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I push myself up against the pillows while Aurora abandons me for the warmer patch of comforter beside my hip. I press my lips together as I watch my cat start washing one paw, and feel the stupid smile come back.

“Oh, this is bad.”

I close my eyes for a second, then listen as my cat gets off my bed and walks away entirely.

“You could at least pretend to care, Aurora,” I call after her as I reach for my phone, unplugging it from the charger and squinting at the screen until the brightness stops hurting my eyes. There are enough notifications waiting that I immediately decide none of them can possibly be urgent, but then I see a name I’ve never seen on my phone before.

Flora Ramos

The stupid smile comes back.

We exchanged numbers sometime after the kissing and before we finally went back inside. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, only that at some point I became aware of the fact that I had kissed this woman several times and still had no way of contacting her that didn’t involve showing up at her place of employment and ordering coffee until she happened to be working.

Which I apparently said out loud. Flora laughed, asked for my phone, and typed in her number.

I watched her do it while standing close enough that our arms were still touching, my brain operating at maybe thirty percent capacity because I’d just discovered that Flora Ramos was, indeed, a very good kisser.

Then she handed me my phone, not without texting herself first.

“What’s your last name?”

“Hawthorne.”

“You truly sound like a fairy tale.”

I laughed, and she looked at me with crinkles by her eyes and a scrunched up nose and a smile so big, I thought my heart was going to stop beating for a minute.

Now, in the considerably less flattering light of morning, her name is sitting beneath three messages from Dani, one from Veronica, an email from work I refuse to acknowledge on principle, and a notification from Whisp.

Flora

Did you make it home okay?

I glance at the time and wince.

Me

I did! Sorry, I passed out. Hope you made it home okay too.

I send it before I can start editing myself and set the phone down.

Then I pick it back up, and I have to tell myself that it’s not because I’m hoping or waiting for Flora to answer.

I’m absolutely not.

I have other notifications. Important ones.

I open the group chat long enough to discover that Dani’s three messages consist of HELLO, MERRY, and a final string of question marks sent at two in the morning, which tells me everything I need to know about what she wants. I close it again without answering.

Veronica can deal with her later.

I put my phone down and finally drag myself out of bed, discovering in the process that I apparently slept in my tights and only managed to remove one earring before giving up on the rest of my clothes entirely. The other earring turns up somewhere near my hip after I shake out the comforter, along with two pieces of straw that land on the floor beside my feet.

I stare at them and think, immediately, that I have no idea how they got here.

Actually, I do know how they got here, and that sends me straight back to the patio.

The stupid smile again.