I fucking loved it.

When I’d relayed the encounter to Izzy, she’d smiled lightly and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, my best friend, the narcissist.” She’d claimed she was just joking, but I knew she wasn’t. I didn’t care, though. Being recognized like some sort of celebrity was the best high I’d ever experienced.

So when I was rushing to a spin class one evening and heard my name, I thrilled. I adjusted my ponytail, pasted my most welcoming smile on my face, and turned to greet my fans. I was surprised to see Cat’s friend Connor waving at me from one of the sidewalk tables outside Columbia Brews. A white coffee mug sat on the table in front of him, and the sleeves of his light blue button-down shirt were pushed up in the sweltering heat.

“Audrey, hi,” he said, smiling genially and rising to greet me. “I thought that was you. I’m Cat Harrell’s friend Connor. We met at trivia the other week, remember?”

“Sure, of course I remember,” I said, omitting the fact that I also remembered the moon eyes Cat made at him. The poor girl practically had a flashing neon sign above her head advertising that she was in love with him. When I’d called her out on it, she had turned a vivid fuchsia and wildly shaken her head. “The lady doth protest too much,” I had joked, but not even my lame Shakespeare could jostle loose the truth. I didn’t believe her repeated denials for a second. Connor was precisely her type: tall, smart, and falling just shy of handsome with his prominent Adam’s apple and wide-set, drooping eyes. They would make an adorable—if slightly awkward—couple.

Cat will thank me later, I thought as I decided to play Cupid.

“It was so nice of Cat to invite me to trivia,” I said. “It’s so hard moving someplace new, but Cat’s really gone out of her way to make me feel at home. She’s just so thoughtful.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Harrell’s great.”

I frowned at his tepid response. This was going to take more effort than I’d thought. “She really is. She—”

“Hey, why don’t you sit down? Let me buy you a latte.”

“Thanks, but I have a bike booked in twenty minutes. Besides, I can’t have caffeine this late in the day. It’ll keep me up, and then I’ll have to take a sleeping pill, and then I’ll be so tired I’ll drink more coffee, and it’s this whole vicious cycle.”

He gestured to his cup and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “This is decaf.”

“Is there even a point to decaf? Seriously.”

He smiled slightly and shrugged. “There is when you’re meeting someone for coffee late in the day.”

Alarm bells rang in my head. He was meeting someone for coffee? As in a date? Perhaps I should stick around to check out Cat’s competition. But before I could say I had changed my mind, another thought occurred to me: Why would he invite me to have a latte if he had a date?