For someone with the innate social charm of a mounted fish (me), watching Miles befriend this stranger felt like seeing Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel: impressive, but also dizzying. Like any second, he might fall off his ladder and splatter on the marble below.

Gill kept buying us drinks, except for when the bartender, a cute redhead with a nose ring and a literal MOM tattoo, bought all three of us drinks.

Now, when last call rolls around, Gill shoves a twenty-dollar bill at us. “For the cab ride home.”

“No, no, no,” Miles says, pushing the bill back toward him. “Keep your money, Gill. How else are you getting to Vegas?”

Vegas, we’d learned, was his next destination.

But Gill tucks the bill in the pocket on Miles’s shirt, then claps one leathery hand on each of our cheeks. “Stay strong, kids,” he says sagely, then turns, tosses his beat-up leather jacket over one shoulder, and literally whistles a goodbye to the bartender.

By the time we’ve finished our last round, the rain has stopped, and the night is pleasantly cool, so we decide to walk home in a drunken zigzag, Miles’s arm slung over my shoulder and mine around his waist like we’re two old friends rather than very drunk, newly minted allies. “Does that kind of thing happen to you often?” I ask.

“What kind of thing?” Miles says.

“Gill,” I say.

“There aren’t many Gills in the world,” Miles replies.

“The free drinks,” I clarify. “The hours of stimulating conversation about crimes he may or may not have witnessed.”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

“How often do you get free drinks, Miles?”

He casts a bemused look over at me. “It’s a friendly place.”

“MEATLOCKER?” I ask.

“Butcher Town,” he says.

I smack my forehead and he stops short in surprise. “That’s why it’s called MEATLOCKER,” I say. “I spent the whole night trying to figure out if it was a fetish bar or something.”

Miles tips his head back, laughing. “You thought I took you to a fetish bar?” He looks delighted. “Did Peter tell you I was into BDSM?”

“Wait, are you?” I ask.

“Not that I know of,” he says. “Why? Are you?”

“Probably not,” I say. “I think I’m pretty boring. In that realm.”

“What realm?”

“Sex Realm,” I say.

“Do you lie there and stare at the ceiling in silence?” he asks.

“Excuse you,” I say. “This is none of your business.”

“You brought it up, Daphne,” he reminds me.

“I don’t stare at the ceiling,” I say. We’ve reached our building. He opens the door for me, and we start up the stairs. “I just make utterly unblinking eye contact like any respectable woman.”

“See?” he says, gesturing for me to take the stairs ahead of him. “Not boring. Haunting, maybe. But not boring.”

“But how does that happen?” I ask, and Miles’s eyes widen, his mouth screwing up into something between a smile and a grimace.

“Well, when two people find each other attractive—”

“The free drinks,” I interrupt.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s not like I set out for it.”

I must be making a disbelieving face, because he frowns. “You think I’m some kind of con artist?”

“I think you’re a very charming guy,” I say.

“As far as insults go,” he says, pausing halfway up the stairs, “that’s a new one for me.”

“I’m not insulting you,” I say, though truthfully, I’ve never trusted people who are too charming. My dad’s a charming guy. Doesn’t mean he actually means anything he says. “It’s just—look, I’m terrible with new people.”

“Gill loved you,” he argues.

“Because of osmosis,” I say. “Because you were there. I love talking to people I already know, but when I meet someone new, half the time my mind goes blank, and the other half of the time, I make a joke that absolutely no one realizes is a joke, or I ask something way too personal.”

He glances sidelong at me as we start climbing again. “You didn’t do that with me.”

“You may have noticed,” I say, “I’ve barely spoken to you before tonight.”

“That’s why?” he says, another quick flick of his eyes over to me. “And here I thought you just hated me.”

Heat flares through me, head to toe. “Of course I don’t hate you. You’re unhateable.” And then, because I’m wasted, I admit: “Maybe that makes me mistrust you a little bit.”

He looks aghast at this.

“I just mean,” I hurry on, my words slurring together, “I’ve always been more of a few close friends person. And when I meet people who like everyone, are liked by everyone, this alarm goes off in my brain. Like, Okay, this person isn’t going to stick around, so don’t get attached.”

Now he looks mortified. “That is,” he says, “so depressingly cynical.”

“No, no, no,” I say, searching for a better way to explain. “It’s fine! Unless your fiancé dumps you, and you spent the last year working to befriend his friends, and now you’re thirty-three and trying to remember how to even make friends. But who would ever find herself in that situation?”

“Making friends isn’t that complicated,” Miles says, which makes me scoff, which in turn makes him smirk. “I’m serious, Daphne. I just like talking to people. And as far as the free drinks, I’m a good tipper. So if I go to a place more than a couple of times, I tend to get discounts, because the staff knows I’ll make it up to them in tips. Plus I’m in the service industry, and I think bartenders can smell it on me. That I’m one of them.”

“Does it smell like gingersnaps?” The slur in my voice has worsened as we climbed the stairs.

Miles stops outside our front door, laughter gurgling out of him. “Gingersnaps?”

That’s what he smells like. Sweet and a little spicy. A natural earthy smell folded into a sugary baked good. I wave him off rather than answer, and try to get my key into our door’s lock. Unfortunately, it seems the door has grown three extra locks and I can’t seem to line the key up to the right one.

Through laughter, he bumps me aside, clumsily swiping the key from my hand to make his own attempt. “Shit!” he says as it glances off the lock.

We keep fighting for control of the doorknob, knocking each other out of the way in increasingly dramatic fashion, until he almost knocks me over and just barely manages to catch me by pinning me to the wall with his hips.

We’re both laughing so hard we’re crying when our elderly neighbor pops his head into the hallway to hiss, “Some of us are trying to sleep around here!”

“Sorry, Mr. Dorner,” Miles says like a chastened schoolboy.

Mr. Dorner retreats.

I squint after him, confused. “Doesn’t he usually have hair?”

Miles bursts into not-at-all-quiet laughter. I smush my hands over his mouth to shut him up. “You thought that hair was real?” he asks. “You have to be the most gullible person on the planet.”

“I mean,” I say, “despite my innate cynicism, I think the last six weeks have already proven that both of us are way, way too trusting.”

A couple of hours ago, this might’ve tripped the start crying ASAP wire in my brain. Instead we’re just back to cackling.

Mr. Dorner’s lock rattles again. Miles spins away to get our door unlocked, yanking me inside before we have to face another scolding.

We slam ourselves against the door to shut it, catching our breath. “I feel like we’re in Jurassic Park,” he says, which makes me laugh harder.

“What,” I gasp.

“Like we just slammed the door against a bunch of raptors,” he explains.

“I don’t think Dorner’s teeth pose that kind of threat, Miles,” I say. “I’m fairly sure he wasn’t even wearing them.”

“You know what I think?” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“I think we should just fucking do it,” he says.

My heart spikes upward. My skin goes very hot, then very cold. “What?”