Kids. With You.

“You’re Avery.”

“Yes.”

“You were a snake when I left work.”

“I was a snake when I got here, too.” He sat up, holding the quilt against his chest. “I climbed your blanket. I changed after I got onto the bed.”

“You’ve done that before?”

“Never.”

I gripped the edge of the mattress. “Why now?”

“I wanted to hold you.” He looked down at his hands as if he was still getting used to having them. “Yesterday you kissed me, and even the vet could hear my heart. I thought I might have better luck telling you how I felt if I could talk.”

I remembered the towel. The tail around my sleeve. All those times I’d gone to the door and found him already there.

“What exactly were you trying to tell me?”

He took a breath. “I want to make a home with you. For us and our eggs.”

“Our what?”

“Kids,” he said. “With you.”

For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the old refrigerator clicking on. I appreciated its contribution. One of us needed to be doing something normal.

“You know you’re supposed to ask me to dinner first, right?”

Avery considered that. “Can I ask you to breakfast?”

I looked at the clock. I was supposed to have the morning off. My plans had consisted of laundry and a trip to buy more laundry detergent. I had a hard time imagining how I was supposed to follow through on any of that with the word *kids* still echoing around my bedroom.

“You can ask,” I said.

“Will you have breakfast with me?”

He looked as nervous as anybody I’d ever been asked out by. I was still holding the edge of the mattress. I loosened my grip.

“Yeah,” I said. “I will.”

I gave him sweatpants and a clean sweatshirt while I got dressed. The sleeves came up short, so he pushed them to his elbows like that was what he’d meant to do. Before we left, I pointed at the window. It was cracked an inch wider than I remembered leaving it.

“Is that how you got in?”

“Yes.”

“Next time, knock.”

He went still. “There’s a next time?”

I picked up my keys. I felt him waiting for an answer all the way to the door.

“I said knock,” I told him. “I didn’t say go away.”

The diner in town had a bakery case by the register and booths with cracked red vinyl seats. I’d been there once with Ben and had spent most of the drive back complaining that we hadn’t ordered dessert. Apparently I’d repeated the complaint in Avery’s hearing. Before I’d made it halfway through the breakfast menu, he had asked the server for a cinnamon roll, a slice of blackberry pie, and a chocolate cream puff.

“Which one’s yours?” I asked when the plates arrived.

He put all three in front of me.

“I wanted to see which one made you smile first.”

It was the pie. I was annoyed at myself for making it so easy to tell. I nudged the plate to the middle of the table and handed him a fork.

He took a bite, got a blackberry seed in his teeth, and looked personally betrayed. I laughed into my coffee. By the time I put the cup down, he was smiling at me.

“You can do that,” I said.

“Eat pie?”

“Smile.”

“I’ve been doing it for weeks.”

“You had an interesting way of showing it.”

“You looked at me every time.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I could argue with the price of three desserts before eight in the morning, so I did that instead. When the check came, Avery insisted he owed me for the pie because he’d eaten the last bite. I covered breakfast and told him he could get the next one.

Back at the institute, I parked behind the cottages and kept my hands on the wheel. Through the windshield I could see the greenhouse, its glass bright with the first clear patch of sky we’d had all week.

“Dr. Carter should know you can tell her what you want now,” I said. “Would you like to talk to her?”

Avery followed my gaze. “Will you be there?”

“If you want me there.”

He nodded. For the first time that morning, he looked more worried about somebody’s answer than I was about his questions. I turned off the car and waited with him until he was ready to get out.

On the walk back, he asked what time I got off the next day.

“Six,” I said. “Are you asking me out again?”

“I was going to ask if I could knock at six.”

“Six fifteen. I have to walk home.”

He took this under advisement. His hand brushed mine twice on the way to the greenhouse. The second time, I let my fingers catch his before either of us could pretend it was an accident.