He’s not interested in a relationship, remember? the thought mosquito continued to drone. He thinks you’re some chilled out, grown-up woman who can handle a casual kiss and not turn it into something awkward that will ruin everything, making you regret it forever.

While this was racing through my head, Sam must have seen the conflict flit across my face because he paused, very deliberately, and then slowly sat back up, twisting around to face the trees in front of us, resting his wrists on bent knees. After another potent silence, he swallowed again, coughed, ran his hands through his hair and assumed his usual easy-breezy, affable expression.

If it was meant to dispel the tension, it didn’t work. Sam mumbled something about how it was late and he’d better be getting back, and he left me to burrow down into my sleeping bag and wonder what on earth just happened, and whether I was a fool to so fervently hope that it might happen again.

‘Hello, Earth to Ollie?’ Steph said, unnecessarily loudly, her eyebrows furrowed in suspicion.

‘Sorry. Sleeping on the ground has left me shattered.’

‘Hmmm.’

I hadn’t fooled her for a second. But my best friend was patient; she’d form her own conclusions, confident that the evidence would prove them right soon enough.

I, on the other hand, had no clue what to think.

By the end of the week, I was still clueless. I’d spent more time replaying that night than was healthy or constructive.

Every time my mind wandered back to Sam it was like the thoughts ignited a sparkler in my stomach, sending nervous longing fizzing and whizzing through my insides. On the one hand, I admonished myself for being embarrassingly pathetic. An uncommonly kind and attractive man had been nice to me, in a professional capacity, and my imagination had ramped up to maximum.

But then again… I wasn’t a total romantic novice. Every other time I’d seen that look in a man’s eyes he’d been about to kiss me.

Sam might have been about to kiss me.

As I twisted myself up in my duvet one night, hot and bothered and increasingly irritated about the whole situation, I concluded that Sam owed me a kiss.

And if the opportunity ever happened again, even if he was only interested in a one-time, casual thing, I was going to make sure I was ready for it.

I had two items left on the Dream List, and more than enough motivation to get cracking.

Only, then came a terrified knock on my kitchen door and suddenly Dream Lists and uncollected kisses were roughly shoved to the side by real life.

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