Page 6 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls (Kissing At Work #2)

If Skye had expected a follow-up, more back and forth about her position at the artist collective and any other antics from her customers, she’d be gravely disappointed.

The search resumed—more sifting around, shadows bending from the flashlight.

For once, she wished she’d left her twine on a tree to show how far she’d gone.

After so long, everything looked the same.

Just as she’d lost hope and feared going the opposite direction, the gorgeous sound of metal jingled from the city woman’s hand. She held Skye’s keyring out on a pointer finger. “Let this be a lesson to you.”

Skye could hug her. Instead, she spoke her gratitude as appropriate for a stranger search party of two. “Thank you, I can’t believe—thank you. You’re my savior.”

The face Skye received hadn’t been smiling all that much, though it’d turned hostile within seconds, half-concealed by shadows and jet-black hair. It implored forgiveness, but for what?

Walking back grew uncomfortable, where Skye mentioned, “I lost my keys foraging for blueberries. That’s—that’s why I’d been out here.”

She answered in a vaguely agitated sigh. Pretty rude, though she owed Skye nothing. This had been out of a sort of arrogant altruism that saved Skye’s ass.

When they reached their vehicles, Skye sank her car key in, and the jolt of the unlocking mechanism was music to her ears. “There we go. And not a murderer in sight.”

The woman had already dipped into her car, equally sleek and flush with the darkness around them. “Stay safe.”

Something acute and troubling shallowed Skye’s breathing. Her heroine would tear off into the night, passing through to more exciting, cosmopolitan environments than Yielding with its old buildings and foraging patches. “May I have your name?”

The car started in a soft hum. Before drawing her window up, she replied, “Celene.”

Skye’s goosebumps made a comeback, and intrigued and energized alike, she threw her knapsack into the backseat and hit the ignition.

Nothing stopped her from trailing Celene’s car, if only for a few minutes, until they diverged.

She pulled longingly from her metal water tumbler.

No music—just her breathing and the smooth engine’s hum.

Celine? No, Seline. Maybe Selene. The alternatives pooled in the mystique of her moody roadside savior. She’d encountered coworkers like that in New York and Philly before she’d moved back to her hometown. Some entitled, self-involved. Skye avoided them whenever possible.

Then, why was she reminding herself not to ride Celine(?)’s bumper?

Crossing into Yielding, she expected the car to zoom straight through.

It didn’t. And soon, a fear of missing out turned into a fear of unintentionally following.

Stalker territory. Her mind waged a war between praying for Seline(?) to go on a different path and needing to know her destination.

However, as Selene(?) turned into Lake Harrier Reserve— Skye’s community—she chose to heed the growing curiosity.

Or Celine(?) could be trying to escape Skye and made that hard left to lose her. Shit, she didn’t mean for this to happen.

They passed old and new constructions. Lawns divided by Canadian hemlocks and vinyl fences.

Toaster houses with their distinct pop-up structures, angular A-frame cabins, ranch-style homes like hers, and neat yet very suburban cookie-cutters.

Regardless of this community’s size and variation, everyone could tell when something was out of place.

Like Seline(?) pulling off onto Goldfinch Lane.

And that was when Skye’s heart stopped. As well as her SUV. Smack dab in the middle of the street.

She stared, almost wishing for a different outcome. In any case, the car went dark in a driveway Skye hadn’t set foot on in forever.

Celene . With a C and three Es.

Skye got home, accessed through her private entrance, and tumbled onto the couch under her loft bed, expelling what little breath she had left. While she never forgot a face, being stranded on a dark back road had compromised that skill.

Because she knew Celene.

From twenty-five years ago.

A slow smile crawled across Skye’s lips. Her friend returned.

A harsh flood of sunlight accompanied Skye’s buzzing phone alarm in a distinctly hot, overstimulating wake-up call. In the forty minutes of her shower and morning rituals, that dash of hopefulness about Celene fizzled to unpleasantly warm doubt.

Celene probably didn’t remember Skye. A very strong possibility considering they’d been preteens the last time she’d watched Celene’s family’s car depart, turning off the street and essentially going to another realm altogether.

They were as unknown to one another today as they’d been last night, cloaked in rural darkness.

From ages eight to eleven, Skye and Celene spent their summer days together.

Roaming the woods, entire afternoons playing by the lake.

Celene had an air about her that made her feel years ahead of their shared age.

Self-awareness as well as a quiet fire. Skye smiled to herself, remembering how Celene used to keep her dark hair in a fishtail braid that reached her butt.

Once, a neighborhood boy yanked it, and Celene cussed him out so expertly, Mr. Meyer sprinted from his porch to scold them.

Skye’s memories played vividly, the dams into those summers broken.

Celene would read interesting parts of hardcover books aloud while Skye hunted for whimsically shaped rocks or lay on a tree branch, visualizing the scenes.

One time, after getting snagged in a super thorny bush, Skye rebraided Celene’s hair into a three-piece twist, adorning it with smooth aster.

Celene had shown it off to her mother, she loved it so much.

“Skye, come get these boxes!” Luce’s distinct, pitchy voice blasted from the intercom installed next to her desk. It shook her back to her fuzzy rug; her toes had curled on their own.

“On it,” Skye chirped, thumbing the mic button. That whole loft setup maximized her space to better mirror the nifty complexes she’d grown used to for her career stay in New York.

This suite used to belong to her parents, a massive add-on when they combined households with Skye’s grandparents. Post college, it’d been handed off to Skye and she’d done away with its beaded doorway, kept some of their wall ornaments, transforming it into a beloved hideaway.

The natural wood interior, custom bay window, and all her earthly possessions stored in agreeable disarray gave Skye the illusion of being on her own. Living alone wasn’t an across-the-board adult requirement, but she missed that independence in the city.

Skye donned her ochre messenger bag and left her room, padding down the long hallway rug with the floral ridges. She noticed one of its corners beginning to curl, thinking on how she’d correct that.

“You came home late last night,” Luce said from the stove, plating an omelet piled with seared peppers. “Did you have a date?”

Dates? In the meagre sapphic population of Yielding? “No. Where are those boxes?”

“By the door. Get your breakfast.”

The kitchen could be bigger—June offered to give them a quote on knocking down the bar and opening the space up, but Luce wasn’t having it.

She shuffled her slippers over vintage tiles patterned with interwoven sunflowers, folding the omelet onto two thick slabs of rye from Yielding Bread. Just how Skye liked it.

After ripping off a square of foil, Skye bent to kiss her grandmother on the cheek in greeting.

Over the decades, Luce developed a bit of a hunch.

She was still spry, speeding to the thirty-gallon aquarium to shake brine to her beloved Pearl Gourmanis.

Named Phish and Swindle—inspired by her most-watched show, Vengeance: Retired , a procedural drama about a vigilante group of seniors avenging scam victims. It played in the background on the mounted television.

“Where were you, then?” Luce asked, washing her hands in the sink. She swatted Skye away to wrap the sandwich primly within the aluminum. “Out with June?”

Skye treaded carefully, not unused to this fixation. Luce would probably throw a party when Skye found a girlfriend; she’d begun asking her rec center pals if they knew any lesbians. “I went foraging and got sidetracked. Was thinking of making blueberry muffins.”

Luce smiled solemnly, nodding white, tightly coiled hair in a neat cut. The younger crowd complimented it often. “The box marked with a purple X should go out front. The red X box is backup inventory. I autographed them all.”

Relieved, Skye scooped up the sandwich and fit it into her bag. Explaining the run-in with Celene would only complicate matters. Plus, they lived in a chatty community—info on a car in the yard of a rarely visited house would make its way to Luce’s ears.

Skye passed by the table once meant for dining.

Instead of the standard plates and placemats, the long oak table held various metal nippers, trowels, scattered beads, and trays of mosaic squares.

The nearly finished showpiece in the center was a custom order for a lady in Tucson, if Skye remembered correctly.

Luce’s projects often overlapped. Next, she’d work on festival pieces while finishing up a three-piece relief set for Chromatique Flair Magazine .

Skye toed on her shoes by the door before unfolding a dolly to stack the boxes. Her grandma typically didn’t overload them, but that bottom one took Skye’s breath away. The contents lightly rattled as she tilted them up on the dolly’s wheels.

When people asked Skye how it felt to be related to a highly acclaimed mosaicist, Skye leaned toward ‘warm,’ ‘liberating,’ and ‘colorful.’ Lucille Florentine often strayed outside the norm, preferring anyone to address her as her mononym, Luce, finding people’s fumbling over the respectable “Mrs.” or “Ms.” for a woman over 80 too clumsy.

Skye loved it—she grew up in a Black household that encouraged eclectic expression.

And Luce lived moderately by choice, regardless of the prices she invoiced for her elaborate creations, like the showpiece—a three-foot mosaic vase easily in the thousands.

A decade ago, Skye’s parents highlighted Luce’s art on their social media, catapulting her reach.

Her custom orders remained in backlog until the winter of next year.

Thus, the family acquired a shop at the local artisan collective. There, her smaller pieces could be sold locally at Luce’s Mosaic Wonderland, where Skye managed.

Granddad Walter once held that job, as Luce’s most enthusiastic supporter. Until he died almost two years back, the untimely result of a third stroke. Skye glanced at his old study. Pristine with his chair, wall-to-wall bookcases, and interesting wares she couldn’t touch.

Seriously—Luce had a neighbor build a 24-inch gate at the doorway. No accidental wandering there.

“See you this evening,” Skye huffed, carting this haul out the door.

Luce met her in the foyer to pass a second foiled sandwich. “Thalia’s in today, yes? Give her this one. No cheese, no salt, no flavor. Her usual.”

Skye snorted, unsnapping her bag for Luce to bundle it in. “Thanks. I’ll be back right after work.”

“Hold on, now. I have a life.” Luce made a show of crossing her arms, lifting nonexistent eyebrows.

“I’ll be playing cards with the girls at Janetta’s house.

If you insist on getting home that soon—” She waved into the house.

“Carl from the courier service brought a new shipment of a couple thousand tesserae. Sort them by color.”

Between keeping up with the shop and her grandma’s endless tasks, especially post-Granddad, Skye was in for an evening of multicolored monotony. “I’ll get on that.”

Luce patted Skye’s shoulder, then shuffled back to her table while the forensics expert discussed a dead stockbroker on the flatscreen.

Skye hefted the boxes into the back of the SUV, shaking her head at Luce’s suspicions about a dating life. Amused and a smidge gloomy, she shoved the dolly in afterwards and shut the trunk. “I have a date with two thousand ceramic pieces,” Skye murmured, backing out of their driveway.

She chose a different route, slightly off her usual path, only to pass Celene’s house again. Car still there; Skye hadn’t dreamt it up.

Skye went on to work, her mind on tiny purple flowers in dark hair.