“Hey girl, you all ready to go?” She placed a file between my arms, set a pen on top of it, and zoomed away. I chuckled and opened the file, looking it all over perfunctorily before signing where I needed to and closing it again. I looked up to hand it back to Mags to see her, somehow, on the other side of the lobby, intaking yet another person.

Before I could call out to her or grab the file and walk over, a man stepped to the other side of the front desk. In any other circumstance, I wouldn’t have noticed this generic white guy in a black hoodie but it was him. The man. The one from my dream. His dream.

He was a bit taller than I remember, maybe a bit shorter than Aaron but somehow even skinnier. But where Aaron always looked annoyingly at home in his body, in a way I’ve never felt, this guy made his skinniness look wrong. Like he’d been deprived of food and sleep for far longer than he should have been.

I couldn’t help it. Before I knew what was happening, I was walking around the circular desk to stand in front of him. And that was all I did for a moment—just stand. Like, three feet away from him, staring at him, like a total weirdo.

“Um … can I help you?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow at me. His voice was gruff and dry, like he hadn’t used it in a while, or he’d used it too much.

“You’re him,” I breathed.

I really wish I had opened with something else because a) very creepy way to introduce yourself to someone and b) his eyes instantly went wide with fear.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Sorry, I’m Rose,” I said, sticking out my hand in an offer to shake. GOD it was almost as bad as when I tried to introduce myself to Emily. I mean, I guess this man was the man of my dreams. Hardy-har-har.

“Oh.” He blinked, looking at my outstretched hand. “Um.”

He reached his arm out slowly, before grabbing my hand in a shake, slow and hesitant.

“Nice to meet you?” he said.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, trying to laugh it off. “I know that was the weirdest way to introduce yourself to someone.”

“I’ve had weirder,” he said. The corner of his mouth twitched in a smile and he angled his body toward me so he could look directly at me, eyes glittering as they roamed over my face, like he was memorizing it.

“Oh, I’m, um…” I blushed under his suddenly SUPER intense stare.

“I’m not hitting on you,” I blurted, blushing even deeper. The horrible anxiety in my gut was somewhat abated by the fact that my bluntness shocked a laugh out of him, short and harsh-sounding, but not mean.