eggplant parm.
Katie tapped her manicured nails against the tan leather of the Mercedes’ back seat, the dull tapping sound calming her. She’d first slept with Albus almost a decade ago, but the thrill of anticipation she felt before they met up had never fully faded. Unlike so many of the men she dated, he never expected her to be anything besides herself. He saw parts of her that few people got to see–her messiness, her anxiety, her idiosyncrasies–and it didn’t matter because he wasn’t her boyfriend or someone she wanted to become her boyfriend, he was just Al. That didn’t stop him from making fun of her for taking cars instead of apparating places, of course.
Maybe it was kind of silly, but she simply didn’t see the point in risking a splinching to save fifteen minutes in travel time. Sure, they could usually put you back together, but why take that chance? Not to mention that there was something to be said in defense of riding through London. It made her feel connected to her adopted city in a way that few other experiences could.
The car slowed, pulling to a stop in front of Rose and Al’s building. She thanked the driver, gathered the food, and nodded at the doorman on her way into the lobby. Katie sometimes thought she could time the trip from the lobby to their door down to the second, she had walked it so many times. She let herself in quietly, heels clicking softly down the hallway. She was fairly certain that Rose wasn’t here tonight–she had chosen to spend a few days in France while this fiasco with the PM’s son blew over–but nonetheless, Katie kept an eye out for her redheaded best friend as she made her way through the flat. It wasn’t that she was avoiding Rose, or even that she was hiding this thing with Al. Rose just had a tendency to ask questions that Katie herself didn’t know the answers to.
She found Al in the den, focusing intently on a book. Katie knew that she got to see hidden parts of Al too: his reading glasses, his furrowed brow as he thought through a particularly complex herbology concept, his second-guessing. She slipped out of her shoes, nudging them into an out of the way corner. She laid the pizza and wine down on the coffee table in front of him before making her way into the kitchen to grab plates and glasses. By the time she returned, Al had set down his book and was opening the box. “It’s meatball, by the way. I’ve been craving it for ages.”