Page 64 of She’ll Steal Your Heart
Lauren grinned. “Thatishandy.”
The waiter brought out their first few dishes: mooncakes, Sichuan cucumber salad, and edamame ginger dumplings, along with dumpling sauce and a red pepper paste. Mia’s stomach rumbled as the savory scent of the food reached her.
“Oh, wow,” Lauren said. “This looks amazing.”
“And it tastes just as good as it looks,” Mia told her. “I’ve been coming here for years.”
“How spicy is this pepper paste?” Lauren asked as she dabbed some of it onto her plate.
“Very spicy. Proceed with caution,” Mia told her with a laugh.
“I like it hot,” Lauren said, then blushed, probably having realized how that sounded.
Warmth spread through Mia’s belly, and she hadn’t even touched the pepper sauce yet. “Good to know.”
Lauren darted a glance at Mia as she reached for a dumpling. “Sometimes it hits me, you know? That I’m flirting withyou.”
“Yes, we’ve undergone a seismic shift in twenty-four hours. It’s jarring sometimes, but maybe not as often as it should be? Mostly, it just feels right.” Mia unwrapped her chopsticks and added some of the cucumber salad to her plate.
“Yeah. Exactly that.” Lauren nodded emphatically. “I mean, I’d been fighting my feelings for a while, so maybe that’s why. It’s likephew, I can finally just feel what I feel.”
“How long?” Mia asked, suddenly curious. She’d been in such denial about the whole thing that she hadn’t even picked up on whatever signals Lauren had apparently been sending.
“Um.” A red flush spread over Lauren’s chest, and she hadn’t eaten any of the pepper sauce yet either. “All my cards on the table?”
“Yes,” Mia responded immediately.
“The day we met,” Lauren admitted. “I was walking behind you on the way to the Airbnb, and I was checking you out, before I knew who you were. You’d cut your hair, and I didn’t recognize you from behind.”
“Oh.” Mia blinked, reaching for her wine. “Really? That night?”
Lauren nodded, looking embarrassed. “That night, it was more like ‘wow, she’s hotter in person than I expected,’ but yeah, there was an attraction for me right from the start.”
“Wow.” Mia let that sink in for a moment. She’d had no idea, and she certainly hadn’t been looking at Lauren as anything but a friend that weekend.
“Now your turn. Lay it on me.”
“There wasn’t a definitive moment for me,” Mia told her. “It was more of a gradual realization, and one that I tried very hard not to acknowledge, because I was afraid of the ramifications. I think the moment of no return was the night I got drunk at Dragonfly. I woke up the next morning, and I couldn’t even look at you without wanting to kiss you.”
As she looked at Lauren now, she felt the same damn way.
“Yeah, you were pretty blatant about wanting to kiss me that night,” Lauren said with a giggle. “It was the first time I’d ever imagined you might feel that way about me, but I wasn’t sure if it was just the alcohol talking.”
“Now you know.” Mia picked up a bite of salad with her chopsticks.
“Now I know,” Lauren agreed with a grin as she smeared pepper paste on her dumpling. She took a bite, seeming unaffected by the heat. Interesting.
Mia took a dumpling for herself. “So you’re moving next weekend?”
Lauren nodded. “Saturday, so yeah, a week from today. I’m working at the café until two, and then I’ll go pick up my keys. I need to do a little apartment shopping between now and then. I don’t need much since it’s furnished, probably just bedding and towels and maybe some decorative accents.”
“That’s the fun part of moving.” Mia tamped down her discomfort about Lauren’s new rental arrangement or how much she inherently disliked the idea of Lauren leaving her apartment at all. “Picking out new things.”
“Yes,” Lauren agreed. “I can’t have pets, but maybe I can get a plant or something. I’ve always wanted one of those cute little plants that come in the decorative pots.”
“A bonsai?” Mia asked.
“No,” Lauren said with a contemplative look. “The ones that look…squishy?”
