Coffee Cake
Coffee Cake
“Really?” Olivia asked, her smile wide and slightly disbelieving. It was one of the things Astrid loved about her. No matter how much crap they dealt with, no matter what weirdness came out of Dr. Bishop’s lab, there was still the capacity for this childlike glee in her smile, this touch of innocence and awe.
Astrid smiled back. “Not everything in the world gets learned in school.” She said. “A lot of things happen in this world that science is just now beginning to understand. Sometimes, the old ways work when the new ones don’t yet.”
Olivia smiled that smile again and it took everything in her to just take the offered tea cup instead of taking her hand and kissing the inside of her wrist like she wanted to.
“So what do my tea leaves say?”
Astrid took a look down at the cup. There were some dark warnings that she hardly felt a need to mention considering the way things had been going lately. She smiled lighter then. “A friendship will deepen, in more ways than one.”
Olivia smiled as she reached a hand out to cover one of Astrid’s. “That’s more than I was willing to ask for.”
And Astrid was a smart enough woman to read between the lines. Her own smile notched up as she rubbed her thumb over the back of Olivia’s hand. “You don’t need to be afraid of asking for anything Olivia. I won’t say no.”
Neither woman moved until Dr. Bishop came strolling in, oblivious to the moment, with a water balloon, three packs of strawberry chewing gum, two pigeons, and a coffee cake.