Why not see where we can go?
Why not stay together?
Why not go back down the stairs and introduce ourselves as a couple?
But that isn’t what Hazel wants. It’s not that she’s antimarriage or anticommitment. Despite her mother’s pressure-cooker expectations, she’s still looking for her perfect one and only. It’s just that she’s most definitely not looking at me. We’re each other’s wingmen at the bar, sitting back-to-back on our bar stools and pointing out hot singles to each other. Buying consolation drinks when those singles hurt us. Offering to exact bestie vengeance.
Hazel’s watching me, her eyes moving over my face, down my arm, to where our fingers are tangled together. “I needed some space.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“This is good.” She slants that secretive, catlike Hazel smile at me, the one that says she’s happy and as relaxed as she gets, but that her brain is still moving a million miles a minute because Hazel never stops thinking. Even though we’re standing in the hallway of her childhood home, I want to kiss her. I want to keep standing here beside her because I like it. I like her.
“I would apologize for my family, but someone will just say something else.” She grins at me. “Then we’ll be trapped in an endless loop of apologies and neither of us will be able to leave.”
“We’d have to stand here forever.” I make a face of mock horror.
“Champagne out of reach.”
“Eternal sobriety.”
Hazel laughs in agreement and then she pulls me toward her. Somehow we just fit together, side by side, arms around each other. Our arms know where to go.
“They shouldn’t ask you to find me a date,” she says. “But fair warning—they’re not going to stop. They don’t think I can find someone on my own and they see you as the mother lode of bachelor recommendations.”
This is my cue to give her shit for her lack of accomplishments in the husband-finding-and-landing sweepstakes. I’ve done it dozens if not hundreds of times before, and then she would always tease me back about being a homebody and a one-trick pony who was monogamous and middle-aged at seventeen. It’s a comfortable, familiar pattern...and it feels all wrong.
“Why doesn’t it piss you off?”
Hazel makes a frowny face, forehead puckering. “Getting mad wouldn’t be effective. I know I don’t need a husband, but it would make them happy. I’m not a people person and my relationship skills need work, so they’re just trying to be helpful. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” I brush my mouth over hers. She’s the perfect height for kissing. “You’re not the problem, Hazel. You’re fucking amazing and anyone who can’t see that doesn’t deserve you.”
The frown melts into suspicion. “My self-esteem is perfectly healthy, thank you. I don’t need compliments.”
I nod even though I’m suddenly not so sure about that. “I’d demonstrate just how amazing you are, but we’re in your mother’s house.”
“Oh.” Hazel brushes against me, specifically against a very happy-to-be-supportive part of me in my jeans. “That’s going to make an interesting brunch statement. How do you propose to fix this very large problem?”
She leans up and nips my bottom lip, which predictably just makes the problem bigger.
Conceding she has a point, I say, “Capital pricing models. Z test stats. Normal distributions.” When she looks at me quizzically, I say, “That’s what I’m going to be running in my head to make myself socially presentable.”
“Nut,” Hazel says affectionately. “Does that actually work?”
I’m fairly certain she’s asking in all seriousness. “Let’s run a test.”
I pull her close to me, until my back’s against the wall, her body pressing into mine, and this time I kiss her. My kiss is hot and wet, wild and urgent, like there’s a mental countdown in my head of how many seconds we probably have before someone wanders down the hall and spots us. My hands cup her butt, lifting her up, and she reaches for me. Anyone could discover us, so it’s risky to keep kissing her, but I can’t stop.
“Lift,” she groans against my mouth. And then before I can react, before I can do more than suck in a quick breath before she steals the air from me, she’s wrapping her legs around my waist. I cup her harder, lift her higher.
I want this woman, I want all of her, so I kiss her like I mean it, trying to show her with my mouth, my tongue, how she makes me feel. She’s not a consolation prize in the dating sweepstakes—she’s the golden ticket, the brass ring on the merry-go-round, the first-place winner.
And then I hear the voices. A woman’s voice, high and happy...and getting closer. I think it’s one of Hazel’s sisters, but either way it’s a wake-up call. I’m really not going to get caught kissing Hazel in her mother’s hallway. I pull back and let her slide down my body to her feet. We need a new plan—and an exit strategy.
Hazel looks up at me, eyes narrowed, grin in place. “Downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom, guest bedroom. Choose quickly.”
Then she smacks my butt.
“Bossy.” I narrow my eyes at her. I love Hazel, but she’s never mastered boundaries. I have a moment of quiet panic; I didn’t say those words out loud, not quite, and it’s not as if I meant love love. Love is just one of those words you use, right? I mean, objectively, of course, I love Hazel. I love Max and Dev, too, although I have zero interest in getting either of them naked.
A door opens and closes somewhere. Sister averted, but Hazel has more than one and we’re still
