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Sullivan stood in her living room. Nothing had moved since that afternoon.

Chenille throws still draped the sofa. Her grandfather’s books still lined the built-in bookshelves over the fireplace.

Her stereo was still queued up to the audiobook she’d been listening to.

But now the vaulted A-frame ceiling swallowed up the light from the table lamps, casting the room in gloom, like a mix between the Midnight filter and the Gritty filter on Insta.

(She couldn’t believe she remembered the names.)

She’d shooed Opal and Nina out after three hours of Nina trying to ply her with expensive tequila and Opal hugging Sullivan like a Little League coach comforting a losing player.

Spring rain like nothing she had seen before slashed her deck as though the world raged at Kia, Mega Eats, the board, the neighborhood, and, most of all, Sullivan.

She used to go to the neighborhood association meetings.

Before Aubrey’s unrelenting pursuit of social media content had eaten up every minute of Sullivan’s free time, Sullivan had been involved in the association.

She probably would have run for board president except Aubrey said it didn’t play well on Insta.

Food festivals slapped. Going to rugby games and doing charity cooking classes together served up sexy, sapphic couple.

There was no way to make board membership exciting.

And Sullivan let some of Aubrey’s hunger for likes pull her away from the causes she believed in and the community she wanted to serve.

For a while it had felt worth it. After all, she had Aubrey, the love of her life, what more did she need?

It turned out other things she needed included room to be herself, privacy, and a chance to live her values.

Sullivan would have heard about the sale if she’d been more involved.

She could have read the handwritten letter her grandfather wrote to the board the last time the board discussed selling, the letter that persuaded them to protect the land for fifty years.

That was her grandfather’s legacy. And Sullivan could have led guided tours of the forest, pointing out trillium and clues that pointed to bobcats gliding through the Bois.

She jumped as the wind knocked a pot of cilantro off her porch railing.

Who was she kidding? The world wasn’t mad at Kia or even at her.

Climate change had turned the patter of spring rain into a hurricane.

What did dear Miss Brenda used to say? Unleash the fury of a changing sky and then duck and hide!

Climate change brought about by a thousand causes, but tonight all she could see was a pile of single-use plastic mounting in front of her house.

A spark reflected in her living room window.

Sullivan turned to see what appliance had flashed in her kitchen, but the kitchen and living room rested in darkness.

Her living room looked out on a deck set a story above the garden, a lovely vantage point to observe deer and raccoons without disturbing their habitats.

There were no walking paths behind her house, as she had been painfully reminded when she’d stalked away from Kia, refusing to flinch even when a blackberry vine snagged her cheek like a fishhook.

The light grew closer. Maybe it was someone’s lost dog with an LED collar, but no, the way the shadows flailed around the flashlight said person .

Who would walk in this weather, let alone tangle with the armed and vindictive blackberries?

A tremor of fear interrupted her fork-ridden despair.

She checked the lock on the slider and then the front door.

The light got closer. She should call the police, but there’d be flooding all over the city.

The police would have to leave someone stranded in their second-story apartment so they could rush to Sullivan’s rescue, and then she would find out it was someone’s golden retriever.

Her backpack lived in a front closet. She was always ready for an impromptu hike in the Cascades or overnight backpacking trip near Camp Sherman.

When she was stressed, she’d go camping solo.

It was safer than people thought if you were prepared.

She pulled it out and grabbed a Nitecore spotlight that could light up a mountainside.

She’d never used it, but you had to be prepared when you were alone. God, she felt alone tonight.

She hurried to the window and turned on the spotlight. A person was lying on Sullivan’s low-water moss “lawn,” where they had obviously slipped. It was a girl. Probably a teenager who’d snuck out to smoke pot and gotten lost. Sullivan pulled open the slider, letting in a tidal wave of rain.

“Are you okay?” Her words got lost in the storm.

She dialed back the lumens on the Nitecore and shone her light on the girl. No, not a girl, a woman, with a glittery handbag lying in the mud beside her and dark hair streaming over her eyes. Sullivan hurried to the porch railing.

“Are you hurt?” She projected her voice.

“No, I’m just frickin’ wet! Fuck, it’s raining!”

The woman sat up. And the tableau all came together… or didn’t, because it was impossible that Kia was sitting in the mud in Sullivan’s backyard.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sullivan called. “Wait. I’ll come down.” Sullivan must be dreaming. “Hold on.” She headed for the front door.

Had Kia sat around the grange for hours waiting to stalk Sullivan in the rain?

“ What are you doing?” Sullivan said.

Kia looked so disheveled, Sullivan couldn’t be quite as mad at her as she wanted to be. She gave Kia a hand up.

“I wore Converse,” Kia said, as though the Converse—which might have had heels, Sullivan couldn’t quite tell in the mud—were at fault.

“That magic path only opens up for you.” The cold had gotten into Kia’s brain.

She wasn’t making sense. It didn’t have to be sub-zero to get hypothermia when you were this wet.

“There is no magic path. Come on.”

How could this soggy, unexplainable apparition be the woman who’d inspired Sullivan to push her craft to perfection?

Be her Kia Jackson? Sullivan stopped for a second.

Where had that thought come from? Not her Kia.

Just Kia fucking Jackson who never should have come back into her life.

Kia shook with the cold. Sullivan put an arm around Kia, willing her body heat into Kia’s side.

Kia leaned against Sullivan as Sullivan guided Kia around the house and up the front stairs, and sat her down on the bench in the foyer.

“You should get out of those wet clothes. I’ll get you something to wear. And then you’ll leave.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“You can talk while you wait for an Uber.”

Uber would take forever in this weather. Kia must have a car somewhere. Maybe Sullivan could drive her back to it.

“You made it look so easy.” Kia’s chattering teeth bit the words into barely discernible syllables.

“You just walked away into the woods, like a… an elf, an elk, a wood elf.” Coats, hanging on pegs behind the foyer bench, brushed Kia’s shoulder, and she jumped.

“There are probably a million snakes out there.”

“Did you hit your head when you slipped?”

“Fear of snakes is not a sign of hitting my head. I have a plan.”

Sullivan looked down at Kia fumbling with the buttons of her ridiculously shiny silver lamé jacket, her hands shaking too much to get purchase.

“I do not want your plan.”

“You—” Kia gave up on the buttons and tried to pull the jacket over her head. “Haven’t heard”—the stiff plastic caught on her elbows—“my plan.” She yanked the jacket down in defeat.

Kia looked up at Sullivan with wide, pleading eyes, ringed with smeared mascara.

Sullivan had forgotten the gold color of Kia’s eyes, like polished tigereye.

Sullivan knelt before her, undid the jeweled buttons of Kia’s jacket, and eased it off her shoulders.

She hung it up on one of the pegs. The back of the jacket read LET’S GET GOURMAZING! in glittery letters.

Sullivan shook her head.

“Kia Gourmazing . Really, Jackson?”

“It’s—” Kia’s teeth chattered. “A brand name.”

“Can I?” Sullivan gestured to Kia’s soaking blouse, an artsy number with tiny buttons Kia would never get undone if she couldn’t even get her jacket off.

Kia nodded. Sullivan undid the first button, careful not to look at Kia or let her fingers touch Kia’s skin, even through the fabric.

“I didn’t know you felt that way about me, Chef,” Kia said, teeth still chattering.

“I do not feel that way.” Sullivan stood up. “I have first aid training. If you have hypothermia, you need to get dry fast.”

Kia wriggled out of the blouse without undoing the remaining buttons.

How could Kia think Sullivan was looking at her like that?

Sullivan glanced at Kia, but only because Kia had planted the idea in her mind.

Kia had filled out since school, full breasts cupped by a translucent bra.

Little rolls softened her hourglass waist, although her belly was flat and muscular.

Suddenly Sullivan lost the ability to form words.

Kia was gorgeous, and her bra was so sheer spiders made webs more substantial.

Sullivan could see Kia’s nipples. Sullivan was thinking about Kia’s nipples while Kia was probably suffering hypothermia and hallucinating that Sullivan was an elk (or elf).

And for some unexplainable reason, Sullivan suddenly imagined warming Kia’s chilled lips with her own.

Sullivan’s body woke up in a way she hadn’t felt since before she and Aubrey broke up.

Opal was right. She did need to get out more, and not to the Oakwood Heights Neighborhood Association meeting.

“I was not.” She spun around so she couldn’t be accused of ogling Kia.

“Not what?” Kia asked, still breathless from the cold.

“Anything. Nothing. I was minding my own business. And who wears that bra in this weather?” That wasn’t appropriate; she realized that as soon as the words left her mouth.

She tried to fix her mistake, still not looking at Kia.

“A bra can be a significant source of warmth when layering for inclement weather. You missed a significant opportunity for forest preparedness.”

Sullivan turned around, keeping her eyes fixed on Kia’s golden gem eyes. Kia bowed her head. Was that a hint of a smirk visible behind the coils of Kia’s hair?

“Go clean yourself up.” Sullivan pointed to the hallway. “Shower’s down there. Don’t get mud on the carpets. They’re Turkish.”

“Thanks. By the way, I don’t want to be prepared for the forest.” Kia wrapped her arms around herself, hiding the translucent bra. “Ever. Again. I don’t do forest. I made an exception for you because I need a small favor. Really, it’s more like a favor to both of us.”

“You do remember that you ruined my life, like, six hours ago, right?”

Kia looked up at her innocently.

“What do you want, Kia?”

“Alice Sullivan, will you marry me?”