“I met her that morning. At Powell’s. We sort of… ended up spending the entire day together.” Some combination of the alcohol and the constant reminders of her all day make it impossible for me to stop talking once I’ve started. “I was upset that morning because my mom was supposed to come to Portland and see my new place for Christmas, but then she canceled her plans at the last minute. I didn’t know anyone in town, so I was completely alone for the holidays, and there she was, like the universe had handed her to me when I needed her most. And damn—she was really beautiful. She had this hair,” I say. Or maybe I slur it. “And this mouth and these big, brown eyes and these… these hands!”

“You’re painting a very clear picture here.”

“She had this presence—this way of taking up space. She always talked at full volume, and she stomped around in these giant boots, and she just—didn’t give a shit what other people thought about her. That’s always been my problem. I give way too many shits.”

Andrew’s eyes flutter down to the table. I’m not sure when I pulled the pencil out of my bag, or when I started absentmindedly drawing on a napkin, but a shape is starting to take form beneath my fingers. The shape of a woman. Tall, with wide shoulders, narrow hips, strong thighs. She’s faceless, silhouetted, but her hair is there, falling into unseen eyes.

“So… what happened with her?”

I close my eyes and wish I could forget it all. The way she led me back to the Airstream trailer where she lived. The smell of her skin and the taste of her body. It had only been sixteen hours, but I’d never felt more emotionally bonded to another person. I’d never felt so safe. Safe enough to want. Safe enough to feel desire.

I’d convinced myself that it all meant something. But it hadn’t.

“It was just a one-day thing. Two people, meeting by chance, crossing paths. The next morning, I learned it hadn’t meant anything to her.”

He nods slowly, and I struggle to remember how I got here, how in the course of two hours and four drinks, I somehow unloaded my romantic history on a hot investment bro sitting there with his mouth half-open. “I get it now,” Andrew Kim-Prescott says knowingly. “You won’t fake-marry me because you’re a hopeless romantic.”

I snort. “There are a lot of reasons I won’t fake-marry you.”

A tray of shots materializes on the table. I have no memory of Andrew ordering shots, but he picks one up and raises it in my direction. “To living spontaneously.”