Annika stared at him, her cheeks flaming. “C-completely, utterly ridiculous.” It wasn’t a full thought, but it was all she could manage.

“Is it? I’m not so sure.” Still smiling, Hudson pushed his chair back and stood. “I’ll see you later, Annika. I’m sure you’ll find a way to make that happen.” He stuffed a hand in his pocket and walked away, melting effortlessly into the crowd.

Annika sat looking after him, her heart beating furiously in annoyance. After a minute, she sighed, put her napkin on the table, and stood. This was all too much. Alesandro had the right idea; she was going home, too.

Back home, Annika kicked off her shoes, pulled off her bra, and threw it on the floor on her way to the living room, her eyes catching on the evidence of a life lived alone: one cup on the kitchen counter. One forgotten plate on the coffee table. The remote stuck between the cushions, where she’d last left it.

She began switching on lights as she went. The darkness only made her apartment seem emptier, emphasizing how alone she was. No one else would go into a room and turn on a light.

Her stomach growled as she walked into the kitchenette and peeked into the freezer with a single-minded purpose: ice cream. It was definitely an ice-cream-for-dinner kind of night. She grabbed a spoon, a glass of water, and a pint-sized tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, then padded back to the couch. Flopping down, she turned on Netflix and began to browse.

She found what she wanted to watch in an instant—Hacker Love Story, a rom-com about two hackers who tried to out-hack each other but ended up falling in love. It was exactly the kind of funny, low-stakes, everything’s-gonna-be-all-right world she wanted to lose herself in.

Annika was only fifteen minutes into the movie—right at the part where the male hacker hacked into the female hacker’s computer and left her a video message—when she realized she was barely following along at all. Her thoughts were too tangled, too messy, too loud.

She pulled a fluffy throw over her and pushed her spoon into the cardboard container of ice cream, watching it get swallowed up. She hadn’t even been the tiniest bit disappointed that Alesandro had left, that their date was basically over before it began.

A slow, undeniable realization sank in: The most fun she’d had was at the beginning of the night, when she’d run into Hudson in the hallway. When he’d crashed her date, her heart had lifted before she’d squelched the feeling. Annika groaned and stuffed a spoonful of cherry ice cream into her mouth. What was wrong with her that she’d rather spend time with someone so arrogant, so smug, so detestable, than a perfectly nice bakery owner who ran charity marathons?