“You wanna come in for a bit? Talk about it?”
A heavy breath tumbled away from her. “It’s late.”
“I knew it,” he said, crossing his arms, his leather jacket squeaking against its own friction. The elevator opened and they stepped off. “You turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”
“Caught me,” she said.
His keys jingled as he fished them from his pocket and stopped at his door.
“You could come in and… not talk about it.”
“Milo—“
“I didn’t mean that! Unless—ow! Okay!” Hanna backed away, the satisfying swat of his arm too much contact for the tenor of the air. “But if you aren’t ready to be alone yet, I’m still up.”
“It was the song.”
She hadn’t planned on confessing it. She hadn’t actually consciously realized she had anything to confess. There was just something about him that drew the truth from her.
“Song?” Milo unlocked his door and held it open for her. She took her place on his couch, the same one she’d curled into the night before for movie night, but the room felt different somehow. He dropped a glass in her hand before she even gathered the words to form her thoughts.
“The country one. What’s her face?”
“Deana Carter?”
“Yes.” Hanna sank into the leather, trying not to think of how many women before her had been held by its warmth. “My mom loved that song.”
Milo leaned forward and poured her a decent gulp of one of his experimental bottles, the label only boasting numbers this time.
“My mom also went through a Strawberry Wine renaissance.” He glanced around his apartment, a twist on his lips that sparked something in her nerves.
“What are you doing?” Hanna groaned as he took her glass out of her hand and set it on the coffee table. “Milo!”
He pulled on her fingers, lifting her from the couch as he said over his shoulder, “Hey, Siri, play Strawberry Wine.”
“Milo, what the hell?” She dropped his hand, a knot forming in her stomach.
“It’s exposure therapy,” he said, swiping her hand once more. “We’re building a tolerance.”
The speakers jumped to life with the song's first twangs, the melancholy lilt pushing down on her shoulders.
She shook her head, her hair brushing against her shirt, every nerve on her neck alert.
“This is literal torture!”
He pulled her closer, wrapping a hand around her back and spinning her, his socks slipping over the concrete floor.
“You can handle it.”
Every muscle in her body resisted his sway, locked in an iron defiance, certain she could not, in fact, handle it. Her face flushed and her heart pumped with a white-hot rage.
Milo hummed the first verse while he pushed and pulled, rocking her back and forth, her head reluctantly lolling side to side with the motion. She swallowed, irritated that he’d managed to make something so painful seem even remotely approachable.
He twirled her slowly and she rolled her eyes but played along, her breath catching in her throat at the arrival of the chorus. When it broke, Milo sang loudly—and poorly, which only added to the charm—bringing her in close to him. It was the warmth of his chest that finally thawed her frigid heart, melting away the anger and pain that protected something so much more frightening to have exposed.
Love.
She loved the way her mom fucked up the lyrics, no matter how many times they listened to it. She loved the way she couldn’t pick a key. She loved watching her spin and twist in their kitchen, singing into a wooden spoon.
