“Are you coming?” she says. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I smile. “I just really, really love being bi.”

She laughs, the head thrown back cackle that I love, and pulls me into the cab. And by the way that her smile catches me off guard, like an unexpected dip on a fast, winding road or the first drop of a roller coaster, I think I really, really love Amy, too.

Chapter Seventeen

Amy

If it were up to me my hand would be halfway down Sophie’s pants right now. But I don’t want to traumatize this cab driver and besides, Sophie doesn’t seem like the PDA type. She trembled in my hands on the stairs in the club, even as she licked at my mouth and nipped at my lips and clutched my jacket in her fists like I would float away without her. As if there was anything in this universe that could tear me away from her then or now.

She stares out the window as the cab pulls away, her eyes huge and sparkling in the Hideaway’s spotlights. Her hand inches toward me on the cracked leather upholstery until it finds mine. She twines our fingers together.

“Hey.” I tug on her hand because I’m selfish. I want to feel the weight of her stare without having to share it with anyone or anything else.

Sophie’s cheeks and lips are smudged with the remnants of my makeup. Even her hair has touches of glitter in the roots around her face. But it’s not enough. I want to leave glitter everywhere, cover her in it. I want to make a map of her body with my fingerprints and the six-dollar makeup I got from a kiosk in the mall.

“Hey.” She smiles. Every time she lets me see this part of her, this starburst version of herself, it knocks me on my ass. When I’d only gotten snippets of her from the show, I wrongly assumed she was the same kind of angry girl that I was. She’s so much more than that. She’s layered with more complexity than I have in my pinky finger.

Sophie rests her head on my shoulder, foregoing the seat belt to be closer to me. I can’t think of a way to tell her to put one on without sounding like an overbearing billionaire or her mother, so I reach around her instead and click her into the center seat.

She pats my hand and returns her temple to my shoulder. “Sorry.”

Warmth fills me like she’s turned on a tap. And I don’t know why. I don’t know what kind of hold she has on me. Until she pulls my arm around her, tucks herself in against me. The warmth filling me from my chest outward is the feeling of being known, of being seen and understood.

Sophie knows me. At some point I let her see.

“I’m proud of us,” Sophie says.

This late and this cold the streets are quiet, hardly anyone out. The Common glows faintly from the streetlamps lining the walkways but even it looks frozen to this moment in time.