“Chef, I would never have guessed,” Kia said.
“They’re by Janice Domingo.” Sullivan looked put upon. “She’s one of the best painters in Costa Rica.”
“I mean this.” Kia picked up the bra as Sullivan led her to the staircase. “You just throw your clothes off as you go upstairs.”
“I didn’t expect to have a roommate.”
Sullivan blushed, and Kia remembered how much she’d loved to make Sullivan blush or roll her eyes in exasperation. Then she remembered that she’d just touched Sullivan’s bra. She’d been dreaming about touching Sullivan’s body for years. Kia felt heat spread across her own face as she tried to quash the thoughts.
“Give it back.” Sullivan snatched the bra. “Are you going to stand here all day and critique my undergarments or can I show you to your room?”
She was reading Kia’s lustful thoughts. And while Kia might have made Sullivan blush a tiny bit, her own face was flaming with… it wasn’t quite embarrassment. Sullivan was teasing her. If she didn’t know better, she’d say Sullivan was flirting with her, but her ability to read women was abysmal, so probably not.
“It’s hand-wash, and it was drying,” Sullivan added. “Air-drying is an excellent way to conserve electricity.”
Sullivan led Kia upstairs and showed her to a guest room furnished in somber burgundy curtains and a four-poster bed with dark gray bedding. A rolltop desk filled one corner.
“Very lord of the manor,” Kia said.
“It was my grandfather’s study.” Sullivan’s voice was flat. “He spent a lot of time trying to protect the Bois. Those are his drawings.” She pointed to botanical drawings displayed in gold frames.
“I’m sorry,” Kia said as she stepped closer to the artwork.
“If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.”
Kia leaned in for a closer look at a photo of an old white man. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, careful not to bumpinto a vase resting on the desk. “What was your grandfather like?”
Sullivan walked over to the window, pushing up her sleeves as if she were getting ready to till the land with her grandfather. Kia stared at Sullivan’s tattoos. What did they mean? Who designed them? Kia wanted to trace the lines with her fingertips and then kiss her way up Sullivan’s inner arm until Sullivan shivered.
“He was an environmentalist,” Sullivan said without turning around. Then, as though the matter was closed, she said, “The bathroom is down the hall. Extra linens are in that closet. Make yourself comfortable. This evening let’s set some house rules.”
“I don’t thinkcomfortableandhouse rulesgo together,” Kia said.
“I don’t thinkmarriageandlawsuitdo either, but here we are.”
Kia hoped they’d go straight to the kitchen to talk, but Sullivan had scheduled a visit to an organic pickle distributor in Washington. Kia spent the day driving around Portland with Deja getting footage for her socials. It just felt exhausting. That night, Kia set up her laptop at the kitchen island and waited for Sullivan to finish admiring Washingtonian pickles. Kia replied to fans’ messages as she waited. Messaging with people online used to be one of the best parts of her online life. Now Deja and AI did most of it. She felt disconnected from the people she had once thought of as her flock. After she’d sent as many messages as she could muster the energy for, she opened Google and continued her ongoing search for the 1968 Wind Searcher Pop-Up Pavilion. There was one for sale in Iowa, but that was too far to go right now, and she shouldn’t buy something frivolous.
She was relieved when Sullivan finally came home.
“How were the pickles?”
“The farmer has found some brilliant ways to use nematodes to target soilborne larvae of cucumber beetles.”
“That is so not appetizing.”
“Neither are pesticides.”
Sullivan looked so serious, Kia wanted to snatch the beanie cap off her head and ruffle her hair, but that would go over about as well as showing up on Sullivan’s lawn with a marriage proposal.
“Ready to go over the house rules?” Kia asked. “I’ve just been chopping raw meat on the marble counters.”
Sullivan rolled her eyes.
“Set anything on fire?”
“Your heart.” It flew out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She made that kind of too-obviously flirtatious comment to lots of people. She was joking. It didn’t mean anything.
Sullivan let out an equally too-obvious sigh.
