Page 71 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls (Kissing At Work #2)

Before long, she took laps around the table, detailing her process and opening the floor for suggestions from Luce and Aisha as the savory-sweet aroma of dinner fed the air.

A part of Skye hurt for Celene’s situation, but it ebbed just as quickly, because sharing this family with her would stand as a present on its own.

Skye Florentine, the debut mosaicist, demonstrated the bending parts of her white Trillium, so glad she’d locked her keys out of the SUV.

Skye beat out the sun today.

In the pleasant yellow glow of her now unsecretive studio, she’d wrapped her art pieces in paper and towels, giving them the extra fragile treatment, regardless of the short trip from there to Celene’s house.

Actually, no. Skye and Celene’s house.

Hours earlier, Skye had gotten sidetracked.

She’d hooked the living, swaying fuchsia above her work desk and spent half an hour sketching into the notebook gifted by her girlfriend.

A wonder, how it’d slipped her mind to use a true source for the Forever Fuchsia, she’d considered again, dabbing a damp paintbrush tip to blend a brilliant magenta onto her drawing.

Closing the book upon a robin feather, she committed a minute to a wistful perusal of the angled, intimate space.

She’d miss this. Though that wouldn’t stop her from moving on—creativity sprang from anywhere, and if the setting had ample ventilation, she’d utilize it.

The extraordinarily window-forward blue room in her new home topped all the other choices.

“I won’t paint over the blue, either,” she whispered to herself, securing items within cabinets so they wouldn’t rattle around.

The moving process wouldn’t be the most organized, but Skye loved the thought of transporting what she cared about most first: anything in her trap door space, mosaics by Luce on her wall, Zinnia’s signed magazine, the ‘Bready for Love’ photo, and the seasonal resin bowls.

While packing some clothes (because those would probably be important), a sound that once made Skye jump to action ignited a grin instead.

“Come out here,” Luce’s voice boomed from the intercom. Straight to the point, no filler.

Throwing on a hoodie to combat the chill of the greater part of the house, Skye walked the plush path down the hallway, silent upon the long rug. The corners hadn’t curled again. Though Skye would be around to correct them if they wilted up anymore.

True to habit, Luce had gotten dressed in her outfit for the day already, save for her slippers. Allowing Skye’s good morning kiss to her temple, Luce pushed a cup of coffee forward. “How long have you been up?”

Skye knew to find a small clock on the counter. 6:29 a.m. “At least five hours.”

“I could barely sleep, either,” her grandmother mused, pouring oat milk into her own mug. “I saw the light on under your door.”

“I’ll be right down the street.” Skye patted the hand Luce didn’t notice she’d been clutching so hard, the milk carton bent. Her stomach clenched similarly.

“Friends, a social life, family, a career...” Luce smiled at nothing. “I’m blessed.”

Blessed . Luce rarely used terms that hinted at her abandoned religious background, so Skye knew something serious awaited them. “You are.”

“Come.”

Leaving her coffee behind, she tailed after the shuffling that’d become a part of the acoustics of her living experience. She soaked it all in.

Yet more confusion than anything met her when Luce stopped at Walter’s study.

Skye waited. Was there a point? Gazing into the room, longing she’d never gotten used to hit her, and for that, she was thankful to get distance. Keeping Granddad’s room pristine still made her uncomfortable. It’d once encouraged passion, a lens into learning new things.

Her grandmother wasn’t smiling. Not frowning, either. A placid expression, the only hint of anything deeper seen in the light gloss of her dark eyes.

Luce raised an arm, a simple gesture over the gate. “Go on.”

Uh.

Skye swore she’d hallucinated; maybe she’d fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of packing. Because up would be down, east became west before Lucille Florentine ever, ever gave her spacey granddaughter permission to?—

“Step on over. Before I change my mind.”

Believing her, Skye patted at her hair’s silk wrap in a standoff between hesitation and anticipation. She pressed her bare feet into the cushy texture of Granddad Walter’s rug—this time without breaking house rules, lacking any residual guilt.

Pacing the perimeter of the room Luce preserved for two years, she sniffed for shadows of her grandfather’s scent.

But time had overridden that to a still, neutral scent with notes of adhesive, matching the rest of their home.

She touched every spine of outdated encyclopedias, of a globe that yellowed years before a stroke had been a concept without experience.

Throat feeling dustier than the room itself, Skye commented, “You’ve kept it spotless. ”

“Walter does, too. If he’s somewhere —” Luce gestured to the ceiling, to the space around her. “Out there. In case he wants to visit, he knows his study is here. Just like he left it.”

Skye wiped her cheek, watching the gentle, rhythmic pendulum on the grandfather clock. “I never considered that.”

“I know he’s gone, child. I grieve strongly, but I’ve accepted it.” Luce lifted her mug, then thought better of it. “Pain doesn’t have a timeline.”

The relief tingled through Skye’s muscles, her chest. She hadn’t realized that’d been a pain point of the move until she met Luce’s eyes that watered, too. “I understand.”

God, could she ever understand. Exceptionally, now.

Far, far in the future, she could lose Celene, and she was sure she’d embody absolute devastation. Luce wouldn’t have anything on that. It felt uncomfortable, even, to cry harder, mixing that hypothetical grief with that of her grandparents’.

These ties bonded them all: true loves and the inevitable. Celene probably gained catharsis, an intimate approach to these subjects, from her death-centered books.

Stalling for only a moment, Skye wiggled into Walter’s high-backed lounge chair.

It’d been a find from a vintage secondhand shop.

“Practically mint condition,” he’d tell every visitor, in the same breath naming all the spots he’d repaired to give it that “like new” finish.

Skye used to laugh about it then, and today, she still smirked.

She pulled at each desk drawer as she’d gained confidence in her exploration.

Revealing boxes of paperclips and pushpins, fountain pens.

A half-used tube of beeswax hand balm. Shiny tesserae sliding out of corners, clinking into each other.

She smiled at a stack of outdated magazines, Chromatique Flair prominently on top.

A metal magnifying glass. Spools of twine.

A mostly empty tin of pomade, which she breathed in with her eyes closed, engrossed by the scent she’d been searching for.

Her hands shook as she uncovered the last item that stood out.

“Until I heard your story yesterday, I thought Walter had been holding out on some talent.” Luce lifted a shoulder at Skye’s fallen jaw.

“It’d been sitting in the dresser next to his bed, tucked behind tissues like a little secret.

I put it in the bottom drawer out here, angry about him keeping it from me. Now, I know.”

The daisy. The mosaic daisy she’d haphazardly fused together.

Skye figured it’d been disposed of in the wake of clearing him from the bedroom, after he’d taken his last breath.

Seeing it in the present day, it wasn’t as lopsided as she remembered.

The piece she’d used for the yellow disk floret in the center gleamed like the citrine stones Thalia sneaked in her messenger bag.

“Can I keep it?” Skye asked, wishing she had her phone to snap a photo.

Luce’s eyes glazed over in a quick thinking session, a hint of apology in her, “No. That daisy links you and Walter’s bond. It deserves to stay in his possession.”

Skye nodded despite her heart plunging. “Understood.”

“Instead...” Her grandmother sipped her coffee as she peered around the study in almost fitful scrutiny. It stoked fear, like she’d regretted letting Skye in. Though what followed cushioned the blow. “Daisy stays, but you can keep something else in here. Within reason.”

A keepsake? From here?

Unlike the careful slowness of the rest of her visit, Skye spun in the chair as she had in her early teen years, back when her biggest worries were exam results and if she’d finally find a girl who loved bugs as much as she did.

Skye did not find that. Good thing she’d evolved.

With her heel, she slowed herself to her choice. It spoke to her so loudly, she’d argue if Luce denied her.

Licking her lips, Skye announced, “His record player. It deserves to be used.” The more she thought about it, the more sure her voice rang out. “With the records, too. I bet this is how Granddad and I sorted through the tiles so quickly—his music.”

Luce’s chuckle secured that record player even before she verified, “You have a point. For the sake of sorting faster, it’s yours.”

She crossed the gate to help Skye carefully extract the flat, black-and-silver player. And Walter’s records—all entertainers who’d shaped him as a music lover. Skye couldn’t wait to delve into his mind, into his tastes again.

Palpable anxiety shook Luce’s directions as she placed it in a box cushioned with cloth napkins, back out in the living room. “Take this straight to the house, no stops.”

Skye drummed her fingers on the see-through bin of records, eager to throw on some pants and take it that very minute. “I will.”

“I’ll come with you when you do it. To make sure you know how to use it.”

“Of course.” Skye glanced at Swindle and Phish as she wrapped an arm around Luce’s shoulders. She’d miss seeing their metallic fins and spotty scales every day, too. Choked up again, she pressed her cheek to Luce’s head. “I love you, Grandma.”

They’d gotten so used to Luce’s mononym, her name. So that reminder of their relation, of a generation revering what came earlier must’ve gotten to Luce.

“I love you, too,” Luce rasped in a low, mournful voice, hooking an arm around Skye’s waist. “Down the street. You’re right down the street.”

Kissing Luce’s soft, coily hair, Skye smiled.

In this fog of emotion, she could tell Luce hadn’t conceived another benefit of this move. In addition to Skye’s continuous attention, she’d gained another confidante in Celene, who loved her company. More family to keep everything running, everyone included.

They held each other long after, Luce reminiscing on Granddad as the birds sang outside. Skye traveled between listening and floating off in a haze of comfort, wondering if she and Celene’s love would make a similarly beautiful impression on Yielding. Or New York. Anywhere.

As the two of them whipped up breakfast sandwiches and coffee for her parents, Skye could only hope.