“This is a special one I wrote for a pretty girl,” he said softly into the microphone, smiling again at a different table of girls seated at his feet. They brightened at his attention, and then he started strumming and singing, his dark brown Chelsea boots tapping away on the bottom rung of the barstool he sat on.

He had dark, shaggy hair, an unkempt stubble on his chin, and dark bags under his eyes. He looked like he was hungover, but maybe it added to the whole tortured artist bit. He also wore a shirt smaller than the one Giana was wearing, if I were to wager, and skinny black jeans with holes ripped over the knees.

The sign above the tip jar next to him said Shawn Stetson Music, along with his Instagram and Venmo handle.

I had to fight not to scoff as I angled back toward Giana, crossing my arms over my chest and sinking back into my chair.

“What’s up with you and the guitar dude?”

Giana had her coffee cup halfway to her lips when I said it, and the mug wavered dangerously in her hands afterward, a little bit spilling out and onto her laptop as she cursed and sat it back down. She quickly wiped where the foamy liquid had splashed her keys, shaking her head with another furious blush on her cheeks.

“What? What are you talking about? There’s nothing up with me and Shawn Stetson.”

A nervous laugh bubbled out of her, one that resulted in a weird snort thing that made my lowered eyebrow bounce up to join the one lifted.

Did she just refer to him by his first and last name?

“Convincing,” was all I murmured in response.

She pursed her lips, sitting up straighter and pulling her shoulders back. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but let’s turn the conversation back to—”

“You like him.”

She gaped, clamping her mouth shut once she realized it was hanging open. “I certainly do no—”

“You’re crushing on him so bad you can’t even stand to hold eye contact with him across a crowded bar.”

I’d never seen Giana so frazzled, and she hastily snapped her laptop shut and tucked it into her messenger bag. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But I just smiled and leaned over the table, elbows on the cool wood as my chest squeezed with an entirely different kind of emotion than the one that had been occupying the space for weeks now. It was excitement, albeit muted, but that part of me that loved to help others thawed like a frozen tree shaking off the last icicles of the winter.

And underneath that thawing ice was a flutter of hope as fresh as spring, an idea sprouting in my mind like a flower.

Or perhaps a weed.

“I can help you.”

“Help me?”