“Just in case you’re measuring their friendship by where they get their coffee after you told them about me, they still come here.” Mia ventured a smile. Could they crack a joke about this already? Perhaps it was the only way past the thing that stood between them.

“It’s okay. I gave them permission.” Lou had a sly grin on her face. “And just so we’re clear. This is not a date.”

“Just hanging out,” Mia confirmed. “Are there any rules I should abide by? I wouldn’t want our hanging out to inadvertently turn into a date just because I cracked a smile at the right—or wrong—time.”

“Just keep the flirting to a minimum,” Lou said. “Shall we go? I’m starving.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Lou hopped off the bus after Mia. If she’d been alone, she would have gotten an Uber, but Mia insisted on taking the bus because she was showing Lou around her neighborhood and bringing her into her life and that couldn’t be an authentic experience if they didn’t take at least one bus.

They walked from the bus stop to The Larder, next to the cinema where she’d spotted Mia a few weeks ago, when she had still been so full of rage.

Mia ordered a salad but Lou needed fatty foods and the feeling of something really solid in her stomach after last night’s excesses. She devoured her eggs benedict with avocado, while Mia scoured the newspaper she’d bought for the best movie they could watch together afterward.

“Don’t tell me you’re a blockbuster girl,” Mia said, looking up from her newspaper. When she glanced at Lou like that, with that grin on her face, her eyes so clear and kind, Lou forgot she was actually Mia Miller. She was the woman she had drunkenly asked out the night before. God, the wave of anguish—followed by one of nausea—that had washed over her when she woke up, head banging, and realized she had.

“If I have to see one more superhero movie in my lifetime, it will be one too many.” Lou put down her fork and considered whether to share this information with Mia. Why the hell not? “My ex was a comic book nerd and she dragged me along to every Marvel and DC movie that has come out in the past years. There have been many, and I hated almost all of them. Give me a French film with Isabelle Huppert any day of the week instead.”

“Do I detect a touch of snobbery?” Mia put the paper down.