“Wait,” I said, my throat suddenly sand-dry. “When you called me last weekend”—the words rumbled out, raw and honest—“I should have told you how I felt. I like you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about kissing you.”

Franny just stared at me.

“Let me try this again,” I said, clearing my throat. “First and foremost, I respect both your professional boundaries and your personal space, and will honor them completely. But I wish I had been more clear with you about how I felt after we kissed. I wanted it to happen, and I’m so glad it did.”

“I’m glad it did too,” Franny said slowly, eyes firm on my face. “I just thought maybe I’d misread you, or the situation. I wasn’t sure.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t misread anything. And I’m sorry—I should have told you how I’ve been feeling. I only came here tonight because I wanted to see you. I hope we can still be friends.”

She nodded, her eyes searching mine. “But you’d also be okay with, like, more than friends?”

I laughed at this. It felt like my feelings were so obvious they were tattooed on my forehead. Clearly, I needed to do a better job expressing them out loud. “Yes,” I said firmly. “Yes.”

I took a step closer to her and watched as her chest heaved with a breath, then released, as she dragged her teeth, so slowly, over her bottom lip. I had known her long enough now to know that her brain was moving at a mile a minute, processing fifty different things she could say to me, all of which could slice me open in a second. Everything she said to me, no matter the nicest words or a cutting dig, burned through my veins like venom. She was my poison, for better or for worse.

And then I saw it. That thing that happened on her face whenever she shifted into a smile. I felt silly even thinking it, but there was no other way to describe it. She sparkled.

“Should we get a drink?” she said finally.

“I’d love that,” I said. There was a relief in letting these words go, in putting it all out there in front of us.

“You don’t want to go home and run ten miles?” She was teasing me now, and it felt amazing.

“I can do that tomorrow morning. I can even do it with a hangover.” I let out a breath, let my tongue run over my bottom lip.

“I don’t think you even get hangovers,” she said, and she reached up and ran her hand gently across my cheek, down my jaw. From her words, it was clear she’d intended it to be a joke, but her voice was lower than normal, serious. “Sometimes, you seem superhuman.”