Kiss Me, Break Me

The bell above the pharmacy door had a mean little chime that always seemed louder when Rae was late. She wasn’t, technically — she was two minutes early — but the bell had no interest in technicalities, and neither did Cole DeLuca. “You’re late,” he said, not looking up from the terminal. His voice was clean and precise, the verbal equivalent of a ruler laid against a desk. Rae set her tote under the counter, tied her hair into a quick twist, and pinned him with a smile so polite it had a serrated edge. “Good morning to you too, boss.” “Inventory flagged a variance,” he added, pushing a clipboard toward her without meeting her eyes. “Count the safe again.” She took the clipboard like it had teeth. “I counted it. Twice.” “Then you’ll enjoy the hat trick.” There were a hundred things she could have said. Ninety-nine of them would get her fired. She picked the last one. “Yes, sir.” He stilled at the sir. It was a tell — one she only deployed when she needed him to feel the sting of his own authority. For a heartbeat, something like heat flickered behind his dark eyes, then vanished. He returned to the screen. Fine, she thought. Let it be war. It always was. By nine-thirty, the line of patients curled in a neat S toward the greeting cards. By ten, a pediatric antibiotic shortage had turned the place into a triage unit. By eleven, someone cried at the counter and someone else shouted and Rae put out fires with the kind of competence that made gratitude look simple. She was good at this. She loved being good at this. It would have been perfect if not for the man who ran the place like a ship that never docked. Cole was relentless and exacting and, if you asked anyone else, the best boss they’d ever had. He promoted from within. He fought for fair schedules. He took the Saturday closing shift more often than his ownership required. But with Rae — only with Rae — he was a storm that never ran out of sky. They’d been at it for years. He pushed; she pushed back. Their respective versions of right rubbed together and threw sparks. The staff pretended not to notice. The cameras did not blink. At four-thirty, the pediatric shortage turned into a province-wide back order. Rae rerouted scripts to an out-of-town wholesaler, negotiated a partial fill with the hospital, and secured courier delivery for two cases that would arrive just after closing. It was a small victory. She let herself feel it. Then she walked into Cole’s office to file the update before he could pretend he’d pulled the day back from the edge. “Courier will hit at 9:40. I’ll stay.” She set the paperwork down. “You can go.” Cole looked up, surprised. “No.” “No?” She arched a brow. “I’m not asking permission. I’m telling you the plan.” He leaned back, studying her, the way he always did when he was weighing the cost of letting her be right. “We stay,” he corrected. “Together.” She hated how the word landed in her chest. “Fine,” she said tightly. “Together.” The plaza emptied. The cleaners hummed next door. Rain started somewhere out of sight and arrived all at once. By nine-thirty-five the streetlights were halos in a soft fog. By nine-forty-two the courier called to say they’d be twenty minutes late. Rae ended the call, set the receiver down, and laughed — not because it was funny, but because she had to release the day from her lungs. Cole looked up from the narcotic log. “You okay?” “What a question,” she said lightly. “Should I be?” He didn’t answer at first. Then: “You carry more than you should.” “So do you,” she shot back. “Comes with the keys.” “Comes with the job,” she corrected. “Not just the keys.” For once, he didn’t argue. The rain drummed. The office clock ticked. A stubborn curl slipped from her twist and brushed her cheek. She pushed it back; it fell again. He watched; she pretended he wasn’t. “Thank you,” he said unexpectedly. “For the hospital coordination.” She blinked. “You’re welcome.” “You were exceptional.” He said it like a fact, not a favor, and it hit harder because of it. The air changed. She felt it. He felt it. Their lives were a grid of rules and timing and sterile surfaces; this was none of those. It was messy and alive and wrong in the ways that felt like oxygen after holding your breath. She had the wild thought that if he stood, they would collide. He did not stand. He reached for another form and pretended to read it. Coward, she thought. Or savior. She wasn’t sure which one she wanted him to be. At ten-oh-four the courier arrived. They broke the boxes down, checked every lot, restocked what could be restocked, and slid the remainders into the vault like relief. It was nearly eleven when the locks clicked shut and the keys stopped ringing and the storm settled into a tired hiss. “Go home,” he said, flipping off lights. “You go home.” “I live closer.” “You live upstairs,” she corrected. “In that little condo over the bakery, like a character in a black-and-white film.” His mouth tilted, part smile, part surprise that she knew. Of course she knew. She knew what time he arrived when he ran in the morning and which days he wore the navy tie and how he took his coffee (black at six, with milk after ten, never sugar, always distracted). She knew how he looked when something was unfair and he couldn’t fix it, and how he sounded when he was about to say something careful and didn’t. “Take the umbrella,” he said, offering the spare that lived on the coat tree. She shook her head. “You’ll need it.” “I don’t melt.” “I’m not afraid of water.” And there it was again, the too-bright, too-thin line where banter became something that looked like a dare. He stepped closer to hand her the umbrella anyway, and the world telescoped down to the heat of his fingers and the clean scent of rain on fabric and the tick of the old clock. She could have moved. So could he. Neither did. “Rae,” he said, an exhale shaped into a name. “Don’t,” she murmured, even as she leaned in just enough to prove she didn’t mean it. He kissed her like an argument he was finished losing. She kissed him back like an apology she’d never say aloud. It was not careful. It was not wise. It was not anything they could turn into paperwork later if it went wrong. It went right. When they broke apart, she rested her forehead against his and breathed. “We can’t,” she said, because someone had to. “I know.” His hands were still on her waist, not gripping, but there. “We won’t.” They did. The second kiss was softer, the kind of deliberate that felt like a signed contract. The third was a promise and a problem and a perfect mistake. They swayed, a slow step, then another, like they were learning a dance no one had taught them but their bodies had somehow always known. She left with the umbrella. He stood in the doorway and watched her cross the puddled lot and knew, from the hollow ache in his ribs, that the world had tilted a degree and would not tilt back. They were very professional the next morning. It would have been convincing if not for the way silence rippled when one of them entered a room the other was already in. They spoke in the language of systems and counts and compliance. Their hands never brushed. Their eyes did not linger. Their pulses did. They set rules. No flirting on camera. No texts they couldn’t explain. No leaving together. If either of them said stop, it stopped. It should have felt cold. It felt safe, like scaffolding around a building that was still learning how to stand tall. A week moved like that: quick, bright, dangerous in the way a live wire is dangerous if you pretend it’s just a rope. And then jealousy walked in at two-fifteen on a Tuesday wearing a leather jacket and an old grin. “Rae?” the man at the counter asked, voice warm with history. “Is that you?” She looked up and smiled before she could help it. “Logan?” Cole, who had been making a note in the schedule, did not look up at all. He didn’t have to. He could map the scene by sound — the lift in Rae’s voice, the easy laughter, the way people who used to belong to each other found the correct distance by instinct and then closed it on purpose. Logan had gone to high school with her. He’d worked at the pizza place two plazas over. He had a motorcycle now and the same generous dimples and a prescription for allergy eye drops. He caught Rae up in a minute’s worth of jokes and a decade’s worth of shorthand while Cole’s pen pressed an unbreaking line against the paper. “How’ve you been?” Logan asked. “Busy,” she said, and the word did not begin to contain it. “You?” “Good. Better now.” He leaned, conspiratorial. “You going to the street festival Saturday? I might have a spare wristband.” “Maybe,” she said, and meant it in the way you say maybe when you’re flattered and you like the person and your life is a mess of lines you can’t explain to anyone without drawing blood. Cole stepped in then, not looking at Logan, looking at the label instead. “We have ketotifen in stock from two manufacturers,” he said to Rae, cool as steel. “Offer the Apotex unless he requests Sandoz.” Logan’s brows went up. “Your boss, huh?” he murmured. She smiled politely. “He’s particular.” “Good thing you can handle it,” Logan said, softer. “You always could.” When Logan left, Cole took a very long time to sign a very simple form. “Street festival?” he asked without asking. “Old friend,” she said without explaining. “Of course.” “Of course?” She turned, heat rising. “What does that mean?” “It means you’re free to do what you want,” he said, still too calm. “We agreed on rules.” “Did we agree on pretending not to feel anything?” He looked up then. The burn in his eyes should have made the room hotter. Instead, it made everything sharp. “We agreed not to ruin our lives.” “Right.” Her laugh was small and mean, mostly at herself. “I forgot. We are sensible. We are wise. We are very, very good at pretending.” He could have told her not to go. He could have said he didn’t like the way that man said her name, didn’t like the dimples or the jacket or the way the air had changed around her when the past walked in and reminded her she had other stories than this one. He said none of it. He said, “Enjoy the festival.” So she went. It wasn’t a date, exactly. It was a walk on Main under strings of lights, a plastic cup of lemonade, a band that tuned forever and played two chords that sounded like June. Logan was easy and kind and safe in the way someone is safe when they never hurt you while also never asking you to become more than you were. He talked about his older sister. He complimented Rae’s patience. He nearly said the word beautiful and steered around it like a car avoiding a pothole it knew well. At nine-thirty, Rae said she should go. Logan offered her the extra wristband for Sunday, just in case. She took it and thanked him and walked to her car feeling lighter and heavier in alternation, like her heart couldn’t decide how to calibrate. She didn’t text Cole. She didn’t have to. He was in her head like a radio she couldn’t turn off. Sunday morning she found the wristband on her kitchen counter, flipped it once, and left it there. Monday at work, Cole didn’t ask. Monday night, the power went out across the plaza and the backup system hiccuped and died and the pharmacy slipped into a dim, quiet gray. They finished locking the vault by flashlight. The rain returned on cue. “Do you ever feel like the weather is mocking us?” Rae asked, shoulders slick with mist. “I feel like we make it easy,” he said from the doorway, holding the light low to keep their faces in shadow. She didn’t move. Neither did he. The rules stretched thin. “Tell me not to,” he said. She didn’t. He kissed her like he’d stood in the rain for years and had finally found the door. She let him in. The world was careful around them for a week. They were careful back. Then carelessness found a camera angle they hadn’t mapped. It started with a mistake: a schedule change that put them alone too often in the last hour before close. It continued with a rumor: two regulars whispering near the cough syrups about how the boss and the assistant seemed made of flint and sparks. It climaxed with the most boring thing of all — a printer jam that called a tech to the back hallway to clear it just as Rae’s fingers found Cole’s sleeve in a moment that looked, on the tiny screen, like more than it was, and then exactly what it was. No one said anything. The tech cleared the jam, printed the forms, and left. But the air changed again, and not in the way Rae liked. Cole noticed because he noticed everything. Rae noticed because she cared how he carried things. “We need to stop,” he said that night, voice sanded down to something quiet. “Stop what?” she asked, already knowing. “This,” he said, and the word sounded nothing like previous nights when it had meant tenderness and permission and a promise to be good to each other in a bad idea. “Before we hurt the only thing we were ever good at — the work.” Rae smiled then, small and sad. “We were good at the work before we were good at anything else.” “I know.” He looked wrecked. “And I can’t lose this place. I won’t.” “You won’t,” she said, and it was both blessing and goodbye. He stepped back like the air around her was hot. “Rae—” “It’s okay.” She lifted her chin. “We’ll be perfect. We always were, when it mattered.” They tried. God, they tried. The next week was a performance that would have won awards if the audience had been kinder. They were impeccable. They were distant like strangers who once survived a shipwreck together. They were hollowed out and full of professionalism in equal measure. Logan dropped by Wednesday with coffee and a joke. Rae laughed like the sound belonged to her again. Cole signed for a narcotic order with a steadiness that did not reach his knuckles. The staff relaxed, a little. The cameras blinked, indifferent. Friday at six, a child spiked a fever in aisle four and vomited into her mother’s hands. Rae moved before the cry finished leaving the mother’s throat. Cold cloth, cool words, call to urgent care, dose to bring the world back under a ceiling that didn’t feel like it was collapsing. Cole assembled a care pack of oral syringes and a printout that translated into mercy. They worked like a machine with a soul. When the family left, the pharmacy felt wide and soft and empty of anything but relief. Rae stood at the counter with damp hair and a damp heart and let herself breathe. Cole approached with two waters he’d grabbed from the staff fridge. “Drink,” he said, offering one. She took it and drank and stared at the automatic doors like answers might walk in. “I miss you,” he said, low. It wasn’t a plan. It was a truth. It cost him the whole bottle of water to say it. Rae closed her eyes. “Me too.” He could have undone the decision then. He didn’t. He set the empty bottle down, exhaled, and said, “Inventory Sunday.” “Of course,” she said, because life is what you do after you admit the thing you can’t fix. Sunday’s inventory was a prayer for distraction. It didn’t answer. Numbers lined up in columns; people didn’t. Rae counted the safe with hands that remembered the shape of his wrist bones without permission. Cole logged returns with a pen that had her teeth marks on the cap from a Tuesday three months before. The air was thick with habit and the shadow of every night they had chosen the same wrong thing because it made them feel like better versions of themselves. At nine-fifty, Rae cracked a joke about the ancient label maker. At nine-fifty-one, Cole smiled like the sun finding a gap in cloud. At nine-fifty-two, the back door rattled. They both stilled. That door never rattled from the outside. Cole gestured for silence and moved to the camera monitor. A boy in a hood stood in the alley, fidgeting with something shiny near the lock — a screwdriver, maybe. A second shape paced behind him, nervous. Cole didn’t hesitate. He motioned Rae to his office and dialed the non-emergency line he kept taped to the wall. While he spoke — low, efficient, precise with details — the boy looked up and straight at the lens. They had time to be afraid before he ran. The cruiser arrived quickly. The officer took statements. The camera printed stills. The alley emptied of everything but stale rain. “You okay?” Cole asked when the door shut on the last echo of radio chatter. Rae nodded, then shook her head, then did something she hadn’t done in months. She stepped into him and let herself be held. It was automatic — the way you reach for balance when the world shifts under your feet. He held her like he’d been waiting to let all his carefulness go. When she pulled back, the rules were scattered like dropped pills, and neither of them seemed interested in finding each one. “We are ridiculous,” she said, smiling helplessly. “Utterly,” he agreed. “Say we’ll be good tomorrow,” she whispered. “We’ll be perfect,” he promised, and this time it sounded like hope, not armor. They kissed like a secret and a vow. It was a quiet thing, a gentle thing, a reminder in the language of touch that they were not just urgency and error. They were also kindness. They were also tenderness. They were also two people trying to build a small honest place inside a complicated life. They kept the lights on for another hour, because pretending the night was longer than it was felt like a gift. They tidied drawers and labeled shelves and checked locks they already knew were secure. When they finally left, they did it separately, like always. But the distance didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like patience. Monday morning, Rae wore a navy dress she knew he liked, not because she needed him to notice, but because she wanted to feel like a person who could be seen clearly and still be safe. Cole wore the tie she’d once called his courtroom tie — a dark blue that made him look like someone you could hand your mess to and trust it would come back smaller. The day moved. People needed things. They gave what they had. At noon, Logan walked in with a paper bag and set it on the counter. “I brought lunch,” he said, grinning. “If your boss lets you eat.” “My boss does not control my stomach,” Rae said, amused. “Good to know,” Logan said, eyes glinting. “Dinner, then?” Cole’s pen paused over a form. Rae felt it without looking. She also felt the choice in her chest, clear as a bell: live a smaller life that didn’t terrify her, or live the true one that did. She lifted the bag. “Thank you,” she said warmly, because kindness deserved a place in the story. “I can’t tonight.” “Tomorrow?” “I can’t tomorrow either.” She smiled, softening the no. “Be well, Logan.” He bowed out with grace that made her like him more. He would always be almost. Almost was a kind of mercy. After he left, the pharmacy breathed. Cole didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. They did not become reckless. That would have been easy and then ruin. They built something else, slowly, with care. The staff noticed and did not pry. The cameras blinked and recorded only what was placed in front of them. The city turned toward fall. The bakery below Cole’s condo put cinnamon in the air on Thursdays. Rae started bringing a sweater and leaving it on the back of her chair like a claim. One night, late, they sat on the floor of the back office eating takeout on an upturned box, their knees almost touching. They talked about nothing — a patient’s persnickety cat, a supplier who insisted on faxing like the century hadn’t rolled over — and everything — the way grief rearranges a person’s sense of time, the way a small kindness can feel like a foundation when everything else shifts. Rae told him about the summer she thought she’d lost her voice for good. He told her about the winter his father got sick and he learned how to live in waiting rooms. “We are not simple people,” she said softly. “No,” he agreed. “But we might be good ones.” She threaded her fingers through his — not hidden, not showy, just true. “We’re trying.” They made a plan to try better. They created a fake argument in public about scheduling so they could dial down the visible friction that had always given them away. They staggered breaks. They stopped the after-hours habit cold for a while, even when it hurt, because discipline is a kind of devotion. They made a pact to tell the truth inside the rules — if one of them felt distance, they said it; if one of them felt fear, they said that too. When the first snow dusted the parking lot in early November, Rae stood at the window and watched the tire tracks make careful curves. Cole came up beside her with two paper cups, one black, one with milk. He handed her the right one without looking. Their shoulders didn’t touch. Their bodies learned a new way to stand close without begging the world to notice. “This is going to last,” she said, startling herself. He didn’t ask what this was. He never did. “Yes.” “Not because we want it to.” “Because we’re doing the work,” he said, smiling. “Imagine that.” She laughed, the sound fogging the glass. “We’re nauseating.” “Utterly.” The bell over the door chimed. The day carried on. A woman needed advice about vitamins. A teenager needed a sports brace. A grandfather needed someone to talk to for five minutes about the way memory is slippery at the edges and how that scares him. They did the job. They were good at the job. They were good to each other inside the job. And when the last patient left and the last lock clicked and the last light went out, they stood for a moment in the soft dark, listening to the heat pipes knock like old radiators in an old story. Rae reached for Cole’s hand. He didn’t take it at first, because habit is a stubborn animal. Then he did, because love — the quiet, ordinary, honest kind — is even more stubborn. “Tell me something true,” she said into the near-dark. He thought. He took his time. “I never liked the word hate,” he said. “Even when it was the only word that felt big enough to hold what you did to my heart.” She smiled, felt the shape of it against her wrist where their hands met. “Tell me something else.” “I had to learn a different word.” “And?” she asked, though she knew. “And I did,” he said, not dramatic, not shy, just sure. They locked up. They walked to their cars like colleagues who had survived a long shift. They drove home by different streets that led to the same truth. In the morning, they would unlock the same door and start again — counting and correcting and comforting, making order inside the day’s wildness, building something that looked small from the outside and felt huge from within. People called it a pharmacy. They called it a life. And between the chime of the bell and the click of the lock and the thousand ordinary mercies in between, the line they’d once thought thin and cruel — the one between love and hate — turned out not to be a line at all, but a path they had learned to walk together, carefully, with their eyes open, toward whatever came next.