“Comfortable?” he asked.
I settled my purse beside me and crossed one leg over the other, mostly to give myself something to do while my body remembered the exact feeling of that hug.
“I’m fine.”
His mouth curved like he heard everything I did not say.
“You definitely are.”
I felt my face get warm. Having his intent focus on me did something to me. His eyes caressed every one of my features like taking snapshots to store for later.
“You came,” he said.
“You sounded surprised when I said I might.”
“I was trying not to be hopeful.”
“That sounds false.”
“It is a little false.”
That got a laugh out of me, which seemed to please him more than it should have.
A server appeared before he could say anything else. I ordered a French 75. He got another old fashioned. Once we were alone again, the room settled around us differently than it had at the mixer. This was not incidental. We had both chosen to be here, sitting across from each other in low light with old songs moving through the lounge and enough memory between us to make pretending feel like a waste of time.
He looked at me for another second, then said, “That post was about you.”
I leaned back against the booth. “I know.”
“I figured.”
“That’s why I commented.”
His mouth shifted, and damn, I liked that little movement more every time I saw it.
“You are very pleased with yourself.”
“I’m pleased with my timing.”
“That too.”
The drinks came, and for a while, we let the conversation do what it had done from the beginning. It opened the space between us instead of filling it with noise.
We talked about the week. About work. About his sister, because he mentioned her in passing and I made him tell me more. About my family, because he wanted to know what had me all the way out in Penn Hills in the first place. About music, again, because music had become one of the little bridges between us and neither of us seemed interested in pretending we hadn’t noticed.
That was the thing about us already.
The chemistry did not erase the conversation. It made it hotter. Every answer felt like it had a body behind it. Every pause carried something neither of us was rushing to name.
At one point, I laughed hard enough to tip my head back, and when I looked at him again, he was watching my mouth.
The air changed immediately.
I felt it in the stem of the glass between my fingers, in the warm little pull low in my stomach, in the way my nipples tightened beneath my bra and denim like my body thought it was helping.
He saw the shift too.
“Sit with me,” he said.
