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Myka arrived at the old farmhouse just before the snow started—Helena was waiting on the porch, watching the weather and worrying, despite the fact that Myka had told her not to.
“What if you get snowed in here?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” Myka shrugged. “The world can live without me for a day or two. Aren’t you cold?”
Not anymore, Helena thought, but she made a show of warming up by the fire before she went to the kitchen to attend to her stew. The stove was still crusted in places from the last disastrous attempt at the recipe, when it had boiled over and run all the way down to the floor. This batch would be perfect.
“Food smells even better than the tree,” Myka said from the doorway. “I’ve never actually been in a house with a real Christmas tree before.”
“I’m glad you like it. It makes the fight I had with the squirrels worthwhile.”
Helena had seen the soft, indulgent smile Myka was giving her before, but never directly. She’d always made this face when she thought Helena wasn’t looking.
A splash of stew sizzled on the eye of the stove.
By the time they’d settled at the table in the dining room, where Helena had arranged probably more poinsettias that was really necessary, the snow was driving down and muffling everything outside. It was just the two of them nestled in Helena’s creaking, well-insulated old house, eating stew that wasn’t even lightly singed.
If Helena thought about it at a certain slant, this was the third time that Myka had protected her from the impending doom of cold—Moscow, Yellowstone, and now Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She was pleasantly surprised to realize that the idea didn’t trouble her like it might have a year ago.
Myka soaked up the last of the stew in her bowl with a slice of bread.
“I suppose I don’t need to do dishes then,” Helena teased.
“Not by yourself, anyway.”
“You don’t need to—“
“I insist.”
And when Myka insisted, Helena relented. She scrubbed the bowls and passed them to Myka, then watched her dry them. In Helena’s wildest dreams, she had never…
The last thing Giselle ever said to her bubbled up in Helena’s memory.
“You know what the worst thing is about you?” she’d asked, just before she shut and locked the door. “I don’t think you believe anything is really possible.”
It had been the strangest thing anyone had ever said to her—H. G. Wells, the creator of a rocket ship and a time machine, the eldest son of science fiction, the now 150-year-old walking definition of the impossible. But as she stood on Giselle’s doorstep with everything she owned in a leather valise, Helena couldn’t imagine what she would do next. She hadn’t imagined anything, she realized, in a very long time.
“Where do these go?” Myka asked, stacking their two bowls together.
Helena reacheed across her to open a cabinet, murmuring, “Here,” and letting the wonder wash over her again as Myka reached up to put the clean plates away.
Myka was here.
The dishes were done, and Myka was wandering back into the living room, scanning the built-in bookshelves as she settled with her feet on the couch.
She asked, “What have you been reading these days?”
“Actually, I—“ Helena hesitated, afraid to commit, but Myka would be thrilled, so she pushed on. “I’ve been doing more writing than reading lately.”
She’d taken it up shortly after a successful stint of inventing. Given that the aeronautics field was taking a second look at old airplane designs, looking for ways to make flexible, responsive wings, she’d whipped up a stretch of material that might come in handy—with variations for uses like athletic clothing, though she hadn’t managed to make it sufficiently breathable. NASA had been happy to buy it from her for unspeakable sums. She’d turned around and bought this little house, with a basement full of engineering experiments and a desk in front of the picture window.
“It seems like a mystery novel so far, though of course there’s a mad scientist involved.”
Myka laughed. “A self-insert character, huh?”
“Actually she makes me think of Claudia.”
Myka scratched quietly at a velvet flower in the pattern of the couch for a moment.
“She uh, she asked me if you were going to visit soon,” she mumbled.
“When would be a good time?”
Myka’s hand froze. She stared at Helena, surprised at her for the first time a long while. The first time since Wyoming, nearly two years ago, Helena guessed.
“I’ll ask and let you know.”
“Splendid.”
Because she could go back. Helena was welcome, Helena was missed and loved, and it was only an hour north anyway. Everything she wanted was well within reach, it seemed.
Helena put a hand on Myka’s knee.
“Do you want tea?”
Myka shook her head.
Do you want me? Helena wondered, but she didn’t ask, if only because the rhyme was unbearable. She slouched down on the couch instead, conveniently edging closer to Myka as she did so.
“I like this wallpaper,” Myka said, reaching over the back of the couch to touch it.
“You don’t think it’s atrocious? The realtor said everyone else did.”
It was green paisley, which was atrocious by modern standards, Helena supposed, but it was very Victorian. Helena adored it.
“It’s really ‘you,’ somehow. I wouldn’t expect it to, but it works.”
“The bedroom has a thistle pattern, black on greige, and it runs all the way to the floor, no paneling. No built-in bookshelves, either, but one makes do.”
Myka laughed again. “What the hell is greige?”
“Finally!” Helena tossed her hands in the air. “I’ve discovered something you don’t know!”
She dropped her hand onto Myka’s thigh, a good inch or two past her knee. At any other time she’d have asked herself when she started thinking in inches, but Myka’s breath caught. They both swallowed, their lips quirking at the corners, and all they’d have to do is let the smile defuse this like they always do—Helena would move her hand, Myka would move her leg in a way that lets the touch linger but doesn’t encourage more, and that would be the end of it.
But what if they didn’t?
“Myka…”
Her hand flexed unconsciously on Myka’s thigh. The arm Myka had draped along the back of the couch reached out, but it stopped before Myka’s fingers brushed against Helena’s hair.
Helena cleared her throat, gave Myka an avenue of escape.
“What were we saying?” Myka asked while she pulled her leg out from Helena’s touch.
For a moment, Helena stared at the paisley wallpaper. The retreat was painful, but the tension was still lingering.
It was possible that she could ruin everything. Their friendship, their dinner, their peaceful wintery cocoon.
Then again, Helena had put a fair amount of effort into ruining it in the past, and still, Myka was here.
“Did you notice the phonograph?” Helena offered. If Myka took this second out, if the tension dissipated, she’d let it, but maybe…
Myka looked over her shoulder, where the enormous bell gleamed on a stand beside the couch.
“Does it work?”
Helena wrinkled her nose. “There’s a cd player in the base.”
She got up, popped open the hidden panel in the front to cue up a Chopin disc, and gave the handle on the side a twirl for show. Myka laughed at her. They grinned at each other, conspiratorial as always, but Myka’s gaze dropped—Helena would swear Myka’s gaze dropped to her lips.
“Dance with me?” Helena asked.
Myka’s eyes dropped further, down to Helena’s outstretched hand. She looked at once fascinated and wary, just like she had the first time they met. Her grip though, when Helena felt it now, was strong.
“Seriously,” she said while Helena settled them into a frame and started to move, “what’s greige?”
“It’s just a mix of gray and beige.”
“Oh. That’s… intuitive.”
Helena dipped her head down as she laughed, then looked up at Myka through her lashes. It was plenty, at the moment, staring and feeling Myka’s hands on her. The atmosphere between them had only grown denser, and it would have been so easy for them to kiss each other, but Helena waited. For what, she wasn’t sure, but if she could wait for one hundred years to see the sun, she could stand to take her time now.
Myka spun her, and it was playful until Helena completed the turn and felt Myka’s arm wrap more fully around her, pressing them closer together.
“Am I doing this right?” Myka asked.
Helena swallowed and nodded. Myka’s fingers flexed against her back.
Had Myka planned this, Helena wondered, or were they both falling into it naturally? Because it felt natural, the way they moved together across a small square of Helena’s living room floor, but Helena couldn’t imagine Myka succumbing to a force that she didn’t fully understand, allowing something to happen when she didn’t know precisely what would happen next.
Then again, what if Myka had spent as much time thinking about this over the years as Helena had? That, Helena decided, is what she was waiting for—the confirmation of her hope that this felt as inevitable to Myka as it did to her.
With the way Myka flowed with her as they danced, it felt like a distinct possibility.
“You know you get this look on your face when you start playing chicken with me?” Myka said.
Helena blinked.
“What look?”
Myka considered for a moment. “Like… like you’re excited for my next move, because you know what it’s going to be.”
“I don’t think I know now.”
“I think you do,” Myka said.
She dragged them to a stop, and Helena realized that she couldn’t imagine Myka doing anything but what she was doing now—which was pulling her closer, cupping her cheek, and leaning towards her.
There was no hesitation now from Helena. She wrapped her arms around Myka’s back and kissed her.