“I thought you said you were sore,” Matt murmured as T’mari slid across the bed to drape herself over him.
“I was last night,” she said, voice low and smug. “Might be again later, if you’re lucky.”
He laughed, burying his face in her hair. “Entropy in the system?”
“Insufficient lubrication between components,” she whispered, nipping at his collarbone.
“There are ways to fix that,” he said, dragging a fingertip down her spine with an absent reverence that always gave him away.
The morning sun filtered through gauzy linen drapes, casting gold over the ancient floorboards. Reds fading to sun-bleached pinks in some of the rugs that kept the place from echoing with five and a half centuries of wear and tear on the thick pine timbers.
The Maddy smelled, and he’d need to fix that if they were going to spend real time here. Being nasally assaulted—in the best possible way—by V’ren women had recalibrated something in him. Maybe it was neurological, psychological, or even physiological level. Maybe it was just love.
Either way, he could smell the baked-in scent of a pizza place from below and the sour smells from when this had been his college party palace. Right now, he needed it to smell of dark roast coffee and breakfast. But for a few more minutes, he was content with sweat and her.
Music hummed low from the sound system—some hybrid V’ren-Jazz fusion piece she’d queued before they fell asleep, still looping as if the city had no other rhythms. This wasn’t Freehold. No roosters, no intercoms, no humming water walls or distant tractor drones. Just clean lines, slate countertops, and tall south-facing windows that framed Columbia’s past and present.
T’mari traced small shapes on his chest. “What are we doing today?”
“I hope more of this,” Matt said, turning slightly to kiss her shoulder. “But I’ve got calls to make before noon. W’ren is expecting your update. Marie’s swinging by with her stylist around two.”
T’mari sighed. “Are we still pretending what we wear matters?”
“It does at the university gala. This isn’t bonfire politics anymore—it’s tenured deans and documentary cameras. One wrong outfit and you’ll be trending as a rebel concubine by sundown.”
“I suppose I’ll need to wear shoes,” she grumbled.
“And panties,” he added, looking at the pair hanging from the icicle lights that he really hoped were hers.
“That’s oppressive,” she said, but didn’t move.
Matt smiled. “What do you want to do today?”
“Eat something I don’t have to hunt or cook,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow.
“I can take care of the cooking, but exactly what have you been out hunting, besides takeout containers?” he laughed.
“I want to hear more stories. Tell me more about Little Rabbit.”
He groaned. “You’ve been reading again, haven’t you?”
“Cosmo and Shawnee folklore. I’m a well-rounded woman.”
“That’s for sure,” he said, sliding his hand over the curve of her hip.
He glanced over at the tablet on the dresser, where a half-written message to W’ren sat unsent. The headline? ‘Little Rabbit and How Mittens the Murder Kitty Got His Spots.’ She was doing more than listening—she was curating. Translating his life into something she could carry home, or make home.
Matt poured the liquid of life from the French press into the sad white mugs of modern sterility as T’mari examined the table and the bounty of another Filipino breakfast.
“Rice is as much a tradition for you as keft porridge was for us.”
.”All your keft porridge needed was a Filipino or southerner to make it palatable,” he laughed, revealing the decadence of sweetened condensed milk and taho syrup for her coffee.
“You realize you’ve horrified the traditionalists,” she laughed, drowning her coffee in the milk and syrup. “Your kitchen is churning out keft champorado and cheddar shrimp keft.”
“M’rak told Angelina that S’rala loves the chomparado and K’rem has been seen going back for seconds on the cheddar shrimp keft.”
“That is not fair, K’rem likes keft to start with,” she laughed, swallowing down her first smooth taste of coffee.
“What about your mother? She has been getting big bowls of keft jok.”
“Of course, they all like it, it is good, that doesn’t mean the traditionalists won’t complain about it while they are eating their second bowl,” she laughed, spreading the ube jam onto her pandesal.
“True enough, watch what happens when some white girl decides the adobo would be pretty with parsley,” Matt laughed.
