Page 65 of Dear Pink

“You like bacon-flavored yogurt?” I ask.

“Don’t you?” Her expression is incredulous.

“Why? Is it a deal-breaker?”

“Yep.” She grins, but I sense she takes this rule seriously.

“It’s my favorite,” I say quickly, and she breathes a dramatic sigh of relief.

We sit with our large bowls. Hers overflows with an entire bag of gummy bears. Mine has a slightly more conservative amount of gummy worms. We are an excellent match. She steals one of my worms, dangles the candy into her open mouth, and sucks it in slowly. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Note to self . . . buy Hannah a bag of gummy worms pronto.

She lifts another worm and tilts her head. “Check out the cute couple in the corner?”

My eyes stay glued to her mouth, waiting in anticipation of another gummy worm seduction, but I manage to turn my head. It’s an older couple, close to my parents’ age. The man wears a light blue seersucker suit, and the woman has on a chiffon sundress and a floppy straw hat.

“They belong on a picnic in the 1920s,” she says, dropping the worm in her empty cup. She takes a black pen out of her purse, rips a clean napkin from the dispenser, and sketches as she did at my birthday party.

The dapper couple comes to life with a few strokes of her pen. “Your drawings are incredible, Hannah. You’re talented.” I’m suddenly aware her passions are a mystery.

“You’re an artist?” I mean to state it as a fact, but a question comes out instead. Hannah glances from her sketch and frowns slightly.

“No. I’m a copyeditor.”

“You aren’t only a grammarian. I mean, look at this sketch . . . and the one for my birthday. You have real skill.”

“What? You have an aversion to typo checkers?”

“No.” I trace my finger along her bare arm. “It seems some of my best friends are typo checkers.”

She smirks, and I’m happy to erase the frown.

“So, where do you work?”

“Umm . . . Burton & Baker,” she says.

“Burton & Baker?”

“I . . . I told you I work there.”

“When?” I have zero recollection of this conversation.

“When we first met,” she says.

“We met on Flag Pole Hill. Don’t you remember my superhero life-saving skills?”

“Umm . . . I mean thefirsttime.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We met in the elevator the very first time.”

“The elevator? When were we in an elevator together?”

“At Burton & Baker. You were in the elevator with a bike.”

I strain my memory to remember the last time I visited Burton & Baker. It happened a couple of months ago. I brought lunch for Giovanna. I study Hannah, her eyes locked on mine. This moment is important, more than any other moment in my life. But I don’t remember seeing her . . . and then I do.

I remember a beautiful woman with long dark hair, so long it covered most of her face except for her soft gray eyes framed by curly lashes. I take in the girl before me, her pixie haircut with a perfect streak of pink and her soft gray eyes framed by curly lashes.

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