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She relented with a low, “Fine. Let’s go get ice cream. I’m driving.”
Mike waved his hand to the front door, gesturing for Sam to go first, after she grabbed her purse and keys from the table. Sam’s car was a little Toyota, and even though he wasn’t excessively tall, Mike needed to adjust the seat. “Good god, this is tiny.”
She nodded. “It gets the job done. I’d like something bigger for all the moving I’ve had to do recently, but I basically packed up my clothes and computer in Michigan and sold everything off. When I get to Texas, I’ll have to buy more furniture.”
“You didn’t keep anything?”
She shook her head, fiddling with the vents, blasting the air conditioning. “My apartment there is mostly furnished, and anything I don’t have, I’ll get secondhand. Why bother dragging my life down there or buying new if I’m not staying, you know?”
She glanced over at him as if he had any idea what she was talking about. He didn’t. “You’re not staying there?”
“The internship is a year.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.” Slowing at a red light, she faced him. “Depending on where I want to be licensed to work will determine what I’m going to do.”
He digested that information. “And you don’t want to come back here?”
“I’m honestly not sure. I want to keep my options open. In order to get my license, I’ll need to do postdoc hours, and not every state is the same. I plan on doing more hours so I can cover more bases. Then when I decide where I want to go, all I need to do is pass the test.”
“Oh,” he said. “Is that all?”
She smiled and turned her gaze back out to the road. “What about you? Your website looks good. I see none of Jimmy’s photos made the cut.”
“Yeah. I’ve been talking through some ideas with Laney.” He wrapped his hand around her knee. “She’s been really great. Gem, too.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Gem?”
“We’ve been having some lively debates over DM.” When she snorted a laugh, he lightly squeezed his fingers into her thigh. “But I like her. I told her I wanted to improve my flexibility, so she gave me some stretches to try. What? What’s that face for?”
“I don’t have many friends, and you’re stealing them all.”
He patted her leg once then moved away as she pulled into the parking lot. “Not all of them. I haven’t talked to Bronte yet.”
“But that right there,” she said with an amused shake of her head. “You know enough about her that you’re basically friends. Soon, you’ll be included in our text thread.”
Even though she said it as a joke, both of their smiles faded. Mike didn’t know if it was for the same reason, but he assumed so. Yet another reminder that she was leaving at the end of August.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked, opening her car door. “Write you a Yelp review? Maybe take some non-blurry photos?”
“The only photos I want you to take are naked ones of yourself.”
She tossed him a cheeky eyebrow raise then stepped out of the car, her T-shirt so large it almost covered up her microscopic shorts. “Well, come on,” she said, spinning on her heel when he didn’t budge from his seat. She smiled, all tension between them seemingly forgotten. And he wasn’t about to fight it. “You’re buying.”
He got out to meet her extended hand, grateful that the summer wasn’t over yet.
21
“Oh my god. It’s so hot,” Sam moaned, sitting on the bench outside.
Mike agreed, taking a big bite of his vanilla peanut butter. “Whose idea was this anyway?”
She cut her eyes to him. He couldn’t have been any more transparent with his invitation to get her out of the house, and now they were sitting here, roasting outside of an ice cream shop while small children shrieked around them.
“Your dad was annoyed, and you seemed…”
She arched her brow.
