“Rose, was it?” Emily’s lilting voice, like music to my ears, broke the awkward tension and I refocused on her face. It was almost too much to look at at first. Her skin is a deep, warm brown like her eyes, and she was smiling enough to show that she has two perfect dimples in her cheeks.

“Uh yeah,” I said, my voice gravelly and hollow, like I had just spent hours shouting. I made a jerky motion with my body before stopping still completely, once I realized that I’d been going to shake her hand. Again.

“This is a pretty weird coincidence, right?” She laughed, but it sounded more nervous than I would have expected. I finally blinked, the fact that I’d been staring blankly at her for the past forty seconds dawning at me, and saw a new tightness in her smile.

“I’m not following you or anything,” I rushed to say, because apparently my brain and my mouth are no longer talking to one another.

“What?” Emily’s eyes widened.

“I just mean,” I said, my voice gaining back its usual strength much slower than I would have liked, “this really is just a coincidence. I know the odds of this are, like, really small, but I promise, I’m not following you or anything. I work here. So, maybe, you’re the one who’s following me. Yeah, I mean, that would be more likely, why else would you be here picking up soup?”

Oh my GOD, just writing this stuff down is mind-numbingly embarrassing. I think I embarrassed Emily too, because she started to blush furiously. I wish I had had more of my wits about me to fully appreciate how hot she looked when she was flustered.

But don’t worry! There were even MORE opportunities for things to be awkward, because Madison came back with both our things, which means we left at the same time, which means we both were trying to navigate opening the door with casts and, in Emily’s case, an armful of soup for her friend because she’s a perfect person.

“Here—” I said, moving into her space. I was close enough now to see the light freckles dotted along the bridge of her nose and to discover that she smells like vanilla. She stepped back, taking her enticing freckles and cupcake scent with her and giving me room to open the door for her.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess … I’ll see you.”

Her foot stepped forward onto the sidewalk and under the awning that hangs in front of Milton’s front door. Doing her best to maneuver around the cast and the soup in her arm, she extended her umbrella in front of her and I watched her grimace as she braced herself to step into the torrential rain.

And that was when it clicked. Don’t take an umbrella.