us feel even more intimate.
Daisy settles into the chair across from me, brushes her hair behind one ear with an easy, practiced motion, and waits.
"How was your day?" she asks. The question sounds casual enough, but her posture is just a little too straight, her fingers wrapped a little too tightly around her own glass.
I could tell her about the paperwork piling up at Town Hall or the coworker attempting to unionize the local fallen angels for what must be the third time this year.
Instead, I tell her the truth.
"I was looking forward to this."
Then, because honesty only gets me so far before instinct forces me sideways, I add, "You have a lovely balcony. It's very...you."
She snorts.
"Small and slightly falling apart?"
"Vital," I correct. "Sturdier than it looks. And the view is better than expected."
She hides her smile behind the rim of her wineglass, though her eyes never leave mine.
I can't quite decipher the expression looking back at me.
It's gratitude wrapped around amusement with just enough mischief to make the tips of my ears blanch nearly white.
I catch my reflection in the window beside us and confirm my suspicions.
Wonderful.
Dinner arrives a few minutes later. Daisy sets down a platter of roast, potatoes, and something aggressively green that humanity appears to have invented for the sole purpose of tormenting my species.
I am not technically required to eat, but sharing a meal has never really been about survival.
It is ceremony. Communion. An acknowledgment that someone wanted you at their table.
As she serves me, her fingers brush my wrist, and I can feel the quick flutter of her pulse through the china between us.
The contact lasts only a heartbeat, but somehow the entire evening seems to gather around it, both of us aware of something growing between us while carefully refusing to give it a name.
She unties her apron and hangs it over the back of her chair, leaving the blue dress to do all the heavy lifting.
I remember Zelda's advice—stare at her until she blushes—but Daisy is infinitely better at this than I am. Moonlight spills across the balcony, tinting her skin a color I don't possess a word for. Her lips catch the light whenever she smiles.
I discover, quite suddenly, that I cannot stop looking at them.
The first few bites pass in a strange, exhilarating silence.
Daisy lifts her glass first.
"To being brave enough to eat my cooking," she says, "and to people who don't vanish at the first sign of commitment."
We clink glasses.
She drains hers in one swallow. I take mine more slowly, though I suspect I'm paying considerably more attention to the curve of her mouth than the wine itself.
Somewhere in the building, a neighbor is playing pop music with the treble turned so high it splinters against the night air. I barely hear it.
Daisy is here.
I'm here.
Sometimes I forget that eternity is built from moments exactly like this—small, ordinary moments that somehow manage to feel fiercely alive.
She laughs suddenly, as though interrupted by a thought halfway through dinner.
"You're staring."
"I am."
"Do I have sauce on my face?"
"Not even a little."
The words leave me before I can examine them.
"You look perfect."
The compliment sounds hopelessly inadequate to my own ears, but Daisy hears something beneath it anyway. I watch her shoulders relax, the guarded uncertainty melting away almost instantly.
Perhaps it's the wine.
Perhaps it's the moonlight.
Perhaps it's simply Daisy.
Whatever the cause, I reach across the table and take her hand in mine.
“You sure you're not nervous?” she whispers, her voice almost musical. “Your ears are giving you away.”
I feel the flush intensify. “I am not, as a rule, easily rattled,” I say. “But you are...difficult to ignore. Compelling,” I add, because she deserves clarity. “It's all very new for me.”
Daisy runs her thumb slowly over my knuckles. “You talk like you're older than the sun,” she says, “but this is just dinner. It doesn't have to be the end of the world.”
“Maybe I want it to be cosmic.”
She doesn't laugh. Instead, she studies my face as though she's searching for something I'd misplaced long ago.
I think she finds it.
When she stands, there's the slightest wobble in her step, equal parts theater, wine, and anticipation. She tugs gently on my hand, and I follow her inside, where the apartment is lit only by a half-melted pillar candle on the table and the soft blue glow of the microwave clock.
She turns to face me.
Only then do I realize I've been waiting for permission.
Daisy knows it too. She's always been better at reading me than I am at reading myself.
“Enoch,” she says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “If you want to kiss me, you should probably do it now. I have a feeling I'm going to burn dessert if you don't.”
Perhaps my self-control has earned its reputation.
Perhaps the universe has simply overestimated how difficult I am to break.
In that moment, I forget the centuries, the scars, the endless chess match I've played with fate and responsibility. I know only Daisy, standing before me in that blue dress, close enough that I can make out the tiny constellation of freckles scattered across her collarbone.
So I kiss her.
How else could the evening end?
Daisy's mouth is a question I've been longing to answer, and the way she meets me—warm, delighted, drawing me closer as though I'd somehow become her favorite discovery—makes something inside me quietly come undone.
When she laughs against my lips, I feel it all the way down to my bones.
Eventually we separate just far enough to breathe.
“You are trouble,” she murmurs, her forehead resting against mine.
“Trouble is my only marketable skill,” I whisper back. “May I kiss you again?”
The question is barely finished before I lean in once more.
Time becomes wonderfully unreliable. Minutes dissolve into laughter and stolen kisses until I become vaguely aware that Daisy's lipstick has migrated somewhere onto my face. She notices too, smiles to herself, and makes no effort whatsoever to fix it.
Her hands slide to either side of my neck, thumbs resting lightly beneath my jaw, and for one ridiculous moment I wonder which of us is going to melt first.
Eventually—whether after minutes or hours, I'm honestly not sure—we drift back toward the little table where dinner waits exactly as we'd left it, looking almost like evidence from someone else's evening.
We make a valiant attempt at behaving like civilized adults.
Neither of us is particularly convincing.
Every few moments her foot brushes mine beneath the table, or our knees bump together, or we catch one another smiling over our wineglasses for no reason beyond the fact that we're both still here.
She raises her glass again.
“To us,” she says. “To bravery, poor judgment, and whatever you call this.”
I touch my glass gently against hers.
“To statistical improbabilities,” I reply, “and culinary risk-taking.”
Dinner is extraordinary.
Or perhaps Daisy has simply ruined my ability to judge food objectively.
Either way, everything tastes wonderful.
She catches me watching her again.
“You can't possibly be this hungry,” she says softly. “For the food, I mean.”
I consider pretending not to understand.
Instead I say, “I've been told I possess a rather formidable appetite.”
She points her fork at me.
“Flirting is supposed to be subtle.”
“That was subtle.”
“For you?”
“For me.”
She laughs, and I discover I would happily spend another century earning that sound.
The conversation slows into something quieter. Comfortable.
The city hums beyond the balcony. Somewhere downstairs, someone laughs. A car passes. Wind stirs the hanging plants.
Ordinary sounds.
Extraordinary evening.
I reach across the table once more and lace my fingers through hers.
“You know,” I say, “I've spent a very long time believing forever was measured in centuries.”
She tilts her head.
“And now?”
I look at her.
“Now I think it might simply be measured in evenings like this.”
She smiles in that impossibly open way of hers, and whatever carefully constructed defenses I still possess surrender without protest.
Perhaps she was right.
Perhaps this really is cosmic.