Uh? Am I? “Is this—are you—making fun of me?”

He looks dead serious and faintly offended at the idea. “You’re basically a rocket scientist.”

“Basically being the operative word.”

“And Helena, who had ridiculous standards, chose you to work with her. You’re obviously remarkable.”

Oh God. Is this a compliment? Am I going to blush? “Um . . . thanks?”

He nods. “What I don’t understand is, why is someone as smart as you watching this shit?”

I smile into my fried rice. “You’ll see.”

One hour later, when Sheryl says, “I think our relationship has come a long way, but I am not convinced that it could develop any further . . .” I slam my hand on my armrest and yell, “Oh, come on, Sheryl,” just as Liam slaps his armrest and yells, “Sheryl. What the hell?”

We turn to each other and exchange a brief, bemused look. Told ya, I think at him with a smile. His mouth twitches, like he heard me loud and clear.

“. . . at this point, I just know that it’s not gonna work out between us. Can I walk you out?”

Liam shakes his head, horrified. “That’s just a bad decision.”

“I know.”

“He’s the best of the lot.”

“Soooo stupid, right? She’s gonna regret this so bad. I know it, because I’ve already seen the season.” Multiple times. I reach for one of the beers Liam took out of the fridge a few minutes ago. “Want another crab rangoon?” I ask.

He nods and settles back, long legs stretched next to mine on top of the coffee table. The snow outside is still falling, and we wait for the next episode to start.

He shovels snow like it’s his one and only vocation.

Maybe it’s the isolation-induced insanity speaking, but there’s something hypnotic about it. The rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders under the black fleece. The seemingly effortless way he’s been going at it for hours, occasionally stopping to wipe the sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve. I press my forehead to the window and just . . . stare. I can almost hear Helena’s voice in my head (Would you like to borrow my birding binoculars?). I blithely ignore it.

Maybe that’s what he majored in at Dartmouth: Snow Shoveling. Nicely complemented by a minor in Muscles. His honors thesis was titled The Importance of Armceps in Ergonomic Excavating. Then he moved to graduate school to study How-to-Make-a-Mundane-Winter-Task-Look-Attractive Law. And here I am, unable to take my eyes off a decade of overpaid-for higher education.

This is getting weird. It’s giving me flashbacks to the first time I saw him, when his dark eyes and those (frankly ridiculous) shoulders hit me like a brick in the head. It’s not a memory I want to revisit, so I look away and head downstairs to make lunch, blaming my temporary lunacy on skipping breakfast. This is what I get for falling asleep late last night, halfway through the finale, in the middle of explaining to Liam between yawns that Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants get mandatory STD screenings. What I get for waking up this morning on the couch, a soft, heavenly smelling blanket laid over me. I wonder where it came from, anyway. Not from the living room. I’m positive that there wasn’t one around.