The Good Pan Bakery
Talk, she'd said. She wanted to talk to him, very badly. The space Cass had left behind seemed rather deliberate; work, Aurelie knew, could wait. Normally, Aurelie would liked to have helped—she was learning how, and she liked doing it. She liked, most of all, just sitting with her and enjoying the other woman's company. A kindness, Aurelie thought. A more subtle one, to be sure, than letting Desiderio stay here with the two of them—the thought made something in her flutter not entirely unpleasantly—but no less of a kindness for the subtlety.
There was the space, and she had the desire—and she sat there at the table mute as a stone. Shadow's sloppy consumption of the leftover stew Cass had given him was the only sound in the room after the door clicked shut. Talk. And what about?
She had seen how he looked at her when she came in through the door. Like someone looking at a stranger. Aurelie had been overwhelmingly conscious of the pointed hem of her skirt, of all the strongly human designs at the cuffs and collar of the blouse. Green and brown, with small touches of yellow—the colors of growing things. Aurelie liked this dress best, and under the golden weight of his eyes, she felt like a child in a costume.
"Cass is really very kind," she offered, folding her hands in her lap and trying not to chew on her lip. It was chapped, and there was a small bit of dead skin she had been gently worrying at with her teeth. "You'll... uhm, you'll see. She's been very good to me."
She ought to go to her room, to her trunk, where there was a bit of clear pomade she used now to discourage the habit and promote healing. But she might have had to ask Desiderio to help her, and she didn't know if she was ready for that just now.
Aurelie fell silent again. One thing she had always noticed about the plantation and the bakery both was the lack of... of the ticking of clocks. At Brunnhold, it was a constant sound—measuring out every sacred moment, on and on. She hadn't realized just how much she would miss it until she left. Like the hum of the other girls in the kitchen, like the soft sound of her roommates' breathing. (Even Bernie, whose breathing was less soft at some times than at others. She had more than once woken Aurelie up in the night.)
The lamplight was soft, dimmer and kinder to her eyes than phosphor would have been. It softened Desiderio's face, too. Aurelie studied it without meaning to. It was so different than it had been when they were children. Not just because of the glasses, which he hadn't needed before. Nor the scars, though they were strong and deep enough to change the landscape of his face, raised along the edges of his jaw. Aurelie clasped her hands more tightly against a desire to reach out— To run a finger along—
Aurelie looked away, swallowing something hot and jagged.
"I'm sorry," she blurted out instead. "For the... I doubt this is where you really want to... to be." She wondered what he made of it—Cass, the bakery, the little flat. Aurelie liked it. More, if she were pressed to honesty, than she had like the Ibutatu house. Not that it wasn't very lovely, she thought, and not that... But this felt more like someone's home to her, and she liked being here. Small as it was, simple as it was.
"...But I'm glad you're here," she said softly, before she could stop herself. And she smiled, just a little.