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. . . . . .
The ticking of the clock on the wall echoes through the sterile emptiness of the room, and every click feels like a blow to the brain. The strange calmness that has enveloped Loki since a masked stranger pointed a gun at his head in a convenience store suddenly feels very fragile, and for a moment he has an overwhelming urge to rip the clock from the wall and throw it out the window.
Instead he folds his hands tightly together and gathers his habitual reserve around him like a shield. Who knew a lifetime of hiding his feelings would end up being such good practice for this very moment?
“Sorry about the delay,” says Dr. Eir, coming back into the room. Loki wants to snap at her that she’s been gone for nearly fifteen minutes, leaving him to just twiddle his thumbs here in this examination room, and is she actively trying to waste his time? The only reason he doesn’t—forget her title and scrubs, he has no more respect for medical personnel than he does for any authority figure—is that she has a matronly air about her that reminds him very much of Frigga, and that reminder quiets his angry tongue.
“You’re cleared to leave,” she goes on, unaware of Loki’s irritation. “Officer Magni said he can come by and pick you up, if you need a ride home. I believe you don’t have a car with you?”
“It’s in the shop,” Loki says in a steady voice. “I caught an Uber to work today.”
She nods. “So we can call him, or you can get an Uber home.” She hesitates. “You’re certain there’s no one you want to call? To come here or to meet you at your home?”
This is not the first time she’s asked—part of her matronly air is that she seems very worried about him—and it’s not the first time he’s shaken his head no. If his mother were in town, he’d have called her, but Frigga and Odin are currently on a cruise and well out of reach. Thor would come running if Loki called, but he would just fuss and worry until Loki was ready to punch him, and anyway, he’s got a pregnant wife stuck on bed rest until the baby’s born. Loki’s stubborn pride would never let him admit it, but he thinks the absolute world of Jane, and steadfastly refuses to put her under any more strain than she’s already under.
And as for Loki’s friends . . .
The Warriors Three (a stupid high school nickname that unfortunately stuck) have been enormously friendly and understanding since Loki came back to Asgard, never casting up to him the fact that he spent their last year of high school angrily resenting them—and anyone else connected to Thor or Odin—and then left the state for college and refused to so much as speak to anyone from his past for eight years. In the eighteen months he’s been back in Asgard, they’ve drawn him back into their circle, and he knows that if he called any of them, they’d be there for him: well, Hogun would just shrug and tell him to suck it up, but Fandral would rush to the ER to try to cheer him up with his dumb jokes, and Volstagg would drag him home so Hildegund could cook for him.
But shame stays Loki’s hand. Surely all three of them (and Thor, for that matter) would think him a weakling and a coward for getting himself into that situation and then doing absolutely nothing to get himself out of it; they are all athletes and gym rats and the very epitome of manly men—Hogun is a literal MMA fighter, for goodness’ sake—and each one of them would probably have disarmed the robber immediately, rather than just stand there and let himself get taken hostage. And surely all three of them (and Thor, for that matter) would think less of him for being as shaken as he is; he may have been strangely calm throughout the whole ordeal, and just as calm ever since, but he’s self-aware enough to see that his serenity is a fragile, tenuous thing, and it would take only the tiniest provocation to upset his equilibrium and send him off into panic attacks or tears.
As for Sif . . .
Loki wants more than anything to call Sif and have her run to the hospital and tell him that he’s safe and everything’s going to be okay; he thinks he might believe her, if she did. But he has no idea if that’s how she’d react, if he called. Sif has been just as welcoming as the rest of their high school friends, but she’s always been an enigma to him: a woman of action, not words, a woman more like Hogun (inscrutable and complex) than like Thor or Volstagg or Fandral (obvious and simple), and he’s never been able to read her as well as he’d like. Most importantly, however, he’s not sure he could bear having Sif see him like this, so vulnerable and weak. She’s tougher than Thor, Fandral and Volstagg put together—former MMA fighter, now a coach and teacher—and probably would have broken the robber’s arm the second he pointed the gun at her, and the last thing Loki wants is for her to see how utterly useless he was tonight.
He just . . . really very desperately needs for Sif to think well of him, that’s all. He knows she’ll never look twice at him—her last boyfriend was a pro football player, for goodness’ sake, and he’s a slender, brainy lawyer who would rather watch the Great British Bake Off with Frigga and Jane than toss a pigskin around the backyard with Thor and Odin—but that doesn’t mean he needs to go out of his way to show her how thoroughly un-macho he is.
So Loki shakes his head at Dr. Eir and smiles politely. “I’ll be fine,” he says, and nearly means it.
She nods and leads him out the door and to the desk, where she hands him a bit of paperwork to fill out. And that’s where Loki is standing when an extraordinary coincidence occurs: he looks up, and who should be walking down a hallway toward him but Sif?
She stops dead in her tracks. “Loki?”
He blinks at her. “Sif.”
Her piercing gaze takes in the bandage on his forearm and the rip in the knee of his light gray suit pants, and her brow furrows. “What are you doing here?” she demands. “Are you okay?”
“What are you doing here?” he counters automatically.
She rolls her eyes, but it looks fond, not irritated. “One of my kickboxing students is an ER nurse here. She left her phone at class today, and I just brought it to her.” She teaches at the gym Hogun owns, and it doesn’t surprise Loki that she’d volunteer to go out of the way for one of her students; she’s always been a do-gooder.
“Ah,” he says, and then he can’t think of anything else to say.
She stands there a few moments longer, her face expectant, but when Loki says nothing else, she just sort of deflates. Thor or Fandral would be pressing him, if they were in Sif’s shoes, but Sif’s a little more thoughtful than those two; it’s probably occurred to her that there are a lot of reasons someone might want to keep their motive for being at the emergency room a secret.
So she gives him a quiet little smile, and he can see in her body language that she’s about to tell him goodbye and walk away. And in that moment some voice inside of him cries out in dismay—she can’t leave, he needs a friendly face to keep him company, he was fine on his own until he saw her and now suddenly he is desperate for her to stay with him. And he hears himself blurt out, “There was a robbery.”
She looks taken aback.
“At a convenience store,” he goes on. “An off-duty cop tried to stop it and it . . . escalated. The guy grabbed me and. . .” He points two fingers in the universal symbol for “gun” and gestures weakly at his right temple, where he can still feel the press of cold metal, and the memory sends a surge of sickening fear through him again as he recalls how it felt to be closer to death than he’s ever been in his life.
Her brow furrows, a sign he’s come to learn means surprise and alarm for Sif. “Are you okay?” she demands for the second time in the last minute.
He can’t muster up anything more than a shrug, and she takes a step toward him. Anything she might have said, however, is lost when Dr. Eir appears. “Are you ready to go?” she asks, glancing back and forth between Loki and Sif a few times.
“A friend of mine,” Loki explains by way of introduction.
Sif turns her attention back to Loki. “Are you going home now?”
“Getting an Uber,” Loki confirms, fighting to keep his voice level now that his moment of desperate honesty is over. “My car is in the shop.”
“Can I take you home?” Sif asks. She glances at the doctor. “Unless he needs to stay longer . . . ?”
Dr. Eir glances at Loki, and he realizes she’s giving him the chance to refuse, if he wants. Which he doesn’t: Sif seems so very concerned and sympathetic, and he’d far rather have a friend by his side than a stranger right now. Still, old habits die hard, and he says hesitantly, “I imagine you’ve got things you need to get to . . .”
“I don’t,” she says firmly, and he hesitates a long moment, and then gives her a half-smile: tiny, but the most real smile that’s crossed his face all evening.
So a few minutes later he finds himself walking out of the hospital, heading—he presumes—out to Sif’s beat-up Jeep. Sif is saying something to him about her kickboxing class, but he barely notices; his mind is taken up with thinking about this evening, and a quiet panic is creeping into the back of his mind. At least he’s not alone; at least he’s got Sif with him, which makes him feel safe for a few different reasons.
As they step out onto the sidewalk, he becomes aware that she’s waiting for a response from him. “What?”
“I asked if you were still with me,” she says quietly. “I guess I know the answer.” She takes a deep breath. “Are you hungry?”
It turns out he is; he just hadn’t noticed it until she mentioned it. He nods.
She seems pleased. “I called in an order to Kanchanaburi Grill while you were finishing up in there,” she says. “Figured that with everything that happened tonight, you probably haven’t eaten yet. You like shrimp pad thai, right?”
He blinks over at her in surprise, momentarily pulled out of his own head.
She glances over at him and gives him a one-shouldered shrug. “That’s the restaurant you picked and the dish you ordered on your birthday,” she explains.
Now why on earth does she remember that?
“You lied,” he hears himself say quietly.
She looks over at him, eyebrows raised in a question.
“You told me once that you’re not good at comforting people. But shrimp pad thai is definitely comforting.”
Her face softens into an affectionate sort of smile, and she seems almost to lean toward him. He doesn’t know what she means by it, but he does know that he suddenly wishes more than anything that she’d hug him. It just . . . might keep him from feeling like he’s about to fly into a thousand pieces, that’s all.
She doesn’t hug him, though; she watches him for a few moments by the light of the streetlamp, and then she tilts her head. “Should we walk to Kanchanaburi Grill? It’s only a block away.”
Loki nods and falls into step beside Sif. She glances over at him as they start across the parking lot, and then glances again, and just when he’s started to wonder what she’s thinking, she reaches out and takes his hand in hers. “I’m glad I happened to be at the hospital tonight,” she says softly, and gives his hand a little squeeze.
Loki says nothing. But he squeezes back tightly.
Their hands stay clasped together as they walk up the street to Kanchanaburi Grill, and as Sif pays for the food—“My treat,” she insists more than once—and as they return to her Jeep. She has to let go of his hand in order to get in the car and turn it on, but Loki’s feeling pretty good by that point; he’s not about to fall apart or anything. The dissociative sort of serenity that’s cocooning him feels solid right now, and he’s not as worried as he was just fifteen minutes ago about the possibility of breaking down.
At least until they get to his condo. Sif parks in one of the visitor spots and follows him upstairs without question, which he’s glad of because it’s exactly what he wanted but he’s not sure he’d have been willing to humble himself enough to ask. They sit at his little-used kitchen table with their meals—him with his shrimp pad thai, her with her yellow curry—and start to eat.
And it’s nice. He rarely eats at home, as he has no interest in cooking and has no one to eat with. But to sit at his table with Sif feels domestic and intimate in a way he craves more than he could ever admit to himself. She’s silent, as she has been since they left the restaurant, but it’s a comfortable silence, or at least it feels to him like a comfortable silence. The pad thai is delicious. It’s quiet here. He’s safe.
Paradoxically, that’s when he breaks down.
Maybe it’s that here, in the safety of his own home, he finally feels he can afford the luxury of weakness. Or maybe he was always going to break down—perhaps even stone-cold Loki Odinson can’t hold himself together forever under great stress—and it just happens to occur at that moment. Whatever the reason, one moment he’s eating his pad thai quietly, and the next moment his hands are shaking so badly that he drops his fork so he can hide his hands under the table.
It’s too late, though: Sif has seen.
“Loki?” she says uncertainly, half-rising from the table.
Loki stands so quickly that his chair tips over with a loud crash
“What . . .” begins Sif, who obviously has no idea how to react to all this. “Do you want to be alone?” she asks, and the part of his psyche that always assumes the absolute worst of everything says See? She wants to leave already.
But then she says “Or I can stay, if you’re okay with that. Would you be more comfortable on the couch?”
A moment later, he is seated on the edge of the couch, and Sif is next him, her body turned toward him, her knees pulled up to her chest (he’d have a few words to say about feet on his couch if it weren’t Sif and if he weren't terribly busy trying not to sob in front of his long-time crush).
The silence is getting too loud, and after a moment he finds himself talking, a stream of words meant as a shield to keep the tears at bay. He tells Sif of leaving work late, of going to the convenience store on the corner to buy a Diet Coke, of the man in the mask bursting in with a gun, of the off-duty cop trying to stop the guy and instead just startling him into grabbing Loki’s arm and pressing the muzzle of the gun to his temple. (He does not mention the sick dread that coursed through him, or how much he feared he was about to die, or how he’s not quite sure he’ll ever forget the feeling of cold metal against his skin. But from Sif’s face, he thinks he doesn’t have to.)
He does mention the cops finally bursting in, having been alerted by the cashier, and the shootout that ensued.
Sif’s eyes are as wide as dinner plates. “But you didn’t get hit?” she demands of Loki.
It takes careful control to shake his head so calmly. “I was on the ground by then,” he explains. “Luckily I had the presence of mind to plug my ears, so there’s less ringing in my ears than there could have been.”
“Loki,” she breathes out, and if he listens to her sound so worried for him, he really is going to cry.
So he goes on, “After the cops finished questioning me, they sent me to the ER to have my scrapes cleaned up.”
Sif is silent for a few moments. And then she says carefully, “I’m really glad you’re okay.”
He’s so busy focusing on holding himself together that it takes him a while to notice her body language—fingers twisting tightly in the fabric of her leggings, brow furrowed, lips pressed into a tight line. But eventually his eye wanders to her and he observes “You seem tense” because getting attention off him and onto her feels like a good idea.
“I’m fine,” she says, which is a clear lie; he’s a lawyer, and he has a lot of experience with people who lie, and anyway Sif’s never been very good at it.
“No, you’re not.”
Sif bites her lip. And then she says all in a rush, “I just really want to hug you. But I know you’re not much of a touch-er.”
Sif, he knows, is a touch-er; he’s seen her with their friends, and knows that hugs and shoulder rubs and cuddles are her love language. But she’s always more careful around him, like she’s trying to respect his boundaries; he loves that about her, and he also hates it, because he’d actually quite like it if she sprawled across his lap when they were on a couch together, thank you very much.
On a normal day, he probably wouldn’t be able to admit any of this. But today is not a normal day, and all he’s wanted, since the moment he saw her in that hospital hallway, is for her to throw her arms around him and anchor him to the ground. So some vulnerable version of him that he didn’t even know existed bubbles up to the surface and says, “I’d actually really like that.”
He can’t quite look at her, so he doesn’t see her face when she hears that. But he does see her unwind from the tight little ball she’s folded herself into and slide closer to him on the couch, and move her arms around his shoulders in a firm embrace.
And it’s good. It’s so, so good, but she’s at an odd angle, hugging him from the side, and he needs her closer, needs her arms around his neck with her chin on his shoulder. So he turns toward her and snakes his arms around her waist, and she immediately understands what he wants and moves to embrace him fully, somehow ending up in his lap in the process.
And this is perfection. Sif is holding him together with the sheer force of her affection, keeping him safe with the sheer force of her arms, and in that tight embrace, he finally lets himself cry.
. . . . . .
Loki wakes groggily when sunlight hits his face. For a moment he can’t figure out why he’s sleeping on his couch—he never sleeps on his couch—and then he stretches his arms and feels a dull throb of pain in his right wrist and everything comes rushing back to him.
Although the end of the evening is a blur; the last thing he remembers is breaking down in Sif’s arms, and oh good, he made a total idiot of himself last night, didn’t he? For a useless moment, he hopes that maybe that was a dream he had, but then he hears a soft sigh from nearby and realizes he’s not alone in the room.
Sif, he sees as he carefully pulls himself into a sitting position, is asleep on the loveseat, her long limbs crammed onto it in a way that can’t be comfortable. Though hideously embarrassed at the realization that he did in fact cry in front of her last night, he forgets his shame for a moment as he smiles fondly at her sleeping form.
But only for a moment, and he’s brainstorming ways to get her out of his condo without having to face her when suddenly her phone buzzes and she’s pulled from her sleep. Unlike him, she doesn’t seem disoriented upon waking; she stretches, then looks over at him with a sleepy smile, and the delightful experience of having Sif Tyrsdottir smile as though genuinely pleased to see his face first thing in the morning momentarily drives his massive discomfort away.
“Sorry to stay over without asking,” she yawns, and he assumes she wouldn’t even think she had to ask if this were Fandral or Thor’s house, and he kicks himself again for making it so clear to his friends that he doesn’t want them to take liberties where he’s concerned. I have a very different set of wishes where you’re concerned, as opposed to the Warriors Three, he wishes he had the guts to tell her.
Instead he rushes to assure her that he appreciates her concern for his welfare. That was the right thing to do, clearly, because she grins at him. “In that case, can I invite myself to breakfast as well? I could go grab something, if you’re not feeling up to going out.”
Loki appreciates her thoughtfulness, but decides that the last thing he wants to do is develop a fear of going outside. So they both dress for the day—she keeps a bag with a change of clothes in her car—and then head out for a cute little breakfast spot near his condo, one with outdoor seating, because Loki loves outdoor seating, because it reminds him of Paris, and he loves being smug about how often he goes to Europe for work and pleasure.
They order and chat lightly about inconsequential things while they eat—eggs benedict for him, a truly astounding pile of bacon and potatoes for her—and it’s not until they’ve paid for their meals and are wandering down the street together that she finally brings up last night.
“How’s your arm?” she asks, gesturing at the bandage that peeks out from under the the cuff of his shirt.
“Fine.”
“And . . . how are you doing?”
He would have bristled had the question come from anyone else, but he saw her concern for him perfectly well last night, and he knows she’s genuinely worried about him, not pointing out his weakness. “A little shaken,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll be going into any convenience stores after dark for a while. Or ever again.”
Her brow furrows, and she reaches over to grab his hand. He wouldn’t mind if all if she kept holding it—forever—but she just squeezes his hand once and then lets go. “I’m really glad I was at the hospital last night,” she says. And then her face changes, as though something has just occurred to her. “Were you really going to get an Uber home?” she asks. “Why didn’t you call someone?”
“My parents are out of town.”
She waits, and when it becomes clear he’s not going to say more, she shakes her head. “Okay, why not call Thor?”
He shrugs. “With Jane . . . I didn’t want to worry them.”
“Okay, why not call one of us?”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother us?” she repeats incredulously. “Loki, we’re your friends. You’re allowed to bother us, any time you need to, but especially when you’ve just been held at gunpoint and nearly been caught in the crossfire of a police shootout. Okay? You can call us.”
He doesn’t mean to mutter “I wouldn’t count on it” out loud, but apparently he does it anyway.
Sif comes to a stop in front of the entrance to a park and stares at him, looking stricken. “Why? Why wouldn’t you call us?” she demands. “Loki, you matter to us. And . . . maybe you don’t feel the same way, but . . .”
“I do,” he insists immediately, a knee-jerk reaction to her stricken expression. Because it’s true, of Sif, at least. And he quite likes Fandral, if he’s honest, which he usually isn’t. And Volstagg— well, he means well and is never malicious and his wife is delightful. And Hogun . . . is also there. “You matter.”
“Then why . . .?”
Loki sighs, really not wanting to have this conversation, but also really not wanting Sif to feel like he doesn’t care about her. And anyway, he cried himself to sleep in her arms last night; it’s not like there’s much lower he can sink, in terms of showing vulnerability in front of her. “I was . . . embarrassed,” he admits. “You guys are all these incredible athletes—actual MMA fighters, in you and Hogun’s case—and I thought . . . you wouldn’t have let yourselves get into this mess. You would’ve broken that guy’s arm the second he tried to grab you. You would have figured out a way to get the gun away from him. But I just stood there like a statue. I . . . was worried you’d think less of me if you heard.”
For a moment she looks genuinely upset. “Broken his—no, I would not have!” she insists. “Loki, you did exactly the right thing. If you’d tried to fight back, you or someone else in that store could have been hurt or killed. The two hundred bucks in the cash register are not worth you or anyone else’s life. Going along with it and not making a fuss was the right choice. I would’ve done the same thing.”
He looks at her a long time. “Really?” he finally asks.
She reaches out to squeeze his hand again. “Really. Yeah, I probably could’ve disarmed the guy. But there’s also a chance that the gun would’ve gone off in the struggle, so unless the situation got more threatening, it wouldn’t have been worth the risk. So please don’t feel like you did anything wrong, or that any of us are going to look down on you.”
“Oh,” he says quietly. And then he looks away and allows a tiny smile to cross his face.
Sif winds her arm through his to pull him into the park, and Loki’s fighting to keep a dopey grin from his face, because this? Getting breakfast and then walking arm-in-arm through the park? This is couple stuff, and for a moment he lets himself imagine that this is their life all the time.
They soon reach a stone wall under a shady tree, just the right height to lean against. Sif makes herself comfortable against it, and Loki joins her. “Loki,” she says seriously, “the next time something bad happens, please call one of us. Or even if there isn’t something bad happening. Call me. With anything you need. Please?”
And she seems so sincere that Loki finds himself agreeing.
That’s not enough for her. “Promise?” she demands.
He blinks at her. She stares determinedly at him, and a hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Promise.”
“Good,” she says, then hesitates. “I know it’s hard for you to ask for help,” she says quietly. “I know that’s not your personality. I know that you’ve always preferred to handle things on your own, because you’ve always felt like you had something to prove—that you’re as good as Thor. And I know that finding out about the adoption didn’t help.”
Loki is torn between being impressed that she understands him so well and pleased that she’s clearly been paying attention and embarrassed that she sees all his insecurities.
“But you have people who care. We like you, Loki. We want to be there for you. But you have to let us. I’ll come running when you need me. But you have to let me know when stuff happens. I can’t read your mind.”
He looks over at her, and she looks up at him with that clear hazel gaze. And he hears himself say “Why are you so nice to me?”
He means it rhetorically, so he’s a little surprised when she answers. And he’s even more surprised when she says “Because . . . we’re friends” and he can tell it’s a lie.
As mentioned earlier: he’s good at sniffing out lies, and she’s terrible at lying.
But why would she be lying about this? Does she not actually consider him a friend?
“Oh,” he says, fighting to keep his brow from furrowing, and glances away.
“What’s wrong?”
He glances over at her, then hesitates. “Did you know that you look to the left and tuck your hair behind your ear every time you lie?” he asks.
She stares up at him. “What?”
“You do,” he says.
“I’m not lying,” she says, and reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, and then catches herself and puts her hand down.
She is lying, and twenty-five years of self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy swarm out of the box he’s worked very hard to stuff them into. Maybe she only tolerates him, for Thor’s sake. And if so, how disgusted she must have been by last night’s display, by having to lead him around by the hand and hold him together while he sobbed.
He was so happy a few moments ago, and now he is humiliated.
“It’s okay if we’re more acquaintances than friends,” he says, fighting for flippancy in his tone. “I know you were always Thor’s friend, really—”
“Of course we’re friends!” she exclaims. “Loki, we’re friends.”
“It’s fine, Sif,” he says, not quite able to make eye contact with her.
And suddenly she steps forward and puts her hand on his shoulder, as though to keep him in place; perhaps she can sense how much he wants to flee this conversation. “Fine,” she says, “that’s not why I’m so nice to you. Although it is true.”
He frowns. “Then . . .”
She winces, then speaks reluctantly. “You are my friend, Loki. But . . . you’re also more than that to me.” Then she quickly adds, “But we don’t have to talk about that right now. I know you’re feeling a little emotionally fragile, and I don’t want to push you . . . about anything.”
Loki, stunned and wide-eyed, is absolutely not feeling too emotionally fragile for this conversation. “Are you saying you like me?” he demands, because that’s the only interpretation he can think of for her words, as impossible as it sounds. “Romantically? Is that why you did what you did last night?”
“I would have done that for any of my friends,” she insists, then hesitates. “Although . . . if I’d driven Fandral home after a traumatic experience, I would have bought him dinner but I wouldn’t have held him until he fell asleep.” There’s hope in her eyes as she looks up at him, and the loveliest, tiniest hint of a smile on her lips. But she quickly adds, “But we don’t have to talk about that right now. We don’t have to talk about it until you’re feeling ready. You just had this crazy experience—”
Loki is absolutely ready to talk about this (has been ready to talk about this for years). But he has a better idea than talking about it; he sees a lot to be admired in the idea of doing something about it. So he takes her face between his hands and kisses her, gently at first, until she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him back quite enthusiastically.
Yes, this is much better than talking.
Eventually she does break away to say, “I just want to make sure—you don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to kiss me because I helped you last night.”
In response to which he growls, “If you think this is how I’d kiss someone to say thank you, then I’m not doing as good a job as I thought at this.”
“No, no,” she says breathlessly, “you’re doing great.”
He grins. She grins.
And he kisses her again.
He’s not sure how long they stand there, scandalizing all the young children on the nearby playground, but he does know that by the time they’re done, the cold that’s lingered in his chest since a masked man pressed a gun to his temple finally entirely dissipates, and all he can see and all he can hear and all he can feel is sunlight and birdsong. Because he’s not alone, and he doesn’t have to handle everything by himself, and he does have people who care, and the most important one of all is the woman currently nestled in his arms.
When they finally break apart, he doesn’t let her get far, because he’s learned that she gives great hugs and he intends to make full use of that information now that they’re . . . together, which is what he hopes she’ll agree they now are. “Fine,” he says as he pulls her close, his arms around her waist and her arms around his neck and her cheek pressed to his. “You win. The next time something terrible happens, I call you first.”
“Or something great,” she amends with a laugh. “Or something mundane. Or you want to go out for dinner. Or you just want to talk.”
“Okay,” he says, and pulls her even closer. “I’ll call you.”
. . . . . .
fin