25. Edda #2
"I have a good memory." He slides one coffee toward me. "Decaf."
I take a sip. It's exactly right. "You've been paying attention."
"I've been listening. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
He pulls a croissant from the bag and sets it on a napkin in front of me. Like it belongs there. Like he knows where things should sit in my space without asking.
"You tell me," he says.
We eat standing at the counter, watching the afternoon light stretch across the floorboards. Mrs. Petrova's grandson shows up at four fifteen, already flushed from whatever he has been doing since school let out. I hand him the Schwinn with a reminder to stop testing curbs like they're optional.
"I don't jump curbs," he says.
"The derailleur says otherwise."
Bennett watches the exchange, something faint and unreadable softening at the edges of his expression, like he is taking in a language he didn't grow up speaking but understands anyway.
After the kid leaves, wheeling the bike with exaggerated caution, Bennett turns back to me.
“You’re good with them. The kids who come in.”
“They’re easy. They just want their bikes to work.”
“Most people want complicated things.”
“Most adults do. Kids are honest about what they need.”
He is quiet for a moment. His hand drifts toward his pocket, that familiar motion I have seen him make a hundred times. But this time, he pulls out the medal. St. Christopher, worn smooth, edges softened from years of his thumb tracing it without thinking.
“She would have liked you,” he says. “My mother.”
I do not ask how he knows. The certainty in his voice makes the question unnecessary. “You think so?”
“She always said I needed someone who would not let me bulldoze them.” He turns the medal slowly in his palm. “Those were her exact words. Bulldoze.”
“Accurate.”
“I know.” His gaze stays on the medal for a beat too long before shifting to me. “I used to think I showed it to you because you deserved to see it. The truth. The thing I kept hidden.”
A small exhale. “That is not why.”
“Why then?”
“Because keeping it hidden from you felt wrong. Like I was lying.”
The weight of that settles between us, quiet and heavy in a way neither of us moves to break. I step closer and close his fingers around the medal, the same way I did in the shop doorway weeks ago. Only this time, I do not let go right away. My hands stay around his, steadying, holding.
“You are not lying anymore,” I say.
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
His eyes drop to our hands. “What were you lying about?”
“That I did not need this.” I swallow, then force the truth into something simple enough to survive saying out loud. “You. Any of it. I told myself the shop was enough. That I could want things as long as they only belonged to me. As long as I earned them alone.”
“And now?”
“Now I am eating your expensive croissants and letting you hold my ladder.” A faint breath of a laugh that does not quite make it all the way out.
I gesture toward the expansion, the new shelving, the space that feels like a possibility I have avoided naming for years.
“I built this. The loan. The plans. All of it. But you are still here. And that does not feel like a contradiction anymore.”
He sets the medal on the counter beside the someday jar. Not inside it. Just there, like it has always belonged in the same orbit.
“I want to be here,” he says. A pause. “Want help, or want me to listen?”
I look at him. “What?”
“You asked me that last week. When I kept trying to solve something you had not asked me to fix.” A slight shrug, almost self-conscious. “I am trying it on.”
Something shifts in my chest, not breaking, just opening space where there was none before.
“Listen,” I say. “For now, just listen.”
So he does. He takes the stool behind the counter while I close out the register, sweep the floor, and shut off the lights in the back. He doesn’t check his phone. Doesn’t comment. Just watches, steady and unhurried, like he’s decided there’s nowhere else he needs to be.
We leave together.
The street is quiet in the early evening, franchise storefronts on either side already dark. My shop sits between them, lights off now but still holding the shape of everything that happens inside it.
“Same time Thursday?” he asks.
“I’ve got a repair scheduled at five.”
“I’ll bring dinner.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” He reaches for my hand, fingers threading through mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “That’s what I keep trying to explain. I want to. Not because it’s strategic. Not because I get anything out of it. Just because wanting things doesn’t feel like a trap anymore.”
I study him for a second, then squeeze his hand. “That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I’m practicing.”
We stand there on the sidewalk, hands still linked, the city settling into evening around us. A delivery truck rumbles somewhere a few blocks over. Life is moving on like it always does, indifferent and continuous.
“I’m keeping it,” I say quietly. “The baby. I know we’ve talked about it, but I want you to hear me say it again. This is what I choose.”
“I know.”
“And I’m choosing you. Not because I need you. Not because the contract said anything about forever. Just because you held my ladder and didn’t tell me how to drill.”
That earns him a laugh, real and unguarded, like it slips out before he can catch it. “That’s your measure?”
“It’s the only one that matters.”
His free hand lifts to cup my face, thumb brushing slowly along my cheekbone.
“I’m choosing you, too. For the record. The official, documented record.”
“There’s no document.”
“There should be. I’m excellent at documents.”
A faint smile tugs at me despite everything. “You’re getting better at this.”
“At what?”
“Shutting up.”
He kisses me then. Soft. Unhurried. Right there on the sidewalk between the franchise storefronts and the shop my father left me.
When he pulls back, his eyes stay on mine. Clear. Present. Unflinching.
“Dinner Thursday,” he says. “And I’ll bring the good chips.”
“The vending machine ones?”
“I know a guy.”
That pulls a laugh out of me, sudden and real in the quiet street. “A chip guy. Of course you do.”
He doesn’t smile like it’s funny. He smiles like it’s easy to make happen.
He walks me to my door, the one that leads up to the apartment above the shop. The apartment where I once slept on the floor because there wasn’t anything else, where I counted every penny and promised myself I would outlast everything.
I’m still here. Still standing. But outlasting doesn’t feel like the right word anymore.
At the door, he kisses me again. This one is slower. He keeps his hand at the small of my back, steady, anchoring without pressure.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
“Tomorrow.”
He waits until I’m inside before he leaves.
From the window, I watch his car pull away. The streetlight catches the roof for a second before he disappears down the road. I stay there longer than I need to, just looking at the shop below.
New shelving lines the front windows now. The register counter sits exactly where it should be. Next to it, the someday jar. Beside it, his medal.
Chosen, I think. Not saved. Not rescued. Not managed.
Chosen.
I hum three bars of that song, the one from the record in his kitchen. Quiet, off-key. The way I always do when I’m not fully paying attention to myself.
Somewhere across the city, in a penthouse kitchen overlooking half the world, I imagine he’s humming it too.