This is the interview portion, the reminder that even though the time at the museum felt like a quirky little date, Sabrina and I are now on the clock for her article. Hell, I need the reminder because it’s too easy to get lost in how I feel with her.

Carefree. Happy. Easy.

As if I’m simply enjoying getting to know someone I like.

Someone I like a lot.

I can’t have that someone, though, and that’s why I need these moments. These reminders of who we are when she clicks on her recording app. But maybe these not-dates, these work-slash-fun slivers of time, are what I need more than falling for someone. Maybe I need to have fun with a woman and not worry about what she’s after.

With Sabrina, I haven’t felt that worry since the night at The Dollhouse. I didn’t experience it on the subway, and I don’t feel it tonight either. The time with her is like a rejuvenation. It’s refreshing, as if her curious spirit and inquisitive mind are restoring my faith in humanity.

She pokes the pineapple and looks at me expectantly, waiting for my explanation.

I turn the pineapple around, showing her the spirals that comprise its hard, rough skin. “See? They fall in patterns.”

“They do?”

Enthusiasm courses through me, and my geekery emerges in full force. This shit is awesome. “Mother Nature is amazing. Mother Nature loves math. Plants love sequences. The Fibonacci sequence is one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, and so on. Basically, you add up the prior two numbers to get to the next one. And what you have here is the Fibonacci sequence. Pineapple spirals only appear in one of the numbers in this sequence.”

I take her hand and bring her index finger to one of the spirals, dragging it down the scales. Silently, her lips move, counting. A row of five. A row of eight. A row of thirteen.

Slowly, she raises her face, her eyes sparkling with astonishment, as if she’s found buried treasure. “Mind. Blown.”

“Nature is actually completely dependent on math. You see these beautiful patterns all across the world. The same is true for the cauliflower spirals,” I say, running her fingers across the florets in the vegetable. “And the artichoke too. Sunflowers follow the same pattern. Math is literally all around us.”

She shakes her head in amazement. “I had no idea.”

“It’s cool, isn’t it? Math doesn’t dwell in a quiet little separate space, but it can intersect with nature and ideas.”

“Evidently.” Her eyes drift down to my hand still on hers, and maybe because I’m amped up on the Fibonacci sequence, I don’t analyze what I do next.

I do it.

I thread our fingers together, and a spark of pleasure rips through me. From that. From that bit of contact. From the thrill of holding her hand.

A quiet gasp escapes her lips, and then she tightens her fingers around mine, grasping. She nibbles on the corner of her lips, something she did the night we spent together, and it shoots me back in time to those seconds before we kissed in the library.