Page 28 of Finally Loved

“Do you end all of your texts with punctuation?” Alba finally asked, her voice soft and quiet.

“What?” Neve tilted her head, questioning.

“Every text you’ve sent me has punctuation at the end. Usually an exclamation point, but the last message you sent had a period.”

“Oh.”

Alba rolled over so that she was on her stomach, looking up at Neve. “Thinking about it?”

“Yeah. I’ve never noticed.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Just…”

“Most of them?”

She winced. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Alba laughed. “I think it’s cute. Although, it’s a good thing I’d met you and that I’m so chill. You put a period at the end of a text and some people think you’re angry enough to murder their entire family.”

Neve hugged her shoulders in tighter to her body. “Uh, yeah. I do that.”

She laughed again, struggling to keep the volume down. “You send periods but get stressed when someone sends you one?”

“Sometimes, yeah. I suppose it depends on the context of the rest of the message.”

“I see.” The gleam in her eyes suggested she didn’t see at all but was deeply amused by the whole thing.

Neve looked awkwardly away, searching for a change of topic. “So,” she eventually said. “Should I ask what brings you by tonight?”

The gleam transformed into something more mischievous, and Alba swung herself up so that she was sitting cross-legged directly in front of Neve. “Did you want me to leave?”

“No!” Neve replied far too quickly, her hands reaching forward insistently but stopping before she actually touched Alba. “No, no. I was just curious.”

Alba tilted her head, watching Neve intently. “I figured I should take advantage of the situation while you were still talking to me. Don’t want you getting lost down a toilet and risk never seeing you again.”

Neve hoped the low light in her room was enough to cover her blush, but the heat she could feel in her cheeks made her certain it was not. “I’ve never fallen into a toilet. I should be very clear about that.”

“Ah. So Charlie’s concern wasn’t based on anything real?”

“Not at all.” Neve wished she could convey that the sentiment went far beyond Charlie apparently thinking she’d be clumsy enough to fall in a toilet. She wasn’t sure how to without addressing the situation completely, but something about Alba’s expression suggested she might have picked up Neve’s meaning.

“Good to know.” She shrugged. “And, either way, I wanted to see you again. Now seemed as good a time as any.”

“You didn’t want to just go home with Zainab?”

“I go home with Zainab all the time—comes with living together.”

“Right.” They were serious enough to live together, but Zainab still dropped her off at Neve’s apartment? She wondered whether it would be too much to ask if they were poly. It wasn’t that she wanted a relationship. She just… wanted to know.

“I can see that place any time I want.” She looked pointedly around Neve’s room. “Far more interesting to see where you live.”

“You’ve seen where I live. You dropped me off before.”

“That was different. You didn’t invite me in for the grand tour.”

“I don’t think this counts as a grand tour either, sorry.”

Alba placed her hand on top of Neve’s where she was picking at the edge of her sleeve. “I mean, your room is clearly the highlight of the grand tour, so I already got to see the best bits.”

Neve looked up at Alba. Her heart was pounding. She’d had friends before whose base operating system was to flirt with everyone. She figured Alba must be somewhere deep on that spectrum too. The only problem was that she wasn’t sure what to do with it when it was 2 AM and she was alone, in her room, with the perpetual flirt—and one who was touching her. It wasn’t as though she had the skills to flirt back and form that kind of bantering friendship.

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