She taps the rim of her mug. “I really did mean it, you know. You didn’t have to come over and build half of my apartment.”
“I told you to call.”
“I know.” Her mouth softens. “But I also know you didn’t mean ‘call so I can come over two days in a row and basically be your personal contractor.’”
“I did.” I lean an elbow on the bar, turning toward her. “If something’s broken, I can most likely fix it. That simple.”
Her eyes search mine like she’s looking for the string attached. “Well… thanks. Again. For today. And for tonight.”
“Yeah.” I let my gaze sweep her again, slower this time so she feels it. “You clean up alright, Simpson.”
I take another drink so I don’t do anything stupid like reach over and kiss that red mouth of hers just to see if the gloss smears. She’s trying to play it cool. I can tell by the way she crosses and then uncrosses her legs. By the way she keeps nervously talking. It’s cute.
“So, um… how was your day?”
“Long,” I say. “Cold. Guys don’t want to work when it snows.”
“Neither do software engineers,” she says, laughing. “Everyone scattered at like four today. I almost asked if I could tag along but I didn’t want to be the new girl who doesn’t have any friends.”
“News flash,” I say, tilting the bottle toward her. “Everybody wants friends.”
Her lips twitch. “Even you?”
I give her a look. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Her shoulders drop a little more, like she’d been braced for me to say this was inconvenient or that I was just being nice because of Maddie. She takes another sip of her mule, eyes on the Christmas tree in the corner.
“Okay, well…” She huffs out a breath that isn’t exactly a laugh. “Full disclosure, then.”
I raise a brow. “Full disclosure?”
She turns on the stool to face me more fully, knee bumping mine again—this time she doesn’t move it. “The excuse I gave you? About owing you a drink?” She rolls her eyes at herself. “That was born out of me being alone in my apartment on a Friday night with a glass of wine, getting dramatic. I obviouslydo owe you, more than a drink, but I figured if I baited you, you couldn’t say no.”
She thinks she’s telling me something I don’t know but if her friend group were here in Denver with her right now, I sure as shit wouldn’t be. And that’s okay, I get it. I remember being alone in a new city.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, voice lower. “Dramatic how?”
“Like a full-on mini crises.” She bites her lip, cheeks heating. “I started thinking maybe I should use one of those apps where you go on friend dates. Or maybe I made a mistake moving here. Which is stupid, I know it is. It’s been what, a week or so?” She shakes her head at herself. “But I didn’t think it would feel so… lonely so quickly. And the quiet.”
I understand all of it and I’m half tempted to tell her that it doesn’t get better, you only learn to hide certain parts of yourself from people so they never have full access and can never hurt you again.
“It’s not that I can’t be alone,” she rushes on, fingers twisting the straw. “I actually like being alone. I just… I’ve never lived somewhere where I didn’t know anyone. College, I had Maddie. After that, I had her and a strong friend group we’d built over the years. Holidays, I had my family and yours. Now it’s like… I go to work, everyone already has their people, and then I go home and it’s just boxes and that stupid sad plant from my old kitchen.”
I watch her as she talks. She’s not asking for advice. She just needed to say it to someone who wasn’t a stranger. So I let her.
“Anyway, it just got overwhelming when I realized I’m sitting in a city full of people and I don’t know a single one.”
“You know me,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flick up, searching. Then she gives me that soft, crooked smile. “Kind of.”
“Kind of,” I agree.
“And that’s why I reached out,” she says, smiling again. “Because I thought of you. And I was like, ‘well, hopefully it’s okay, hopefully it’s not weird.’ I almost deleted it and pretended my phone auto-texted you or something.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, and I mean it. “I would have said no if I didn’t want to be here.”
Her shoulders sag in relief like she was holding on to that answer.
