Summer flushes hard. “You were never that bad. I was an unholy pest.” She looks up at his profile, eyes soft, and bites at her lip. “I know. Don’t — just be yourself, okay, Toni? I lo-like, I like you the way you are.” Reaching out, she puts a hand over his wrist and squeezes a little. “Like that night I was so drunk. You were awfully good to me that night.”
Toni can feel the blood rise to his cheeks and he coughs into the hand she doesn’t have a hold on. “I …uh …” he swallows. “I just …I know how it feels to be drunk in a place that’s not …familiar … so, yeah, you know, it wasn’t a big …deal.” Open mouth, insert foot.
“I think I could have managed,” she laughed, squeezing again. “But it was a big deal to me; you said all the right things, and you didn’t let me do anything stupid.”