Page 80 of Can't Help Falling

“Was she your girlfriend?”

He grimaced. “No. Just a nice girl I met at a party. We did it in somebody’s bedroom and then got walked in on by a drunk kid looking for the bathroom while my pants were still around my ankles.”

She grimaced too. “Ouch.”

“You said it.”

“You think anyone’s first time is like, amazing?” she asked.

“Probably?”

“Doubts.” This conversation was making them both a little giggly, and something about the way she said “doubts” made them both burst into loud laughter. It was the kind of laughter that picked you up and shook you out. The kind of laughter that made you feel like you’d just sprinted around the block in the fresh cold air. The kind that made it very hard to stop smiling afterward and made everything else seem funny simply by association.

The kind that made everything it touched sort of glitter.

She was still glittering an hour later, after they’d split the cake, when she and Tyler walked Anthony down to the curb and put him in a cab. She was still glittering when Tyler waved down another cab for her, held the door open for her.

Still glittering when, to her surprise, he reached down before closing the door and gave her shoulder a good, firm squeeze.

“Night, Fin.”

“Night, Ty.”

And then he did that thing. That thing where a man knocks twice against the roof of the cab to indicate that it’s time to pull away.

She figured she had to add that to the list along with tie-adjusting and helping a woman take a coat off. Because Fin just sort of crumpled back into her seat, her eyes closed, savoring the glitter of the moment the way someone might savor the first sip of truly great whiskey, or a fresh strawberry still warm from the sun, or a first kiss.

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