Page 24 of Maybe in Another Life

“What if I eat so many cinnamon rolls that I gain four hundred pounds? Then?”

“Then what?” he says. He’s only half listening to me. He’s focused on trying to find a place to park.

“Then would this be over? Would that be a deal breaker?”

He laughs at me. “Try all you want, Hannah,” he says. “But there are no deal breakers here.”

I turn and look out the window. “Oh, I’ll find your weak spot, Mr. Hanover. I will find it if it’s the last thing I do.”

He laughs as we slow to a red light. He looks at me. “I know what it means to miss you,” he says. The light turns green, and he speeds down the boulevard. “So you’ll have to find a pretty insurmountable problem if I’m going to let you go again.”

I smile at him, even though I’m not sure he can see me. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, smiling.

We finally find a spot relatively close to the café.

“This is why people leave this city, you know,” I say as he squeezes into the spot.

He turns the key and pulls it out of the ignition. He gets out of the car. “You don’t have to tell me that,” he says. “I hate this city every time I circle a block like a vulture.”

“Well, I’m just saying, in New York, there’s the subway. And in Austin, you can park anywhere you want. The Metro in D.C. is so clean that you could eat off the floor.”

“Nowhere is perfect. But, you know, don’t go racking up reasons to leave already.”

“I’m not,” I say. I’m slightly defensive. I don’t want to be the person no one thinks is going to stick around.

“OK,” he says. “Good.”

He turns and opens the door to the café, letting me in first. We get in line, and it so happens that the line snakes around the bakery case. I see the cinnamon rolls on the top shelf. They are half the size of my head. Covered in icing.

“Wow,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “I’ve wanted to take you here ever since I first found this place.”

“How long ago was that?” I ask, teasing him.

He smiles. For a moment, I wonder if he’s embarrassed. “A long time. Don’t feel like you need to trick me into admitting I’ve been hung up on you for years. I’m confident enough to say it outright.” I smile at him as he laughs and steps forward. “A cinnamon roll, please,” he says to the cashier.

“Wait, aren’t you having one?”

“They are huge!” Ethan says. “I thought we’d split one.”

I give him a look.

He laughs. “Excuse me,” he says to the cashier. “Make that two cinnamon rolls. My apologies.”

I try to pay, but Ethan won’t let me.

We grab some waters, sit down by the window, and wait for a server to warm up the rolls. I fiddle with the napkin dispenser.

“If I hadn’t stayed out with you on Saturday, would you have tried to sleep with Katherine?” I ask him. It’s been in the back of my mind since that night. I’m trying to be better at actually asking the questions I have instead of avoiding them.

He starts sipping his water. I can tell he is put off by the question. “What are you talking about?”

“You were flirting with her. And it bothered me. And I just want to make sure this is... that this is just me and you, and we aren’t... that there is no one else.”

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s not another woman on the planet. I’m into you. I’m only into you.”

“But if I hadn’t stayed out...”

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