“What about food?”
“Anything really, I don’t care much as long as I don’t have to go hungry.”
“You’re painfully boring.”
“And yet you’re here with me.” She looked up at me then, a little longer than necessary.
“You didn’t have to bring me,” she said quietly.
“I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“Because I remember that night.”
“So do I.”
“What do you remember?” I asked, and she hesitated before answering.
“I remember how you didn’t introduce yourself immediately but watched me from a distance and took your sweet time with it. It almost felt as if you were deciding whether I was worth the trouble or not.”
“You were.” She rolled her eyes.
“And I remember thinking,” she continued, “that you were dangerous and interesting and I wanted you to come introduce yourself to me.”
“And what do you think now?” She didn’t answer immediately as the music swelled slightly around us.
“Now I think you’re more complicated than I allowed myself to believe,” she said finally.
“And that disappoints you?”
“It unsettles me.”
“Why?”
“Because it means I might have been wrong about you, and I don’t like being wrong.”
“I have noticed that.”
We moved seamlessly with the rhythm as her hand slid slightly higher along my shoulder. My grip tightened almost imperceptibly at her waist.
“The things you keep doing just keep making it harder for me to hate you.”
I held her gaze. “And does it make anything else easier?”
The song shifted again, slower now, but she didn’t answer my question. Instead, she simply shrugged, her head resting lightly against my chest. The contact was small but deliberate, as if she wanted me to find my answer in that one small movement.
“You’re laughing tonight,” I said softly.
“I am.”
“I haven’t heard that in a while.”
“I know.”
Her fingers traced a subtle pattern against the back of my neck.
“Tell me about your parents,” she said.
