I reach across the table and hold her hand. This is a simple gesture. It’s not sex. It’s not the kiss. It’s just presence. Just choosing to touch her across this small table in her empty bakery when she’s scared and I’m terrified and neither of us has any certainty about what comes next.
She turns her hand over in mine like she’s checking whether it’s real. Like she needs to feel the warmth in my palm to believe this is happening.
“You don’t have to pick today,” I say.
“What if I wait too long and miss the deadline?”
“Then you miss it. Then you renegotiate. Then you make a new choice based on what’s actually true, not what you decided before you knew me.”
She looks at me. She’s crying a little, tears at the edges of her eyes, but she’s not hiding it.
I think about what I would say if I could say true things. If I could tell her that the bench I built is waiting. That Hank was waiting. That I’ve been waiting since the moment I saw her standing on Edna’s porch in borrowed socks, deciding whetherto stay or leave. That I’ve been waiting so long I stopped noticing I was waiting.
But that’s not the kind of thing you say to someone who’s trying to figure out if they can breathe in the same town as you.
“I’ll kiss you tomorrow the same way I kissed you the first time,” I say instead. “And we figure out what temporary means when we have to. For now, we… keep building.”
She doesn’t cry. She’s not that kind of person. But something in her settles, like she’s been holding her breath and finally decided it was safe to let it out.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Okay, we keep building. We figure it out. I don’t have to know the ending before we get there.”
“That’s very reasonable,” I say.
“Don’t get used to it,” she says. “I’m terrible at reasonable. I’m definitely going to panic and stress-bake at three AM again.”
“I know,” I say. This is also callback—her panic baking after the competition. Her fear made into carbohydrates. “That’s fine.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. It means you’re here and you’re terrified and you’re making salmon croissants that people want to buy. It means the bread bench I built is being used the way it was always supposed to be used. It means the property Hank asked me to maintain finally matters again. That’s the whole game right there.”
She squeezes my hand.
In the empty bakery, with the sun still up at six PM because we’re still in the endless daylight of an Alaska summer, I hold her hand across the table and we sit in the space where temporary hasn’t expired yet. Where she can stay without staying forever. Where I can let her leave without letting go entirely.
The salmon croissants sold out today. The ledger isn’t being written in anymore. Morris is probably chewing through another fence somewhere. Jasper is probably sleeping with his head on something that belongs to her. And Gabby is sitting across from me looking terrified and real and like she’s decided to build something with me, at least for the next chapter.
The light is still pale and golden. The day hasn’t ended. Somewhere in the workshop, a cabinet is waiting. Somewhere in this space between staying and leaving, we’re figuring out what building together means when the foundation is temporary.
I can work with that. I can work with temporary that stretches long enough to matter.
I can work with anything she builds if I’m building it with her.
I think about Hank. About whether he’s watching from wherever Hank watches from. About whether he can see that his promise got handed to the right person. That I kept the property intact long enough for someone to make it matter. That I built a bench and waited, and the thing I was waiting for arrived in heels and a sundress, terrified and trying to hide it.
Hank believed in this. In this place. In this moment.
Maybe wherever he is, he knows.
The sun is circling the horizon. It’s not going to set for hours. And in the golden light, holding her hand across a small table, I think maybe this is what permanent looks like when you’re afraid to use that word. Maybe this is what love looks like when it comes with an expiration date you’re both too scared to acknowledge.
Maybe Hank knew something about promises that I’m only just beginning to understand. That they’re not about forever. They’re about the space between now and later, where real things happen.
Maybe this is enough.