Page 89 of Knot Your Sugar Rush
I plate the pieces and we eat with our fingers, humming in unison as the crisp edges give way to soft, saturated centers.
“It’s very important you keep me alive,” Jamie says, licking honey from his thumb, “so I can keep eating this.”
“That’s the plan,” Dane says, not entirely joking.
We do a second round “purely for science,” and then Theo steals the pan from me before I can get ambitious and involve salt or citrus.
“Later,” Dane says gently. “Keep it simple for your first day of not doing everything. You’re still recovering, which is why we’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
“Bossy,” I tell him.
“Hydratingly bossy,” Jamie murmurs.
Theo shakes his head. “New rule: anyone who says ‘hydrate’ does ten push-ups.”
“Terrible rule,” Jamie says, appalled. “Strike it from the minutes.”
“What minutes?” I ask, laughing.
“The ones in my mind,” he says, tapping his temple. “Very official.”
***
Rain arrives after lunch, soft first, then steadier, then patient. It turns the green outside luminous, dials the safehouse light down to amber. We pull the cushions from the bunks and build a sprawl on the floor by the fireplace—blankets and pillows and the “very official minutes” notebook Jamie claims to own (it’s just a folded paper with a terrible sketch of Theo labeled “Sergeant Tea”).
We read. Or try to. Theo pretends not to watch when my eyes drift closed with a book facedown on my chest; he just tucks the blanket higher around my shoulders and returns to his map notes like he didn’t just give me another reason to trust him. Dane sets up a small maintenance station for boots and quietly works balm into the leather, hands steady, eyes half-lidded with focus. Jamie asks me for three increasingly ridiculous words and then spins the worst short story I’ve ever heard on purpose: “There once was a valiant pickle, a melancholy lighthouse, and a bear with a law degree—”
“You’re fired,” Theo says from the floor without looking up.
Dane’s mouth kicks at the corner. “Bear wins the case.”
“Obviously,” Jamie says. “Bear always wins.”
I think of Zae the way you think of someone in a room you left only minutes ago—their hand still warm in yours. I flip open her notes again and run my finger down a margin where she scribbled “we’ll do this if we have to swim.” I don’t realize I’m smiling until Dane glances up from his work and mirrors it back, small and solid, like a companion set on a windowsill.
“Tell me something about her,” Theo says into a lull, eyes on the ceiling, hands tucked behind his head.
“Zae?” I ask, even though I know.
“Mm.”
“She… refused to measure vanilla,” I say, laughing a little. “Said life was better when it tasted like ‘oops.’ And she could whistle through her teeth so loud the dog three doors down lost his mind.”
Jamie lights up. “You can’t make a promise like that and not deliver. Can you whistle like that?”
“No,” I admit. “But I can shake metal bowls together and make a noise that sends children into fits.”
“We’ll add that to the show,” Theo says, earnest. “When the shop opens. Demo days.”
The shop. The word lands gentle this time, not like a stone. “I want to hang a new bell over the door,” I say, half to myself. “Handmade. The kind that doesn’t ding so much as sing.”
“I’ll find one,” Dane says, and his voice makes it sound less like an offer and more like a certainty about the shape the future can take.
The rain slows. I don’t know when it happened; I just notice the quiet arriving like a bird that chooses your railing as a place to rest. The windows are silver with it. The world smells rinsed clean.
“Walk?” Jamie asks, eyebrow arched.
Theo and I look at his leg, then at each other, then at Dane.
