He took his napkin and dipped it into his water glass. I expected him to pass it over, but instead he crooked his finger in my direction. I leaned toward him, and he gently dabbed at my forehead. I did not breathe the entire time, crossing my eyes in an effort not to stare.

“There,” he said, and withdrew.

Thankfully before I could do anything else embarrassing, our food and Gabe’s third beer arrived.

In addition to his own burger, Gabe had also ordered a plain patty for the puppy, which she ate with enthusiasm punctuated with several happy snorts. As he observed her, I arranged my burger the way I liked it, dipping my fries in ketchup and laying them across the patty in a crisscross pattern.

I looked up and found Gabe watching me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone eat a burger that way,” he said.

“I’ve done it since I was a kid,” I said.

“Huh,” he said, and then opened his burger and did the same. “Like this?”

I nodded, wordlessly, and watched as he took a bite.

“Oh yeah,” he said, a soft moan escaping. “That is fucking delicious.”

Heat spread through my body as if I had swallowed something spicy and wonderful.

I watched him eat for a moment. He savored each bite, licking his fingers, his lips, even the palm of his hand at one point. He was clearly a man who enjoyed his food.

Wow. Even when I was single-handedly torpedoing my career, I was still very, very horny for him.

“It’s going to get cold,” he said.

Not a chance, I thought.

It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about my food.

“I’ve read your articles,” Gabe said as I took a bite of my burger.

“You have?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said.

It was as if the whole slipup with his dad had never happened. Gabe Parker was clearly someone who rolled with the punches.

He dipped a French fry in ketchup.

“I like your blog.”

I choked on my drink.

It was one thing for Gabe to have read my articles—unusual, but still, those pieces were well researched, edited, and vetted. They weren’t all that dissimilar to the type of interview we were doing right now.

My blog on the other hand…

At least I now knew where he’d gotten all that information about me, like where I went to school and the fact that I hated New York. For better or for worse, my blog had become somewhat of a de facto journal these days. Mostly because I thought that no one was reading it.

“You’re funny,” Gabe said. “Your writing. It’s funny.”

My brain was going a mile a minute, trying to remember what kind of embarrassing personal shit I’d word-vomited recently.

Jeremy had read my blog once.