“Hey, dipshit, get out of the way,” someone in the back says.

“Hey, Mark,” Gavin says to him, but he’s grinning at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his dimples deepening. Dark and wildly curly hair like a halo. Probably smelling like something warm and woodsy. Making me want to smile back at him. He’s not letting go of the door.

“Are you running away?” he asks me. His mouth is a perfect Cupid’s bow, and I know that stubble he’s working right now feels like the most delicious rough velvet on your skin.

“Could you let the door go?” Mark says.

I clear my throat to say something polite but devastating, but Taylor beats me.

“Hi, Gavin!” he says brightly. “We were just heading upstairs and never talking to you again.”

Gavin ignores him. “Come here! Let me talk to you for a sec,” he says to me.

“Oh, come on, dude,” Mark says.

“I know, right?” Taylor says, twisting around.

The elevator alarm starts to ding, and I shove Gavin backward, push him through the crowd, past the sign-in desk. Taylor, Katherine, and Nevaeh swarm out of the elevator behind us.

“I’ll just be a second?” I say to them. Katherine frowns but stops Taylor from following me, and Nevaeh rolls her eyes and slouches against the side of the check-in desk, looking pointedly at her wrist like she is wearing a watch.

“Hi,” I say, turning back to Gavin, my hand on my hip. “So? What do you want?” I sound totally unconcerned, I hope, because, oh, he makes me feel breathless, nervous, fluttery. Which switches on my bravado, the confident smile, the hope that he can’t tell how nervous he makes me, because I’d die of embarrassment.

His smile is warm fingers gliding down my spine, a hand gripping my hip, lips at my ear, teeth nipping at my earlobe, and I suck in a breath. I remind myself that chemistry like this between people, it’s just chemicals. Unfortunately, chemicals don’t get the memo when the rest of you is done with someone.

“Hi,” he says. “I was going to text you, and here you are.”

“Pretty sure I blocked you,” I lie, sounding very casual.

I did delete his number. (After Nevaeh scolded me.) But I never blocked him. Because maybe he’d realize he made a terrible mistake and come beg for my forgiveness, right? It hasn’t happened in the last six months, but he could have had an epiphany.

“Well, then I’m even more glad I ran into you,” he says, leaning forward. Eyes still hazel, check. Eyelashes—nope, not thinking about eyelashes.

“It’s a small campus,” I say. And why Gavin hasn’t dropped off a cliff and into the center of the earth, I do not know. It is unfair.

“Too small,” Taylor calls from behind us.