Page 121 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls

“The house will be mine?”

It wasn’t lakeside. The draft hadn’t been resolved. The fireplace needed updating. It could use a sunroom.

But Yielding’s stores were charming, and groceries fresh. Her nosy neighbors weren’t the worst. Zinnia invited her to next year’s Toast Festival. It had her hammock.

And Skye lived there.

Theatrically groaning, Elise pushed the file cabinet through Bryon’s rack of tan and gray clothes until it was flat against the closet wall, hidden and protected again. Then, she held a hand out. Celene took it without question, finding her footing.

Absently spinning the charging cable, Elise finally replied, “I’d shout it from the mountaintops, sis. That house isyours.”

30

Skye shook Vlad Newsom’s hand.

Because she’d bought a car.

She and Vlad took Honors English courses together, something they reminisced about as he walked her through financing options for a cute hybrid car in shimmery slate blue. He’d traded in his shaggy hair for the clean-cut look, though his gauges and neck tattoos showed his rock band roots. June used to live next door to him, often arriving at school with eye bags because he’d bang on drums all night—until the neighborhood imposed quiet hours, complete with fines.

Smiling at the memory, the legalese on Skye’s signed document squiggled into blurry shapes. Her concentration drifted somewhere else.

Because saying goodbye to Celene that Sunday afternoon felt…off.

Skye had entered the closing security code for the Vale house and locked the door. Clear, straightforward directions left by Celene, who—despite the trouble in her eyes—grasped Skye by the chin and delivered a parting kiss. More tender than her usual, a graze at the finish.

It’d lingered on Skye’s lips as she chauffeured the living fuchsia home. While sweet, Celene had poured a distressing tentativeness into it.

Celene hadn’t spoken their reality word back to her.

And it took until the next morning for Skye to wake from another nightmare, realizing her error, how she’d attributed Celene’s mood to the stress of the moment. While true, she’d significantly soured when Skye spoke their reality word.

Skye had voiced it to cut through the fog, to remind them to stop and reassess.

But when Skye showered in her bathroom suite, she revisited the sequence. First, as herself, which jostled her heart, as uncomfortable as it’d been. Then, she detoured outside her sensitive perspective, choosing to imagine everything from Celene’s point of view.

And that did more than jostle. It barged, slammed, flattened anything pulsing inside her because—wait?—

Could the way she’d said ‘Dragonfruit’ come off…controlling?

That would explain why Celene had withdrawn further, to silence followed by strict rule-giving. Sure, the worry about her father exacerbated it, butshit. Skye mishandled something so precious to them—something meant to open them up within mutual, protective honesty.

At that moment, their safe word didn’t feel safe.

She’d pressed her back to the slippery tile wall, regretting her expansive imagination for the first time in her life. But Skye wouldn’t retreat within herself. She let this knowledge wash over her, hot and clarifying.

If she and Celene were going to be good to each other, frank honesty deserved its companion—radical empathy.

After that, she’d dried off and nodded through Luce in her face thirty minutes later, firing off a speech about blue and orange X’s on four boxes.

By Friday morning, Byron had been home for days. Good news as far as Skye was concerned about Celene, though the gorgeous photos she’d sent of them as children further upset her about being absent in a time of need.

Instead of driving to Yield for Art, Skye had called out. Thalia held down the fort, along with Zander and Mei, his newly onboarded art school friend.

To break away from her grandmother, having her own space were tantamount—staying with Celene persuaded her. She appreciated the close bond with Luce, but that didn’t need to be a lifelong living situation.

Another push towards her signing on the dotted line in Vlad’s office was Thalia’s courtyard gallery showing. It’d come together beautifully. As someone high on the quirkiness scale, Thalia’s furnishings, flowery décor, and balanced piles of geodes enhanced the space in a way only she could pull off.

It would’ve been more entertaining to divulge the fake-to-legit dating origin with Celene by her side, flanked by a pink-haired Thalia’s Neo-Fauvist oil paintings. But if Celene could confront her stubborn father, Skye could survive giving a rundown to Thalia and Larkin while nibbling on grilled cremini mushrooms. Her friends were puzzled at first, but ultimately amused since Skye and Celene’s chemistry had been too strong to accept any other result.