“You're right,” Dani said, then paused to clear her throat. If Max thought it had never occurred to her that keeping in contact with him held a certain, if relatively small, amount of danger for her, he was mistaken. “All the same, I've made my choice as far as that's concerned. Where you're living may not stay a secret, but on my side of it, only Pete knows we've kept in touch. So no need to worry about it.” And whatever was being done to her phone should keep it protected from anyone learning of their correspondence, as long as no one else had physical access to it. At least, that’s what she hoped.
With her phone in Max’s hands, there was little else for Dani to do except kick her feet up again and wait for him to be finished with whatever magic he planned to work on her device. She watched, though not openly, as he went through each step in a whole process that was a mystery to her. Whether it was navigating through her phone’s settings, or carefully removing the case to take a look at the jumble of the device’s inner workings, there was no hesitation in his actions. Clearly this was a realm in which he was comfortable, which made a sudden, stark contrast with how awkward and uncomfortable he seemed to be in her presence these days.
At last Max looked up and pronounced it done, and Dani nodded, slightly disappointed to find they were wrapping things up. It was getting late, of course, and the phone thing had been their entire purpose for getting together, so with that finished there was little point in hanging around.
“Thank you for taking a look at it. I appreciate the fact that you came all the way out here for basically no other reason than to do me a favor,” she said, stowing the phone back in her bag and taking a last look around the abandoned theater before standing up again. It had been nice to step outside her typical sphere, in the end, and to take a little walk down memory lane in the process. But the real world waited.
As Max followed her back into the dim lobby, she found herself struggling just as much with how to say goodbye as she had how to say hello. It was a painful truth that every parting might be their last, but even putting that aside, neither of them could say how long it would be before they had another opportunity to see each other again. And so Dani found her steps slowing as they neared the cinema’s exit, until she finally stopped and turned to Max.
After a moment of hesitation -- there was always hesitation with him, now, and it wasn’t a feeling Dani was used to -- she stepped forward and enveloped him in another hug. Her eyes closed, she let the embrace sink into her for just a moment before pulling away again, hanging onto that last bit of composure.