Mikey leans across, offering his hand.
“What’s the name, sweetheart?
“Or we s’posed to guess?”
I shake it.
Only because ignoring it would be louder.
“Allison.”
His hand lingers, thumb brushes mine,
and I can feel Andrew vibrating next to me.
Mikey shoots him a smirk?—
“No disrespect, man,
“just tryna get my facts straight—she yours?”
Andrew slides me a side glance,
one breath away from saying?—
fuck Thanksgiving.
But when I scan the room,
I notice he has an audience.
It’s too loud in here to hear anything.
But somehow, they all do.
Conversations stall.
One girl behind Mikey arches a brow.
Another bites her lip.
A guy lingering close by eyes me, waiting on a green light.
The girl leaning against the wall stops mid-sip to listen.
And Andrew’s eyes are fixed on me.
“Nah. We’re just friends.”
And it blows into me like a punch I was dumb enough to lean into.
I know what I agreed to,
but I still breathe air in fragments,
my body forgetting how to hold it.
Mikey’s grin kicks up.
