She left the restaurant the way she had arrived — casually, on foot, the little crossbody bag swinging at her hip and her hair still caught in the high messy ponytail that Ashley had, by the end of dinner, declared "criminally cute."
They had parted on the sidewalk with a hug.
Ashley had initiated it. That surprised the small, ever-watching part of ARIA that catalogued human behavior like a bored accountant.
Ashley was not, by disposition, a woman who hugged strangers. She hugged old friends, her mother, her best friend, and the tiny, carefully guarded circle of people she had decided belonged to her.
Yet tonight, after ninety minutes of warm, easy laughter with a girl she had only just met, Ashley had wrapped her arms around ARIA's shoulders and held on a beat too long. Into her hair she had whispered, "I don't know why, but I feel like I've known you forever."
