I took the beer Stella offered me and clanked it against her bottle. “To…I dunno. To you, really.”

“To you too, Evy.” Stella said.

We both blushed. I had a ‘this reminds me of being a mushy dork with a crush in high school’ moment, but this time felt even mushier than all my past mushy dork times.

One thing that was the same as me in high school: me processing fluttery fluff feelings by trying to do a weird trick or something in an attempt to divert from how goofy I felt. “Wait, check this, I have a trick,” I said. I held up two fingers and flicked them upwards, channeling my Cani power. The metal bottlecaps curled up and popped neatly off the bottles.

“Wow, impressive.” Stella said.

“My Cani gift’s gotta be good for some regular life stuff, right?” I asked. "I can pry a bottlecap off with my fangs too, but that hurts after I do it like once."

We chatted each other up and about two bottles in I felt like I had over-vented about my stupid day, and the incredible aroma of the meal, which looked professionally placed to boot was more enticing. “Alright, is this food good yet?”

“I think so,” Stella said.

I cackled before diving into the food, taking a few bites off a skewer then grabbing a few of the bacon wraps. I froze after my first bite. “Oh my god.”

Stella, adorably, looked like she thought I was about to hate her meal. “What? Is it bad? I thought I caught it before it burned, but—”

“It’s amazing, Stella!” I said. “It’s even better than I thought it would be from the smell!”

I tried to keep it even between the skewers and the bacon wraps, I ate way more of the bacon wraps, they were incredible, perfect amounts of crispy and juicy, with a dash of brown sugar on them to make the flavor even better.

I was starting to get a bit more buzzed, and I wanted to help Stella have as much fun as I was feeling. She still looked worried I would suddenly hate the meal, so I hit her with some of my best stories (not all of them, I didn’t want to burn all my good material so fast. I really wanted to make her laugh.

“And after all that, this adult man looks me dead in the eyes, and in the most genuine, serious voice I’ve ever heard, says ‘Oh, I’m catching a right spanking on this pair of buttocks tonight for this,’” I said as Stella giggled. “And I never even got the shoelaces back! That’s why that was probably the second weirdest on the spot Cani doctoring I had to do on the streets.”

“You had to have made some of that up,” Stella said.

“Nope,” I said. “I’ll tell you a secret. Only for you, Stel. If I make up parts of a story, I always end up putting in a part about a vending machine. I don’t know why, that’s my tell.”

Stella giggled as I sat back down. I needed to be standing on the couch to make the tales of my misadventures have the most comedic impact.

“No but like, but like, Stella,” I said. “You’re just.” I held my face in my hands, feeling some delightful fuzziness that mixed nicely with the mushiness I felt for Stella. “You’re so great, but this night’s been all me. Can I do something for you? I feel very pampered, but I also don’t wanna just get pampered, you know?”

“You bought the drinks,” Stella said, strumming her fingertips on the amber bottle she held that was almost empty. “And you liked the food. That’s good for me.”

“Come on, Stella.” I said. “Nothing?”

Stella thought about it for a second. “Can we…” She sighed. “I don’t know if it’s something you’d want.”

“You can ask, if it’s like, ‘let’s go rob a bank,’ like for you? Like maybe? I’d consider it. But our careers would be pretty rightly screwed for it, you know?”

Stella laughed. “No, I just…can we cuddle tonight?”

I could feel my heartbeat pound for a sec. Stella looked away, and I knew there was something I had fucked up on in our fun week. I had issues with cuddling, and I couldn’t hide them well enough. Even as drunk as I was, I could only bow my head when she asked.

“I’m not much of a cuddler,” I said quietly.

“It’s OK if you don’t want to,” Stella said.

“Oh, Stella,” I sighed. I really wanted to make her happy that night. Well, every night, but there was something particular about that night. “Nah, let me…c’mere. It’s a baggage thing. We can go slow.”

I opened my arms, and Stella dove for me. She started to move towards my neck, and I felt us close to kissing and then probably another night of sex. But that isn’t what she asked me for. And I wanted to oblige what she asked for.

“Sorry, that’s not cuddling,” I laughed. “I mean, we can do that, and I’m happy to do that, but I want you to be satisfied first. Satisfied the way you asked for, not...you know what I mean.” It was a hurdle for me to leap over, but if I was making a run for Stella’s affection, I wanted to leap that hurdle real good while she was cheering me on in the crowd. The problem: I didn’t know how to leap the hurdle. “This may sound very stupid from a doctor and from a person who you’ve had like a lot of sex with in the last week but. Can you show me how to do this whole cuddling thing?”

“Yeah,” Stella said, biting her lip. “You have to be big spoon, though. You have a good half foot on me, so it’d feel weird if I did. Probably.”

“Should we maybe head to bed then?” I asked.

“I think, maybe, yeah.” Stella said.

I stood up and practically stumbled face first into the plate with only skewers and toothpicks remaining on it. Stella caught me, but similarly was wobbly on her feet as we giggled our way to the bedroom.

“Alright, more space here,” I said. I took a deep breath and climbed into bed. Then patted it a few times, as if to let Stella know it was safe to approach me. “Is it weird this is scarier than sex for me?”

“If you have baggage from it, it’s not that weird,” Stella said, climbing onto the bed as well.

“Because yeah,” I said, bad memories of attempts to cuddle with Caya flashing into my head. “Because it’s hard to think of cuddling as even a thing when the person you were with longest pretty much wanted to just leave the room when. Er. The deed was done, so to speak? Even the whole house, and that's not even counting times when the deed was not done and cuddling was not had and—ugh.” I sighed. “Sorry, baggage. I don’t want to bug you with all this past crap when you’ve been so sweet tonight.”

“No baby, let it out.” Stella said. She blinked. I realized at the same time she did what she’d just said.

Stella Faleur called me baby. Stella Faleur calling me baby is one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard. None of us needed to say anything else. I was gonna try to cuddle. I had to, because Stella called me baby and that made my drunk heart soar. Stella turned her back to me and tried to gently guide her arms into a proper cuddle position.

“I like when you call me baby,” I said, exhaling as I wrapped my arms around Stella as well.

Stella nuzzled against me and having her so close to me like this felt different than the sex. I could just hold her, hold this precious woman in my arms and have her hold me back. I was reaching dangerous increasing speeds of my mushiness.

“And I really…am I talking too much?” I asked.

“Never,” Stella said.

“Good,” I said. “I really am glad you’re here, you know?”

“Me too,” Stella said. “You’re even better than the you I spent the last three months daydreaming about.”

I clamped my arms down around her, maybe too tight for a cuddle but she didn’t object. After the stuff she was saying, I wanted her locked down in my arms. The mood in my gut was, “Nobody’s getting my Stella.”

“So the arm that’s under me may go numb here,” Stella said. “But that’s a part of the cuddle.”

“A sacrifice that must be given for the cuddle,” I said.

“Kinda, but like move if it gets really bad, I won’t be mad.”

“It’s fine right now,” I said.

“You’re a good cuddler, you know?” Stella said. “Thank you, too. I know it’s hard with baggage. You really didn’t have to.”

I was super drunk, but my blossoming feelings for Stella gave me some clarity. I felt clear in that I wanted Stella safe in my arms, I wanted her laughing and happy and content. My past baggage was something I could work on, and Stella was a very good motivator to work through it.

“Maybe I just needed the right person to cuddle with.” I said.