Page 97 of Anything But Lonely

How the tables have turned.

For months, she's watched me make an idiot out of myself around her. She's watched me stumble, overthink, and recover poorly.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one affected.

My lips part to say as much before she lifts a hand, cutting me off. “Don't start,” she mutters.

Setting my coffee down on the table, I hold my hands up in surrender. “I didn't say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“Maybe,” I argue.

“Mateo.”

I can't help my smile.

Half an hour ago, she'd been pretending she didn't want to spend time with me.

Now she's annoyed because another woman recognized me.

I'll take that as a win.

“Maybe I should’ve knocked on Liam’s door this morning.”

My smile immediately drops, only for hers to turn lethal.

Well, we can’t all be winners.

By the time we finish our coffees, we've somehow wandered three blocks from the café, going back and forth, each of us testing the other's defenses and looking for cracks—toeing the line just enough to knock the other off balance.

Emerson points out every person on the street who does a double-take when they recognize me, asking if I want her to start carrying around a Sharpie or two for autograph emergencies. I retaliate by reminding her that someone gets a little territorial.

She insists she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

I insist I do.

We drift in and out of little shops as we walk through the city. Emerson disappears into a bookstore for nearly twenty minutes, emerging with two novels tucked under her arm and a third she swears she didn't just buy because the cover was pretty.

I follow her into a vintage record store and endure ten minutes of her making fun of my own albums sitting in the rock section. "Do you think they put these here because they're good?" she asks, holding one up. "Or because they needed something to prop up the shelf?"

I almost leave her there.

Instead, I buy the record and make her carry it.

Between the teasing, conversation comes easier than it should. We talk about Crew. About the tour. About the cities I've liked and the ones I haven't. She tells me stories from working at the coffee shop I'd never heard before, and I find myself asking questions just to keep her talking. She tells me all about her friends, Rumi and Ava, and about her brother Jack and Ava’s husband, who I learn is the same Anderson who led the Survive Alive House event that day at the station.

At some point, I realize neither of us has checked the time. And it’s been hours.

Neither of us seems in any hurry to go back to the hotel.

The jabs keep coming, but they've lost their edge, settling into something comfortable.

The kind of banter that starts to feel less like sparring and more like an excuse to keep the conversation going.

“Do you plan on going back to Hey Honey’s after tour?” I ask her, her shopping bags from the bookstore and the record store swinging in my hand.

She nods, her hands in her pockets as she matches her steps with mine. “Probably,” she answers, her gaze a few feet in front of her boots. “I also do freelance character designs and book covers for authors, so I’ll probably start that back up again too.”