“That’s why?” he says, another quick flick of his eyes over to me. “And here I thought you just hated me.”
Heat flares through me, head to toe. “Of course I don’t hate you. You’re unhateable.” And then, because I’m wasted, I admit: “Maybe that makes me mistrust you a little bit.”
He looks aghast at this.
“I just mean,” I hurry on, my words slurring together, “I’ve always been more of a few close friends person. And when I meet people who like everyone, are liked by everyone, this alarm goes off in my brain. Like, Okay, this person isn’t going to stick around, so don’t get attached.”
Now he looks mortified. “That is,” he says, “so depressingly cynical.”
“No, no, no,” I say, searching for a better way to explain. “It’s fine! Unless your fiancé dumps you, and you spent the last year working to befriend his friends, and now you’re thirty-three and trying to remember how to even make friends. But who would ever find herself in that situation?”
“Making friends isn’t that complicated,” Miles says, which makes me scoff, which in turn makes him smirk. “I’m serious, Daphne. I just like talking to people. And as far as the free drinks, I’m a good tipper. So if I go to a place more than a couple of times, I tend to get discounts, because the staff knows I’ll make it up to them in tips. Plus I’m in the service industry, and I think bartenders can smell it on me. That I’m one of them.”
“Does it smell like gingersnaps?” The slur in my voice has worsened as we climbed the stairs.
Miles stops outside our front door, laughter gurgling out of him. “Gingersnaps?”
That’s what he smells like. Sweet and a little spicy. A natural earthy smell folded into a sugary baked good. I wave him off rather than answer, and try to get my key into our door’s lock. Unfortunately, it seems the door has grown three extra locks and I can’t seem to line the key up to the right one.
Through laughter, he bumps me aside, clumsily swiping the key from my hand to make his own attempt. “Shit!” he says as it glances off the lock.
We keep fighting for control of the doorknob, knocking each other out of the way in increasingly dramatic fashion, until he almost knocks me over and just barely manages to catch me by pinning me to the wall with his hips.
We’re both laughing so hard we’re crying when our elderly neighbor pops his head into the hallway to hiss, “Some of us are trying to sleep around here!”
“Sorry, Mr. Dorner,” Miles says like a chastened schoolboy.
Mr. Dorner retreats.
I squint after him, confused. “Doesn’t he usually have hair?”
Miles bursts into not-at-all-quiet laughter. I smush my hands over his mouth to shut him up. “You thought that hair was real?” he asks. “You have to be the most gullible person on the planet.”
“I mean,” I say, “despite my innate cynicism, I think the last six weeks have already proven that both of us are way, way too trusting.”
A couple of hours ago, this might’ve tripped the start crying ASAP wire in my brain. Instead we’re just back to cackling.
Mr. Dorner’s lock rattles again. Miles spins away to get our door unlocked, yanking me inside before we have to face another scolding.
We slam ourselves against the door to shut it, catching our breath. “I feel like we’re in Jurassic Park,” he says, which makes me laugh harder.
“What,” I gasp.
“Like we just slammed the door against a bunch of raptors,” he explains.
“I don’t think Dorner’s teeth pose that kind of threat, Miles,” I say. “I’m fairly sure he wasn’t even wearing them.”
“You know what I think?” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“I think we should just fucking do it,” he says.
My heart spikes upward. My skin goes very hot, then very cold. “What?”
“Let’s RSVP,” he says. “Let’s go to their wedding. And get wasted. Eat the cake before they’ve even cut it, and puke on the dance floor.”
I laugh. “Okay.”
“I’m serious,” he says. “Let’s go.”
“No way,” I say.
“Okay, fine,” he replies. “Then let’s just say we’re going.”
“Miles,” I reply, “why?”
“To make them sweat,” he says. “And pay ninety dollars a plate for dried-out chicken that no one’s going to eat.”
“Their parents will pay for that chicken,” I say. “And I don’t know about the Comers, but the Collinses are lovely people.”
He flinches. I’m not sure at which part, but something I said definitely shifted his mood a bit. “They’re also rich,” he says. “Ninety dollars is nothing to them, and at least this way, they have to spend the next few months worrying that we’ll show up and ruin their big day.”
“Maybe they don’t care,” I say.
The smirk seeps from his face. “Shit,” he says. “You’re right. I guess that’s why they invited us.”
I snort. “You know why they invited us, Miles. Because they’re both addicted to being universally loved. And they’re good at it. Good enough that they don’t realize you don’t get to be loved by people whose hearts you completely fucking destroy. They think they’re being the bigger people right now. But they don’t get to be the bigger people. For the next few years, they have to live with being the assholes.”
