“Wanna join us for one last drink?” Shanti asked him.
“Had a beer at home,” he replied. “So…thanks, but no.”
At home.
He’d been at my place.
Le sigh.
“Though, I’ll hang if you two aren’t done,” Gabe offered.
God, he was so freaking great.
Thus, le repeat.
Le sigh.
“No, we’re good,” Shanti said as she slid off her stool.
I sucked back the dregs of my drink before I did the same, which earned me an amused mini smile from my man.
Gabe took us home and Shanti and I hugged outside her door.
“You need to stop worrying,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m fine.” She pulled away and smiled at me. “But I’m not giving up besties dates.”
“Never,” I replied.
We hugged again.
Gabe waited patiently.
It was both of us waiting as she let herself in, and only after we heard her coo to her cats, “Hello, my babies,” did Gabe take my hand to guide me to our place (or, one of the two of them, I was seeing why Eric and Jessie, Harlow and Javi were all in on this two-shared-spaces gig—once you’d doubled up on toiletries and split your wardrobe accordingly, it was all kinds of fun for all kinds of reasons to have options).
Gabe let us in.
I flicked off my heels precisely two steps into the apartment.
“Another drink, cupcake, or hit the sack?” Gabe asked.
It was late-ish.
I was tipsy-ish.
What I was not was running on empty.
My life was full. It was busy.
It was no longer overfull or overwhelmingly busy.
And Real Logic hadn’t had to rear her head in weeks.
Winning!
Still, I said, “Hit the sack.”
Gabe moved to me.
I told him. “You don’t have to carry me every time…eyeeeee!”
