“If you ask out Hannah and she says yes, I’m going to have to break your nose. And then stop talking to you.”
“You’d never get a clean shot, and I have other friends.”
“Fucker.”
The doorbell rings and he chuckles, getting to his feet. “That’s probably my girl Hannah now.”
“Get the damn food,” I growl at him.
His laughter follows him out of the living room to the front door.
“That was fast,” Shep notes.
I’m only half-listening to him, wistfully watching toward the window.
D-Low comes back a minute later with a small brown bag and sets it on the coffee table, then heads toward the kitchen.
The smell of something greasy and delicious hits my nose. I pull out a carton of noodles and chopsticks and dig in, leaving the rest in the bag for the guys.
“I need a plan,” I say around a mouthful of Thai food when D-Low comes back into the living room.
Shep sits forward and takes the bag from me. “To ask out your neighbor again?”
I give him a “duh" look and he nods.
D-Low sets the plates and forks down. Shep reaches into the bag and pulls out a small bowl of soup.
“This is it?” he holds the container as he looks to D-Low.
“Why are you looking at me? I have no idea. I ordered pizza.”
I pause with another hunk of noodles millimeters from my mouth.
“Who ordered the Thai, then?” Shep asks.
“I thought you ordered it,” D-Low says, then picks up the bag and looks at the receipt stapled to the side. His lips pull into an amused grin. “Hannah Walsh.”
His dark brows lift as he looks at me. “Wow, Bennett.”
I look down into the half-empty container of noodles. “Oh, fuck.”
D-Low’s deep chuckle makes a pit form in my stomach.
Shep shrugs. “On the plus side, now you have an excuse to go talk to your hottie neighbor.”
4
HANNAH
“I hate my roommate,” Wren says for at least the third time since we got on the phone an hour ago. “She’s started leaving these passive-aggressive quotes on the whiteboard. Today’s read: Always choose kindness.”
“What’s so bad about that?” I ask.
“It’s aimed at me. I know it is. Last night I very politely asked Sara if she’d mind cleaning out her old takeout food from the fridge because we were running out of room and it smelled awful in there, and she said, ‘You know, Wren, I’ve been having a really hard time lately and I’d appreciate if you were a little kinder to me.’” Wren lets out an exasperated grunt. “I can’t even ask her to throw away her two-week-old Thai without being mean?”
I laugh but the thought of Thai takeout has me glancing toward my own fridge where my sweet and sour soup from a week ago still sits. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I was too mad. And a little afraid he did spit in it.
“I’m sorry,” I say as my phone pings with a text. I pull it away from my ear to read the message.
