Adaire closed the door to her office—she had an office; the thought still astounded her, sometimes—and leaned against it. The faint sounds of cheerful staff members and customers trickled through the cracks, but mostly, in her office, there was nothing but the soft ringing of windchimes and chatter rising up from the street outside. Adaire stared past the desk she’d centered in the room and out the open window, where other buildings cheerfully rose up into the cloud-ruffled sky.
Not for the first time, Adaire thought about what it would be like to just jump out of the window and disappear into the city.
The rush of wind against her skin, needing to crouch in corners until nobody would see her sneak into a closed room—her heart ached with how it felt. Adaire breathed out, slowly, and pushed herself off the door. There wasn’t any reason to skulk through Aubade, and that, on the rare occasions she let herself actually think about it, was the problem.
Aubade took care of people. Samothes made sure of that. Aubade even took care of her, when she started changing it—giving them a general store, making herself not exactly indispensable (the way she wished she could be, because then nobody would betray her) but useful. They came, they talked to her, they exclaimed over her designs and ideas. Even Samothes thought that her designs were good, for fuck’s sake.
So, she hated it.
The others had people and places that they knew—Hella with her boat, Hadrian with the church, Lem with the archives; even Adelaide knew nobility and proactive leisure—but she hadn’t had people. That had been the problem. Everyone had lied to her, been too self-centered to care about her, or otherwise forced her to learn self-sufficiency and how to use others to ensure her own survival.
Aubade didn’t have people like that.
Aubade didn’t have people like her: Adaire Ducarte, thief and consummate charmer, who could flirt without a thought while robbing you blind. They just had people like her: Adaire Ducarte, merchant entrepreneur, who welcomed you into her store and showed you a dozen things you wouldn’t have thought to desire but suddenly needed right now.
It was something, but it wasn’t enough.
Adaire shook her head and seated herself, window at her back and the breeze just a faint tickle on the back of her neck. She had to make sure all the financial records were up-to-date. She had a job to do. She took a breath, pulled out the logs, and set to work.
Long enough later that the sunlight had dimmed, Hella walked into her office without knocking. Adaire knew it was her because one, nobody else walked in without knocking; and two, Hella could be quiet if she tried but she almost never did, which meant she stomped around in her eminently practical and horrifically ugly boots all the time.
“Jessie says you’ve been up here all afternoon,” Hella said by way of greeting. She leaned over the desk and glanced at the book, then made a face. “Have you been staring at numbers for hours?”
“Yes.” Adaire carefully wiped off her pen and made sure that the ink was dry before closing the log. “It’s useful.”
“It’s boring.” Hella straightened up and stretched out her arms, gesturing at probably all of Aubade, but Adaire was more interested in the little patch of skin revealed by Hella’s not-quite-large-enough shirt. It was a few years old, now; it kept shrinking a little each time Hella washed it, and Adaire wasn’t entirely certain she’d noticed. “You can’t even look at anything from here.”
“I can’t get distracted, you mean?” Adaire leaned her elbows on the desk and braced her chin on her hands, smiling up at Hella. “You’re very good at distractions.”
Hella paused and lowered her hands to the table, cheeks flushing dark. “Adaire—”
Adaire’s smile widened into a proper grin, and she tilted her head to ler her hair fall across her shoulders. “Yes?”
Hella looked at her, and her mouth moved, but eventually she just shook her head and smiled. “I was gonna say, I could turn your desk so you can at least look at something interesting while you work.”
Without even thinking, Adaire shook her head. “I don’t want—” she managed before the words froze in her throat, the didn’t want inarticulate beyond the idea that what if I wanted to leave and keep running forever was maybe something she shouldn’t voice right here right now. Hella understood a lot more than people gave her credit for, but she’d never been stuck.
If Hella noticed Adaire’s panic, it didn’t show on her face as she shrugged. “Okay. So come help me with the boat? I wanna make sure there’s enough lines and hooks and stuff for this weekend.”
“Yeah,” Adaire said, voice running automatically. “I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes, okay?”
Hella smiled, sunny-bright as Aubade itself, and bounced her hands lightly off the desk. “It’s a deal.”
Adaire watched her go, and as soon as the door swung shut again let her arms—and face—slide onto the desk. Hella seemed so much happier here, and Adaire could see her getting more easy-going and relaxed each year, while her insides bound themselves into knots.
It wasn’t fair. But then, what in life ever was?
Adaire locked those feelings carefully back into the box where they always lived and straightened up. Glancing at the log book again, she muttered, “Fuck it,” and put it back into her desk, carefully locking it again. Then she stood and shut the windows on the beautiful slow sunset beginning to grace Aubade’s skies.
Then she pulled the curtains on the view of rooftops she could’ve been running over, and went to follow Hella, who would be delighted that she had taken less time than she’d predicted. There was more to life than chasing a past she could, for a little while at least, move beyond.
Hella took her hand as they began walking towards the beach, and Adaire let herself smile as Hella began talking about the weird fish she was hoping to catch. The sunset lit everything rose. Adaire tilted her head up to the sky and thought, What if we never left?
She shivered, and the breeze picked up for a moment, and Hella pulled her close without a thought, saying, “Are you warm enough? I know you have a lot of cloaks, but you aren’t wearing one right now.”
“I’m fine,” Adaire told her, and it wasn’t really a lie. The world was plenty warm; her memories were just too cold for this world, and that wasn’t something anyone could do a thing about. Adaire put her arm around Hella anyway, and leaned against her. “We can stay like this, though.”
Hella kissed the top of her head and went back to talking about her boat and fish. Adaire closed her eyes and let her girlfriend guide her for a little bit. Please stay like this, she thought, the words as close to a prayer as she could ever contemplate coming. Because this? This, I want to last.