“Come on, big guy.”
Milo stumbled next to her for two blocks before the evening breeze reinvigorated him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, still soft around the sounds. “I don’t usually get drunk. I try not to anyway.”
“I owe you one.” Hanna fell back to that dive bar in Phoenix, trying not to get lost in those dimples.
Milo smirked. “True. You were so mean to me that night.” He bumped his shoulder into hers under the streetlight.
Hanna protested. “Only for the first few minutes!”
“No one can resist my charms for long, Arizona.”
She laughed as he pulled on the end of her ponytail. “Diner coffee and pie, or cold leftover pasta?”
Milo stumbled over a crack in the street. “You pick.”
“Pie,” she said, leading him into the diner. The server appeared next to their favorite table with two glasses of water and a fresh pot of coffee.
“Can we get a slice of the French silk and… a…” She looked over the list on the handwritten menu above the counter. “Ah, lemon meringue.”
“Be right back,” she said.
Milo leaned his head against the laminate table. He mumbled from under his elbow.
“You study me, too.”
“You ordered the lemon last time we stumbled in here with Chloe.”
He was silent for a second, and then whispered, “I think you like me a little more than you wanted to.”
Hanna’s face heated, completely caught off guard. “Um—” It wasn’t that she was surprised. The feelings didn’t sneak up. But she was surprised to hear him acknowledge it.
“Don’t make it weird. I definitely like you more than I should.”
“Can you at least look at me while you drunkenly confess shit?” He picked his head up off the table, and no, no, he could not look at her. He couldn’t even locate her. “Oh, god, you’re a goner.”
“Nothing pie can’t heal.”
“Let us pray,” she groaned as two plates hit the table.
The lemon meringue did some heavy lifting. Halfway through his slice, he was at least able to look her in the eye, though he still wasn’t fully online.
“I want to go home, lie next to you in bed, and pass out so fucking hard, Hanna.”
“Done and done,” she agreed and paid their tab, dragging him across the street and into the elevator. When the doors closed, he slumped against the wall, half asleep as they raced toward their floor.
His floor. Not our floor, she reminded herself.
He reached for her, a gesture she wasn’t about to ignore, and she leaned into him.
“I mean it, Arizona, I like you too much.”
She nodded against his chest, the dread of the sentiment all too familiar.
“I know.”
“And you like me too much.”
