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Her dream sits between a coin laundromat and an abandoned, overgrown parking lot.
“It’s small,” says the landlord standing beside her. His business card is crumpled in her pocket somewhere—it reads Zhongli. He folds his hands behind his back like a man much older than him, squinting up at the building’s brick facade. “But I believe it could be quite cozy.”
In Lumine’s mind, it’s beyond cozy. It’s already hers. She pictures the wooden sign hanging above the jade green door— Celestia Coffee —her logo glistening on the glass. A flower bed, maybe, though she has never had much luck with keeping plants alive. Definitely a wind chime in the doorway so she’d never miss a customer. The longer she looks, the more it all unfurls like the reflection in a crystal ball. This is it. Without stepping a foot inside, she already knows it.
She draws closer and peers through the door into the open expanse beyond it, nothing yet but a great swathe of polished concrete floors. The glass is cold against her hands. December is here: the death of things. For her, the death of waiting.
“What do you think?” Zhongli asks. There’s something in his voice, not quite excitement, but something close enough.
Lumine backs up. A rare glint of winter sun catches the shimmering blue chassis of a bicycle locked to one of the racks around the corner. It’s like rediscovering a piece of clothing she forgot she owned. This meant something to her once, or at least to a version of her. If only she could remember which.
She asks Zhongli, “What’s upstairs?”
“An apartment,” Zhongli answers, casting a glance up at the second floor. “You won’t have to worry about the tenant. He’s quiet—a fashion designer, I think, so he’s not home often. You won’t even notice.”
Lumine’s lips form a half-smile. “Like working with a ghost, then.”
Zhongli coughs, amused. “Something like that.”
“I hope this ghost likes coffee,” Lumine says, and digs a pen from her purse. “I’ll take it.”
———
A week before the grand opening, the heat still isn’t working and the coffee shop’s walls are bare as a psych ward’s.
Lumine stands shivering in the middle of the floor, facing the back wall with her hands held up before her face like a camera frame. Peering through the square of her fingers, she considers her reading nook. Is it better if the bookshelf is angled into the corner, or flat against it? Maybe she should send the bookshelf back to the thrift store and opt for floating shelves instead—those are trending on Pinterest, at least. But does she want to look like she picked everything off of Pinterest? Lumine claws her hands into her hair and allows herself one moment—only one—to panic.
A knock on the door curtails her panicking, and she whirls to find a delivery man leaning against the glass. She’s shocked to find the sky behind him has turned the bluish-purple of falling night, the streetlights oozing light into the twilight gloom. Five minutes ago she could’ve sworn it was dawn.
The delivery man wheels a dolly stocked five boxes high inside the shop, a wave of coffee scent drifting past her nose as he does. Lumine goes to follow him, but the rhythmic clicking of bicycle gears makes her stop, pulls her eyes up.
She’s here, and then she’s not. She’s in a shitty studio apartment covered in cat hair, and he’s lying flat on his stomach on the broken couch, face smushed into the cushions, tattooed shoulder faced outwards. She traces the lines with her fingers first, then colors them in with a set of his niece’s markers. He doesn’t wash it off for days.
Back then he was laughing, or the sort of tiger chuff he did that was the closest he ever got to laughing. As they turn to her, his eyes are far from laughing now. It’s surprise, and then it’s shame.
“Xiao?” she says, her eyes flicking up towards the second floor, instantly connecting the dots. “You’re the one who—?”
His fingers slip against the handlebars of his bike; he readjusts, sliding it between the racks and clicking the lock home. “You must be busy,” he says automatically, his voice gruff. “I won’t bother you.”
“Wait. Stay,” she says before she can think about it, and he jolts as if the word has sent a current through him. “I…I just got my coffee beans, and I need someone to taste test. Would you help?”
She could be hallucinating it, but for a moment she catches the edge of an almost-smile. “I’ll be up all night if I have coffee now.”
Lumine laughs, propping the door open with her foot and motioning him into the light. “Perfect,” she says. “Then we can catch up.”
Then I can tell you all the things I never got to.
She wonders if he hears it, too.
———
Before her, it was a craft store. Then a thrift shop, smell of sawdust and mothballs, everything for a dollar. Then for a while it was nothing, an empty space that occasionally attracted squatters Zhongli inevitably had to chase out. Needless to say, it’s been months since Xiao has seen it like this—the floors so polished he can catch the vague blob of his silhouette in their surface, the windows glistening as if holding the starlight themselves. Above the wooden bar and the glass pastry display hangs a dangling array of green. Xiao reaches out, brushing one of the vines—plastic. As he thought.
He lingers in the center of the floor, watching his ex-girlfriend fuss at the counter, porcelain mugs clinking and hot water bubbling. Her hair has gotten longer, the blond almost white at the tips. She stands differently, too. He can’t quite figure it out. She was always confident, but there’s weight to it now: a palpable success drawing her strong shoulders back.
She whirls around again and Xiao studies the wall. “So? What can I get you, sir?”
He frowns at the gaping blank space above the coffee machines. “Is there supposed to be a menu there?”
“It gets in tomorrow. It shipped late,” Lumine says, the sigh in her voice suggesting it’s a battle she’s long given up on.
“Well then,” Xiao says. “I guess you just have to surprise me.”
She laughs, a brief melody that overflows like a wind chime. Xiao feels both younger and older at once.
Within minutes she’s laid out three cappuccino-sized mugs along the bartop, each brimming with black coffee and curling steam into the night. Xiao steps forward, examining them. “Surely you didn’t pour the same thing three times.”
“Hardly. The roasts are different.” Lumine leans over the counter; Xiao pretends not to notice the color as it saps from her knuckles. “Dark roast, Colombian. This one’s more in the middle, Ethiopian. This one’s a blonde, Costa Rican.”
Xiao picks up the last mug on the row and regards it warily, as if it might bite him. “Coffee can be blonde now?”
She watches him take a sip. “Coffee can be anything you want it to be.”
The vacant cafe is silent save for the low whirring of a desk fan in the corner as Xiao samples each one. He drags each sip out as long as possible, as if this moment is something in a dream, and he can only hold onto it for so long.
Lumine straightens again, brushing hair from her face. The ease in her expression has waned somewhat; she wrings her hands. “Well?”
He clears his throat, meeting her gaze and then looking away again. “To tell you the truth, I can barely tell the difference,” he says, “but I think the blonde is my favorite.”
Slowly, she drops her hands to the counter, drumming her fingers along the bartop instead. Her head tilts as if she’s working at a crook in her neck and Xiao knows what’s coming, long before she starts, “Xiao, I—”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t—you don’t—we don’t have to do this, you know,” he says, and Lumine pauses, frowning. “I’m sure Zhongli told you, but I’m hardly ever here anyway. I’ll disappear, if that’s what you want.”
“Is that what you think I want?” Lumine snaps. “Is that what you think I wanted?”
The whirring of the fan sounds almost militaristic now, a drone buzzing right into Xiao’s ears. “I don’t know,” he says, but he knows that’s not a good enough answer, so he forces himself to figure it out. “I…I worry that wanting it isn’t enough sometimes.”
For a brief moment Lumine looks at him like she wants to punch him, and he thinks she just might give in. Thankfully, she grabs for the center mug instead, twisting it in her hands and lifting it to her lips, draining the last dregs of coffee. It’s the first time Xiao notices the design glistening delicately on the porcelain—a qingxin flower, stretching towards the sun.
“That shirt,” she says, setting the mug down again, none too gently. “Is it one of yours?”
Xiao plucks at the black dress shirt hanging daintily from his form, as if she could mean another one. “This? No,” he answers. “I never wear my own designs. This is from an outlet mall.”
“You should,” she says, her voice soft again. “Isn’t that what I always told you? You should do something for yourself for once.”
Xiao takes the mug in his hands before he knows why. He twirls it carefully in his finger, swiping away the semicircle of Lumine’s lip gloss from its rim, slowly, reverently. “You did always tell me that,” he says, “but it’s funny. You never took your own advice, either.”
Xiao pushes away from the bar then, heading for the back exit, which only his room key can open. “Good night, Lumine.”
“Xiao.”
Years have passed and still she's the only one who makes his name sound like anything besides a curse. He shudders and looks back at her, the hanging light fixtures outlining her in gold. “Yeah?”
“Let me make you coffee again,” she says. “Once we’re open, I mean. On the house.”
His only answer is a nod, and he slips through the door, silent as a shadow.
———
two years before
His eyes were open, though it had been hours since he’d been really awake.
Xiao came to again in the middle of what resembled a tornado recovery site. The studio was a careless collage of fabric pieces, spools of thread, and design sketches—each time the AC kicked on again another whirl of papers fluttered up towards the ceiling fans and floated down again like fat drops of snow. He sat up, rubbing away the imprint of the table on the side of his face. Beside him, the fruits of his labor. A finalized sketch. Seven different coffee mugs all drained to a brown ring. And the cocktail dress—ruched, tossed with a faint sheen of glitter, the color of the sea at midnight.
Xiao mopped the sheen of sweat from the back of his neck, just as a knock on the studio’s doors startled him. Lumine waved at him from the other side of the glass, beaming, two mismatched to-go mugs clutched in her hands. The sweater that draped her shoulders and kissed the tantalizing spot just above her knees was far too heavy for the apex of June. She’d overheat. He’d lost count of how many times he’d told her that.
“How long were you planning on standing there and staring at me?” she asked when he at last dragged himself to the door. She handed him one of the mugs, then touched his face, wiping away a smear of eyeliner. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’d died and come back again.”
He grunted, turning to head back into the studio, his head dipped to breathe in the fresh coffee steam. “I certainly feel like it. What time is it?”
“Early. Seven-ish?” Lumine sunk into one of the chairs, spinning. “You’re one hot zombie, for what it’s worth.”
He smiled, which was somehow painful, as if his face had gone stiff from doing nothing but frowning for the past ten hours. “You made this?” he asked, tipping the coffee at her.
She nodded. “Guess.”
His face returned to its favorite frown. “I’m not going to get it right.”
“Humor me.”
“Do I look like I have much humor left in me right now?”
She spun her chair again, until she could reach him with her legs. Stroking his calf with her toe, she said again, “Please,” the way she knew disarmed him, her voice and eyes low.
Xiao took a sip, nearly scalding his tongue. He said, “Pour-over?”
Lumine imitated a buzzer sound.
“Americano?”
Lumine made another buzzer sound, this one more appalled.
“French press,” Xiao said, because it was the only other option he could think of, and he would not embarrass himself by suggesting the Keurig ever again.
“Oh, good,” Lumine said, hooking her toe around his leg and pulling him closer. He staggered, catching himself against her chair, and Lumine smiled in his shadow. “Another wrong guess and the floor would’ve opened up beneath you.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’ve learned I don’t really mind falling.”
She giggled as if she didn’t care that she was destroying him. Enjoyed it, actually. Her lips brushed his, and he leaned in, but she pulled back again with a sudden gasp.
“Lumine?” Xiao demanded, twitching with alarm. “Did I hurt you?”
“The dress!” She flung herself to her feet, flying to the finished project that remained pinned to the mannequin. “Oh, Xiao. This is what you were working on all night? It’s beautiful .”
“It’s only one,” he said with a sigh, pivoting towards her. He downed more of the coffee, hoping it would make the world seem less foggy. “I have to create another twelve at least before next weekend.”
She’d barely heard him, and when he looked at her, the way her fingers danced over the gatherings of fabric, he barely remembered what he’d said. She flowed like water in that way, dissolving everything, catching it all in her current.
He approached her from behind, closing her in, his hand settling over hers as it traced the stitchwork. “I’ll make one for you one day,” he said. “Universes more beautiful than this one.”
She turned in his arms, skeptical. “Universes?”
He settled his chin in the crook of her neck, resting there like a perched bird. “What else could hold something like you?”
When she kissed him, it was pure caffeine.
———
By the fifth time he comes in, Lumine has the stranger’s order memorized.
He’s easy to spot: his red hair like a tongue of flame against the city’s grayish winter landscape, his stature tall enough that he has to duck beneath the bell above the door to keep from concussing himself. The first time he meets her at the counter, she asks a name for the order and he smiles at her like he’s well aware he has the sort of smile that stuns people. Childe, he says, slow, easy, like a gift she can never give back.
His order is simple. Latte, extra foam, with plenty of caramel. This morning, she slides it across to him gently, so as not to upset the flower that trembles in ribbons of milk and brown sugar upon its surface. “One of these days you’ll tell me what you’re always working on over there, won’t you?” she says, and nods her head at what has become his Designated Corner—left of the community bookshelf, next to the plastic ferns.
“Oh, I shouldn’t. Classified,” he says, and grins, half of the smile hidden in his scarf. “But I don’t know. Maybe I could tell you for the right price.”
Lumine raises an eyebrow, casting a purposeful glance at the pastry shelf. Childe laughs and shakes his head, bracing one hand against the counter, silver rings glinting on his fingers. “Not that sort of price,” he says. “You’ll see what I mean.”
She does not, in fact, have any idea what he means, but she has no chance to ask about it. He picks up his mug and with a polite dip of his head disappears back to his corner, and Lumine stands there motionless for a moment, her mind beginning to spin. The thought strikes her then that she’s terribly out of practice. She can’t remember the last time she was held, the last time she even allowed herself to be known in a way only lovers know. But she has a feeling it hasn’t been since—
As she turns to clean the steam wands, her apron catches on a drawer handle and tears, threads pulling free. She’s gaping at it, trying to fold it somehow to disguise the massive hole, when the little bell at the service counter rings out into the chaos.
Lumine whirls. “How can I help—?”
“For you,” Xiao says. As usual, he’s dressed in all black, a stark shadow against the coffee shop’s gold and wood decor. His fingernails match; he slides a receipt over to her with only his middle and his index finger.
Lumine shakes her head. “Huh? I—I don’t need—” Her eyes catch at the name at the bottom of the receipt. She flips it over, and sure enough, a cell phone number is scrawled in black ink.
When she looks up, Childe is smiling at her again, that same stunning smile, like staring directly into the sun.
“I figured you’d just throw it away without looking at it,” Xiao says under his breath. “So you’re welcome.”
“Xiao,” she says, before she has figured out the rest. Let me explain— explain what? What does she have to explain?
Xiao doesn’t wait for her to figure it out. He says, his voice gravelly, “Don’t…don’t work too hard, okay?” and then vanishes out the door, as mysteriously as he appeared.
———
one year before
The sky beyond the university library was pitch black. Out of the corner of her eye, Lumine had noticed the security guard beginning to make his rounds, his eyebrows raising with curiosity each time he looped around the reference tables. Other than that, she hardly noticed a thing. The presentation tomorrow could very well make or break her future, and it couldn’t be anything less than perfect.
Fueled by energy drinks and individually-wrapped chocolate chip cookies from the vending machine, Lumine tapped away, writing and rewriting and re-rewriting each point she was going to make. She rearranged her business model, then rearranged it again. Almost perfect; still nowhere close.
Her cell phone rang and jarred her towards something like consciousness for a brief moment, but she ignored it. Five minutes later it screamed again and she exhaled and flipped the device over. Her brother’s name flashed back at her.
“You sound tired,” Aether announced, before she could say a word.
Lumine placed a hand to her forehead in exasperation. “I haven’t even said anything.”
“You haven’t?” There was a pause, as if he was thinking about it. Car horns blared in the distance behind him. Footsteps, crosswalks—city noise, much bigger than any city she’d ever see. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just the vibes. Why are you still up, anyway?”
Lumine hesitated. It didn’t matter if she and her brother had quite literally been formed in the same breath, if she had loved him and recognized him long before she could even consciously do so. Ever since he’d started appearing in bigwig finance magazines everywhere, a part of her that would always feel insignificant speaking to him: a child bringing her toys into the conference room. “Mock proposal,” she answered, finally. “It’s tomorrow, and my slides need work, and my pitch needs work, and everything just…needs work.”
She could hear the frown in his voice. “I thought you’ve already been working on that all semester.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t envy you,” he said, and she thought, of course not. Why would you? “Listen—any chance Xiao is keeping you company? The marketing department ran this new advertising campaign by me this afternoon. Fashion-themed. I wondered if he might consult me on it.”
“Xiao,” Lumine repeated, a cold feeling of dread swirling about in her gut.
“Yes. Xiao, your boyfriend. You know him?”
“Shit.” Lumine slammed her laptop closed, hurriedly sweeping things into her bag. “His showcase was tonight. I—I totally forgot. How the hell did I forget?”
“Lumine—”
“I’ve gotta go, Aether. I’ll call you tomorrow?”
“But—”
She hung up before she could feel bad about it, throwing her bag over her shoulder and giving the security guard a thankful nod as she dashed out into the night.
The address, which she distinctly remembered putting into her phone a month ago, wasn’t far. Still, by the time she reached the quaint little gallery where the show was held, it was too late. The outdoor lights were dark and only a small crowd of people remained gathered on the sidewalk, most of them still with a drink in their hand, half-staggering. Lumine shoved through the throng until at last she found him leaning against one of the front displays. He was still, silent, rubbing his ankle with the edge of his sharp-toed dress shoes. She remembered picking out the teal suit he was wearing a few weeks back, laughing as he reluctantly twirled around in the dressing room. He’d looked powerful in it back then, but he slouched now, as if the cloth had grown heavy.
“Xiao?” she said, and at the sound of his name he looked up at her, tapping a persistent rhythm against the plastic cup in his hands. “Oh God, Xiao. I’m so sorry. I…I have this big deadline tomorrow, and I lost track of time, and I…just—how did it go?”
His eyes scraped hers, then settled on the sidewalk. “Fine.”
She reached out for him, as if to pinch his ear. “That good, huh? Why don’t we grab milkshakes or something? Sugar always gets you talking.”
He swatted at her hand, and Lumine flinched. “Enough,” he said, and sighed, dragging his hands down his face. “God. Enough, Lumine. Aren’t you tired of this?”
She held her hand where Xiao had swatted it, frowning as she tried to parse his words. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t,” Xiao said, the edge of the words slurred, as if dragged through water. “You never will. That’s what I keep trying to tell you, but you keep ignoring it, like the problem will just go away if you avert your eyes for long enough. Let me spoil it for you. It won’t.”
Lumine scoffed, stepping back. A motorcycle howled by on the street behind her, a furious blare of noise, the beat of her blood rising to meet it. “Are you drunk right now?”
He cut his eyes sideways, mumbling his answer under his breath. “A little. Why does it matter?”
“Because—”
“I kept looking for you,” he said, his voice spilling out of him now, like water over the edge of a cliff. He sank down to the sidewalk, slowly, as if his legs had simply given up on him. “And they kept walking by with those damn platters. It was just to pass the time.”
Lumine took a long inhale. The night air was sticky, its cloying warmth settling on her skin like honey. “I told you I’m sorry,” she gasped, crouching in front of him, “and I am. But I can’t turn back time, okay? I can’t fix it. I wish I could.”
“Don’t,” Xiao said, and his voice was different now—quieter somehow, thin as paper. He reached out for her hand again and held it to his face; his cheeks were flushed, warm as the dying embers of a flame. “You know it as well as I do, don’t you? I’m what’s holding you back. You’re…you’re too much for me to hold onto, and I know that, and I’ve known that. I’m trying to tell you it’s okay. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
There were nights he got like this. When the dredges of the time he’d spent unwanted and forgotten, an orphan drifting through a system that barely acknowledged him, rebirthed themselves in violent color. The most she could do was sit and listen and remind him where he was now, but this time—something about this time was different. She could tell the words weighed more.
“You think…” Lumine sighed, stroking the side of his face with her thumb. “Xiao, no. I know I’ve been…I don’t know—preoccupied, but it’s not because of you. It could never be because of you.”
He turned his head, kissing her palm. “You’re right.” His lips moved against her hand, soft as butterfly wings. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
There were ways to say goodbye without saying it. It felt like a goodbye, too—a nail sinking into some unreachable part of her flesh, lodging itself there to stay. “You’re drunk,” she said, though whether to convince him or herself, she wasn’t sure. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
He lowered her hand, shoving himself to his wobbly feet again despite Lumine’s insistent protests. “Promise me you won’t go work for him.”
“For—for who? What are you talking about?”
“It’s not what you want, is it? To do what your brother did,” Xiao said, steadying himself against the wall. “You want something gentler. A life that’s more forgiving. You want—coffee. Regulars. One of those free lending libraries in the corner. Don’t you?”
She didn’t understand. It was a passing dream, one she’d thrown out randomly in a conversation she barely remembered having. It had been winter then, snowing, far too cold to stargaze. They’d gone anyway. She would follow him anywhere, even into a blizzard, into hell. How did he not see it?
“Xiao,” Lumine said, but he was already drifting. He took a step away from her, stumbled, righted himself and tried again. “Xiao!”
“This is my last gift to you, Lumine,” he said, and he smiled at her, the worst injury he could have caused. “Maybe a few years from now you’ll agree with me.”
“ Xiao, ” she said again, and she was vaguely aware of the wet stain of tears appearing on her cheeks, her vision blurred by water. She watched him, a shadow, a memory, the love of her life, as he ducked into a taxi and disappeared from her sight.
———
That evening, Lumine closes the cafe early. A posse of dim gray clouds are gathering over the city, promising snow and sleet and other unpleasantries, and she knows better than to gamble with the Earth. The windows of her front display are already kissed with frost, gathering like gossamer cobwebs in the glass corners.
In some ways, closing has become her favorite part of her job—not because it means the end of the workday, but because the shop ripples into new being. Soft, faded light. The remnants of happily enjoyed crumbs and coffee beans dancing under the breeze of the ceiling fan. The radio singing along in the corner as she sweeps and dusts and wipes—old giving way to the new, in constant cycle.
She’s just pulled open the pastry display to clear out what’s gone unsold when the radio clicks off behind her.
She straightens, but doesn’t turn. “You have the strangest ways of announcing your presence.”
His voice still catches every frayed thread inside of her and pulls it loose. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
At last, she turns. “And this is less scary how?”
In the soft tawny glow of the overheads, Xiao’s eyes shimmer and shift like stones of preserved amber. It takes Lumine a moment to shift her gaze from his face to the item draped over his elbow—besides the periwinkle blue hue of it and the ruffles at the end, she can’t make it out immediately. Nevertheless, her pulse begins to climb.
He answers her after a beat, as if he had to remind himself to. “I don’t think silence is as scary as people like to say it is.”
A noise bubbles out of her. She’s surprised to find it’s a laugh. “You’re always saying stuff that makes me think poetry might be your lost calling, you know.”
He shudders. “Never. I can’t stand the sound of my own words.”
“You just did it again.”
He blinks with genuine surprise. “Did I?”
Another laugh. This time, he joins.
“Lumine,” he says, and her name in his mouth is soft as spun sugar. He takes the garment from his elbow and holds it out to her. “I don’t…I don’t mean to overstay my welcome, or anything. I just came to give this to you.”
She raises an eyebrow at him, but accepts it, letting it unfold in her hands. A small, stunned breath pulls itself from her lungs as she reveals the new apron—in her favorite color, no less, the bottom edge frilled like a vintage dress. Hiding in the corner is a splash of red, a perfectly hand-stitched windwheel aster.
“Xiao, it’s…” Beautiful rests on the tip of her tongue, but even that doesn’t fit right.
“It’s no use using a torn one,” he says, looking at her and away again. “That’s all.”
She holds it back out to him. “Put it on me.”
A warm red color, nearly the same shade as the stitched flower, spreads across his face. “What?”
“I have to try it on, don’t I?” Lumine insists, and shakes it in her hands. “The designer ought to do the honors.”
He looks at her for another brief moment of disbelief, but accepts the apron as Lumine turns her back to him and scoops her hair off of her neck. Lumine closes her eyes, holding her breath as he steps closer, close enough for his body heat to emanate from his skin like a buzzing electric wire. He slips the apron over her head, his fingers ghosting along the back of her neck, raising goosebumps. As his hands slide over her waist, pulling the apron taut, she feels him shiver.
The apron settles neatly against her body. Neither of them move away.
“It’s not a dress,” Lumine says at last, the words leaving her before she can think about them. “But it’s close enough.”
His hands linger on her waist, hovering there hesitantly, giving her ample room to push him away. When she doesn’t, he exhales, stirring the feather-light hairs by her ears. He draws her closer. “You remember that?”
“Of course I do. You promised.”
“We both promised a lot of things,” Xiao says.
Silence—the kind that’s waiting for something.
She turns her head as much as she can to look at him, and he lets his chin fall onto her shoulder. “Ask me. Whatever it is you were going to ask.”
“That night,” he says at last. “That night we…that night I ended things. I tried to call you afterwards, once I was sober again. But you never picked up.”
Lumine sighs. That morning is not one she cares to remember. “I don’t know,” she says. Beyond the window, the flurries had started, whirls of white fairy dust spinning towards the pavement. “I believed you’d said what you wanted to say, I guess, whether you were conscious of it or not. That if I kept trying I’d just end up hurting you. The pieces weren’t worth picking up if we didn’t want the whole thing.”
His arms tighten around her, but his voice is brittle. “Are they worth picking up now?”
Lumine’s breath hitches. Her heart is throbbing now, her skin both freezing and feverish at once. The hunger in her stomach is familiar—her tongue tastes like wanting. “That depends on if you believe me,” she tells him. “When I tell you I wasn’t pretending then, that I’m not pretending now. So do you? Believe me?”
“Oh, no. Worse than that,” he says at the end of his breath, kissing the edge of her jaw, the soft flesh of her cheek. “Lumine, I love you. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped.”
The hunger consumes her, and at last she gives in. She turns her head and throws her arms around his shoulders, bringing her lips flush to his. Immediately Xiao hums into her mouth and crushes her against him, the kiss gentle, polite at first, before it deepens. Lumine slides her hands into Xiao’s hair where the dark strands mix with the green, and his whole body shudders.
His arms around her, he guides her back to the counter. Lumine breaks just long enough to catch her breath and whisper, “Xiao?”
His lips brush her ear, his grip on her firm. “I’ve got you. I promise,” he says, and hoists her up, careful not to strike the cash register. Lumine frames his face with her hands and lets herself sink into him again, the taste of him familiar and new at once, both comforting and wildly different.
She leans back, pulling him with her, until something crinkles beneath her weight. Both of them pause as Lumine unearths a crumpled receipt from her thigh—the same one Childe left behind.
She closes it in her fist, crushing it beyond recognition, and tosses it to the middle of the floor.
Xiao smirks at her, moving a stray piece of hair out of her face. “You’re going to have to pick that up, you know.”
“Later,” she says, and kisses him again. “We have all the time in the world.”