Then he glanced down, first at me, and then at his shirt, where I’d left two wet blotches where my eyes had been. And right below it—oh god—was a trace of snot. Suddenly, getting laid off didn’t seem like the worst thing to happen to me today.

I backed away from him, and the pregnant woman gave me a sympathetic look as I accidentally bumped into her. Again.

“I would take it,” she said as I muttered another apology. “Unless you want—” She gestured to the clip in her hand.

The conductor’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker as the train rolled to a slow stop in the tunnel. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re just holding here as we wait for a train to leave the station ahead of us.”

“Okay, yeah.” I nodded at the stranger on the subway. “Thank you so much.”

He held up the jacket in front of me by the collar, like the men did for their dates in the black-and-white movies that my grandma and I used to watch. Gingerly, he draped it over my shoulders, tugging it ever so slightly so it hung snug over my body, his cheek coming dangerously close to brushing against the top of my head. I breathed a sigh of relief that I was no longer showing my ass to the entire city. As I did, I caught a whiff of his scent lingering on the collar. Apparently, this man’s neck smelled like an afternoon spent with old books stacked on wooden shelves as icy rain cracked against the window, with hints of spicy pine and a fireplace that roared with hot flames and flickering coals. It was heady and decadent, steady and dark.

Someone handed me a tissue, and I blew my nose into it until it was too damp to use. “I just got laid off,” I blubbered. “And now this.” I gestured with my head, as if I could somehow point to my dress with my forehead. “It’s really been a bad morning.”

He offered me a small smile and a nod but said nothing.

I tucked the tissue into the pocket of his coat and noticed a small grimace ripple across his face.

“I’ll get it dry-cleaned and back to you as soon as I can.”

He shook his head. “I swear, I’m good. Besides, I think you need it more than me.”

I nodded. He wasn’t wrong. I did not want to ride the subway all the way to Brooklyn and then make the twelve-minute walk back to my apartment with my dress ripped open down the back.