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An hour ago, Jay had stared at his phone with a smile on his face. There was once a time in his life where drunk texts from Hailey would consist of many emojis and telling him she thought he was funny and a great detective and a good man, and those always made his heart skip a beat. Then, she had just been a friend. Even when she was dating Adam, she'd find a way to pull out her phone and make him laugh at whatever silly thought had popped in her head that she deemed necessary for him to know. Now, though, she is his girlfriend, and these drunk texts mean that he is going to experience a looser, relaxed version of Hailey that is only reserved for him.
It was just after midnight when she sent the official text asking for him to come pick her up, and it instantly brought a smile to his face. His mind was tired after working overtime with Adam, and his hands shook from the excess caffeine he'd drank while they were in the back of the van, but he couldn't deny that he was excited to see his girlfriend tonight.
She had used her night off to go out with Kim, Stella, Natalie, and a few other girls that they were friends with. Stella wanted to have some sort of engagement party or Sylvie wanted to throw a practice bachelorette party, Jay didn't really understand. All he knew was that Hailey was happy to be invited and even happier that it lined up with her night off.
"I haven't gotten to go out in a long time," she told him after receiving the text with the invite and list of bars they were going to go to.
"We went out two nights ago," he'd teasingly countered.
She'd rolled her eyes and gently hit his arm as he drove back to the district from an interview. "And that was a lot of fun, but-"
"But I'm not a girl," he'd chuckled, "I know. Go have fun."
"That's not what I was going to say!" she'd replied with a laugh of her own.
"Maybe not, but it's really okay. I want you to go out and have too much to drink and be a little hungover in the morning. I think it's cute, and I like seeing you happy like that."
"Cute? My hangovers are cute?"
"Anything you do is cute, Hailey."
"Even when I had food poisoning last year and needed you to drive me home from work after Vanessa and I had that bad Chinese food?"
"Especially when you had food poisoning."
It was an outright lie, and Hailey knew it, but Jay didn't care. In actuality, he did think it was a little cute when Hailey had been so sick. The coughing as she'd tried stopping herself from getting sick and the constant shifting around in his passenger seat hadn't been attractive in the least, but he did like how she'd spun around to reach in his backseat for his sweatshirt to wear because a chill had passed over her that the heated seat could not fix. She kept that sweatshirt for months, and he saw her wear it once or twice at her apartment before she eventually returned it to him…after they started dating. That had been cute.
She's still cute when he enters Molly's in time to see her doing a shot of something on the other side of the bar. He smiles even wider when she shudders and reaches for a plate of lime slices between her and Stella. He hadn't seen what she was going to wear tonight since she left work hours before him, so his stomach flips when he sees the tight red top she's wearing beneath her leather jacket. Her dark jeans hug her hips, and when she steps back for Kim to grab a lime, he lets his eyes drag down to the pair of black boots she's wearing.
For a brief second, he wonders if she actually meant to text him asking to come get her, but then she looks up with the lime in her mouth and catches his eye, and he knows she meant it in her drunken state.
Hailey waves over at him and makes her way out of the crowd to stumble over to him, spitting the used lime into her hand. "Jay," she says as she approaches, "You came."
He chuckles and grabs her elbow when she trips over her feet. "You asked me to. Did you still want to go home or-"
"Yeah, yeah, I do," Hailey breathes. She pushes her loose curls out of her face and smiles. "I missed you."
He smiles back and says, "I missed you too. Again. Are you sure you're feeling okay?"
She hums and takes a step closer to him, and he can instantly smell the tequila on her breath. Her free hand comes up to tangle in the front of his jacket, and she says, "I'm good. It's all good. We had a lot of fun, but now I'm ready to go home. I missed you."
"Well, I'm here now," Jay replies. He steps forward and wraps an arm around her shoulders to hold her close before nodding over to her friends. "Should we go pay your-"
She pushes up on her tiptoes to kiss his jaw, and he freezes next to her. "I missed you," she repeats in his ear so softly and yet it still finds a way to send a shiver down his spine.
Turning to look at her, he raises an eyebrow and decides to stop playing into her alcohol-infused haze. "You do?"
She hums and slips her hand down his jacket. "We were talking about you. Well, I was talking about you. Stella was talking about Kelly, and Kim was talking about Adam, and I was talking about you."
"Kim was talking-"
"I was talking about you."
Jay swallows and wets his lips. "You were? What…what were you saying about me?"
Hailey shrugs and tucks her finger into the belt loop of the jeans he'd thrown on to come and get her. "That I like you," she murmurs, "They know. They said they've known for a while. So it wasn't really gossip, but…but I told them you're good."
Jay watches her eyes raking over him for a moment before daring to glance over at the other girls. Natalie and Kim are watching them, and a part of him wants to drag Hailey away from their nosey stares, but he can't disturb her. Not when she's focusing so hard on him.
"A good man, a good detective, a good boyfriend," she continues softly, "I'm so lucky to have you."
She's drunk, but her words sound incredibly clear as they wash over him. He believes her, even if the tequila is helping the words come to the surface.
"I love you," she says as she looks up at him, and the lack of smile on her face tells him that she's serious right now. This is not a joke to her - alcohol or not. Hailey is telling her honest truth, and he completely believes her.
"I love you too," he whispers back, "So much, Hailey."
Finally, a smile flickers over her face, and she nods. He blinks, and then her lips are pressed to his. When her tongue brushes against his own, he can taste the lime and tequila in her kiss. She moans against him, and he wants nothing more than to take her home right now.
Hailey wraps her arms around his shoulders, and he hates that he has to pull back slightly from her to stop her where she's at. They might be at their friends' bar, but they're still in public, and he doesn't want to cause too big of a scene, no matter the time of night.
"Let me take you home," he breathes against her lips, "Let me put you to bed."
Her eyes flutter close, but she still smiles and nods her head the slightest amount so that the scent of her shampoo makes a cloud around him. "You can do that."
He chuckles and steps away from her. Gently grabbing her arms, he turns to place her on the empty bar stool behind him, and she lets out a shocked laugh. He winks, and then he's hurrying over to where the other girls are standing.
"How much does she owe?" he asks to no one in particular, already digging out his wallet.
"Give me twenty and call it good," Kim says as she sticks her hand out.
He raises an eyebrow, but passes over the money. "Are you sure?"
She nods and pockets it. "We haven't been here long."
"Do you need a ride too?" Jay asks, "I can-"
"I'm not getting between whatever that was," she shoots back. There's a beat where she looks annoyed, but then she's smiling at Jay, and she reaches over to push his arm. "Go," she says, "I'll be okay. Make your girlfriend happy. She was telling us some things about you that make me look at you very differently - things I haven't heard about you in years."
Jay stares at her, looks back at Hailey, then does a double-take toward Kim. "She what?"
Kim smirks and waves him off. "Go. Have fun. Do that thing with her leg or your leg or whatever she was trying to say. I didn't really get it, but she was laughing and blushing, and it was cute. Go."
Jay furrows his brow, but slowly nods and begins walking back toward Hailey. When he finally tears his eyes from Kim, he looks at his girlfriend and instantly feels the stress leave his system. Part of him does want to ask her what the hell she was telling her friends about, another part of him wants to talk about some boundaries that maybe they should have in place, but the largest part of him wants to take her home right now. She's practically glowing as she smiles at him, and he swears she had to have somehow lowered the top of her shirt while he was gone.
The truth is, he does know what Hailey was trying to tell Kim earlier in the night, and he wouldn't mind bringing her home to do exactly that. He grabs her hand and nods toward the door.
"Ready to get out of here?"
"Very."
Jay laughs and pulls her along to the door, helping Hailey when she again stumbles into his back and tries straightening herself up in a fit of giggles.
"You really are the best," she says once they make it to the truck.
Jay smiles and opens the passenger door for her. "I think you're the best too. Need a boost?"
Hailey shakes her head, but still accepts his hand before stepping up into the truck. Once she's settled, she smiles down at him and gestures toward the door. "Close it so we can head out of here. I have some things I'd like to do at home."
Jay's laugh echoes throughout the nearly empty street, and he says, "So I've heard."
Closing the door, he shakes his head and runs a hand over his hair before hurrying around to get in himself. Hailey immediately grabs his hand with both of her own, and his smile widens at how small and cool they feel against his skin.
"Take me home," she says so clearly, he practically forgets that she was just doing shots in a bar after having how many other drinks throughout the night.
Jay softens and nods. "Home," he repeats.
They haven't discussed it officially yet, but his heart has known it for a while: home is with Hailey, and that home is going to last forever. Whether it's at her apartment, his, or somewhere completely different, his home is wherever she is.