33. “Good news?”
“GOOD NEWS?”
YASMINE
Diana called while I was standing in my kitchen eating peanut butter straight from the jar.
“You’re welcome, by the way.”
I lowered the spoon. “For what?”
“I’m going to let you enjoy these last few seconds of ignorance.”
“You know normal people just say they have news, right? You sound like a Bond villain.”
Diana laughed. “As your agent, I’m allowed a little theater when I’m about to change your life.”
I straightened. “Okay. Now you have my attention.”
“Antarctica. Emperor penguins. Full creative control.”
I stopped breathing.
“Yeah,” Diana said. “That’s about the reaction I expected.”
“You’re fucking lying.”
“You said you wanted real work. Well, congratulations, bitch. The penguins picked you.”
“Diana.”
“Check your inbox.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and opened the email with my thumb.
National Science Foundation. Six months. Field research. My name sitting right there in black and white.
“Oh my God.”
“There she is.”
“Di. This is it.”
“Obviously. So I’m hearing yes?”
“Yes. Jesus. Yes.”
“Good. I’ll confirm on my end. Go celebrate. You earned this.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank me when you win something with the photos. Talk soon.”
The call ended.
Antarctica.
I said it aloud again to the empty room.
The apartment had been quiet for a week now. The spare room door stood open the way CeeCee had left it, and one yellow hanger still hooked over the closet rod.
We’d moved her on Saturday. Denise and I hauled boxes while CeeCee directed from the couch, one hand on her belly because nobody was letting her carry anything heavier than a pillow.
Her new place was small and landlord-beige, with a yard barely bigger than a bath towel, but she’d stood in the middle of the kitchen staring at the cabinets like she couldn’t believe they were hers to fill.
I stayed for pizza, but left before it got dark. Sat in her driveway a full minute before I made myself pull off.
Now this.
I’d been working toward something like this for most of my adult life. The kind of assignment that could change a career. Months in a place most people would never see, with enough time to get it right.
My mind started moving before the rest of me could catch up.
Medical clearance. Gear. The 400mm needed servicing. Cold-weather equipment that wouldn’t fail me halfway through. What to do with the apartment. Hale could—
I stopped.
Hale.
Six months on the ice with six weeks to be ready.
My phone was still in my hand, the brief open on the screen. A photograph stretched across it, white land and hard blue sky, so clean and distant it made the rest of my life feel small and loud.
Saying yes had been instinct.
Hale was the part that came after.
I grabbed my keys. I’d figure out what to say when I saw him.
He was at the stove when I came through the mudroom.
“Fair warning,” he said. “I cooked like I was only feeding myself tonight.”
I dropped my bag by the door and slipped off my shoes. “Meaning?”
“Meaning meat and heat. C’mere. Taste.”
He held out the spoon.
I leaned in and got tomato, garlic, smoke, too much red pepper. “It’s good.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me properly then, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “Well, hello. That look isn’t for my pasta sauce.”
He set the spoon down and turned the heat off under the pans. “Good news?”
“Stupidly good. I—”
“Wait.”
He pulled two glasses down from the cabinet, poured the last of an open bottle of red, and set one in front of me.
“Tell me.”
I wrapped my hand around it and didn’t drink.
“Antarctica,” I said.
His eyebrows lifted. “Home to five species of penguins and six kinds of seal.”
I stared at him. “Why do you know that?”
He shrugged. “Had a Happy Feet stage as a kid. What about it?”
“I got a job there with the National Science Foundation, photographing emperor penguins.” The words were tripping over each other already. “Full creative control for the entire six months. I’d be with the research team, on the ice the whole time. Diana just sent it over.”
He grinned. “Yaz.”
“I know.”
“That’s—”
“I know.”
I put the glass down. Picked it up again. Put it down.
He stayed where he was, watching me over the counter, waiting me out the way he did when he wanted me to slow down on my own.
“Tell me the whole thing,” he said.
So I did.
I told him what it meant in practical terms first because that was easier. Six months. Clearance. Research access. Then I tried to explain what it meant in the only language that mattered to me—the light down there, and the shot I’d been waiting years to take.
He listened without interrupting, nodding every so often, the tiny lines at his eyes deepening the longer I talked.
When I ran out of words, he was still smiling.
“You earned that,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Look at you.”
My throat went tight. “Come with me.” It came out before I’d decided to say it.
His smile held for half a beat, then changed. Dimmed, just a little bit.
“I know it’s a lot.” I was already trying to sell it and take it back at the same time.
“But there’s a companion slot, Hale. It’s already in the paperwork, I don’t have to fight anybody for it.
And you said once you wanted to see more than Whitlock Hills.
Carter and Grant could handle the shop for a while.
Maybe not forever, but for a while. It’s six months. The bottom of the world. It’s—”
I stopped. Swallowed. “I don’t want to see it without you.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then away. His thumb dragged once along the edge. When his eyes came back to mine, something in them had gone careful.
“Let me think on it,” he said.
I blinked. “Think on it?”
“A couple days.”
“Think on it.” I set the glass down carefully. “Right.”
“Yaz.”
“No, I hear you.”
“I’m not saying no.”
“I know.”
Except I didn’t, not quite. Not the way I wanted to. I’d asked him something big and reckless, and part of me had wanted the same kind of yes back. I knew he deserved time to think. I just wished he hadn’t needed it.
He was watching me too closely.
“You’re annoyed,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Little bit.”
“I asked you to run away to Antarctica with me, and you said let me think on it like I’d offered you the last piece of pie.” I picked the glass up again. “I’m processing.”
He took it out of my hand and pulled me in. I went, my face against his chest, his hand at the back of my neck, broad and warm.
He didn’t say anything for a minute.
Just held on.
“I’m proud of you,” he said into my hair. “That first before anything else. I’m proud of you.”
I closed my eyes. “I know.”
“A couple days, Yaz.”
“Okay.”
Outside, the trees moved in the dark. The house settled around us, old wood shifting, dinner cooling on the stove.
I stayed there. Still a little annoyed. Still not leaving.
His hand at my nape stayed exactly where it was. He didn’t tell me what was going through his head.
I didn’t push.