Celeste’s words echo in my head. I don’t do relationships.

“So,” I start to ask. “What happened—”

“Are you two together?” Celeste cuts in before I can finish my question. It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about Ian.

“No, I just met the guy. This is kind of our first date.”

I glance down at the now unconscious man. From this angle, he looks unexpectedly cute, almost like a big, sleeping baby and not the massive giant he really is.

“Wow, some first date,” Celeste replies.

Now that Ian’s out of the way, I can’t ignore how close she and I are to each other. It’s still hard to believe she’s standing right here in this random bar in San Francisco. I could lean over and kiss her if I wanted to.

Before I can stop myself, my eyes linger on her scarlet-red-painted lips.

“How about you?” I ask. “Why are you here? I thought you moved back to Seoul.”

Celeste leans back against the bar. “I did. But I came back to LA a year later to finish my degree. Now, I travel back and forth between there and SF for my photography work. I got in yesterday for another project here.”

The bartender turns back to us, and Celeste orders a pumpkin spice cocktail, the same drink Val ordered when my friends and I arrived at the bar.

“And what happened between you and Gretchen?” I can’t resist asking.

A crease appears between Celeste’s eyebrows. “Pretty much what you heard in the restroom” is the only thing she says in response. The bartender hands Celeste her drink, and she takes a long sip.

I expect her to go on, to tell me about why she doesn’t do relationships or why she disappeared on me so many years ago, but she doesn’t. She slowly takes another sip of her cocktail instead, keeping her gaze on the floor. I’m about to directly ask her about everything she clearly doesn’t want to talk about when something she’d said earlier gives me pause.

“Wait, what project?”

She shrugs. “Oh, it’s for some magazine. They want me to shoot video and take photos of couples for Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t start until later, but I had to meet with some people to finalize some things. I could have done the meeting virtually but since I had another shoot in the area scheduled for this weekend, I figured I’d come in earlier and kill two birds with one stone.”

And then it all clicks. The Valentine’s Day project that I’ve been assigned to. The hot woman photographer from UCLA that Kiara mentioned. And now, Celeste, who’s not in Seoul or Los Angeles but in San Francisco, of all places, sitting right next to me in this crowded bar.