21. The Dolphin Breastplate Stays On #2
"Kevin is such a spoon."
The dessert armory smells like grease and sugar and the powdered-sugar ghost of every funnel cake I've made alone in this courtyard.
"You weren't alone because you were supposed to be," she says.
"You were alone because nobody showed up yet.
And then the outbreak happened and you came here and you built a fish vest and a crime boat and a kill chute and a dessert armory and you waited, Beck.
You waited and now there are people on your crime boat and funnel cakes in your armory and four forks in your kitchen. "
The math isn't clean anymore. Grace broke the math when she named my armor. Joel broke it when he agreed to stay. Grant broke it when he packed his bag and brought his animals to my ship.
I don't cry. Beck Alvarez doesn't cry in a funnel cake stand during the apocalypse. What Beck Alvarez does is sit on a counter with his hands on his knees and his jaw tight and his eyes hot and he breathes.
"Four forks," I say.
"Four forks," she says.
"Kevin is a spoon."
"The biggest spoon."
"The biggest chaotic spoon in the entire cutlery drawer."
She grins.
I don't know how she does that. She names things and the naming changes them. I'm being changed and I can feel it happening. I don't want it to stop.
"Thank you."
"For what?" she asks.
"For staying in the doorway."
"I didn't stay in the doorway. I got stuck in the doorway."
"Same thing."
My hand finds her jaw. My thumb traces the line of powdered sugar on her chin.
"Beck," she says. Just my name, said the way she says everything, like she's trying it on, testing the fit, deciding whether to keep it.
She's going to keep it. I can see it in her eyes. She's already keeping it.
I kiss her the way I do everything now: full speed, full contact, the whole system online, every circuit firing.
She makes a Grace sound. Half surprise, half something more urgent than surprise, and her hands come up to my chest, to the fish vest. Her fingers curl around the edge of the fiberglass and she pulls me closer.
Her back hits the counter. The funnel cake stack wobbles. A plate falls off and shatters on the ground.
I lift her onto the counter.
She wraps her legs around me. "The fish vest is poking me," she says against my mouth.
"I can take it off."
"Don't you dare. The fish vest stays on, Beck. The dolphin is part of this now. The dolphin has been watching us fall in love with each other for days and the dolphin deserves to be here for this."
Fall in love.
She says it like the train didn’t leave without me after all. She reached through the closing doors and pulled me aboard.
My mouth finds her neck because if I try to answer, I’m going to say something that changes everything.
Her head tips back. Her hands are in my hair and her legs are around my waist and the counter is at exactly the right height, which is a coincidence that I'm choosing to interpret as architectural destiny.
My hands are under her hoodie. I want more of the sound she makes when I touch the soft skin above her hip.
"Beck."
"Yeah."
"I want…"
A sound. From outside. Not Kevin, who's wandered off to eat civic infrastructure elsewhere.
Shuffling. The wet, dragging, wrong-footed shuffle.
We freeze. Her legs still around me, my hands still under her hoodie, our faces inches apart, breathing the same air that now contains the sound of the worst possible interruption at the worst possible moment.
"No," Grace says.
The shuffling gets closer.
"No."
A shadow passes the entrance of the funnel cake stand. The silhouette of a figure with bad posture and worse intentions.
"That's Gregory," Grace says, "the cockblocking wrong person. Gregory has a vendetta against my love life and I will not…"
"Grace."
"Gregory doesn't get to be part of this. I'm going to take the friendship paddle and I'm going to…"
"Grace." I put my hand on her face. Turn her back to me. "Gregory doesn't get to be part of this."
"That's what I said."
"So let's not be here when Gregory wanders through."
She blinks. The fury downshifts into something that looks like the word "yes" before the mouth says it.
"The crime boat," she says. "The thinking box. Door locks. Ramp retracts. No Gregorys."
"No Gregorys."
I lift her off the counter. She grabs the friendship paddle.
I grab the axe. We leave the dessert armory, check the courtyard, and confirm Gregory has shuffled past the entrance and into the roped-off queue maze near the castle facade.
Technically contained. Emotionally at large, completely unaware that he's just become the most hated wrong person in the history of the apocalypse.
We move through Mythic Frontier. Fast. Focused. Grace trips once on a cobblestone and I catch her arm and she doesn't stop walking.
The crime boat rises above the lagoon. The gangplank is down. I pull the rope and the gangplank lifts behind us. The ramp retracts.
The sun is low and the park is quiet. Gregory is behind us doing his stupid fanny-pack shuffle. Kevin is eating something he shouldn't. Joel is checking structural integrity. Grant is tending to the animals.
She takes my hand and pulls me toward the captain's quarters.
The dolphin breastplate stays on.
For now.