Thank goodness I stumbled on my words. Thank goodness he reacted the way he did. Because when we talk after this, he’ll explain that he doesn’t do casual. And he certainly won’t ask me for more, which will suck. But at least I’ll have been spared making a fool of myself for a man who’s all wrong for me. Again.

Honestly, you’d think I’d have learned by now to see an arrangement for what it is rather than what it could be. I blame this terrible lapse in judgment on Grace and her romantic aura, which thickens the air more than the heady jasmine and amber incense wafting around us.

“Stare deeply into your lover’s eyes,” Grace calls, as if we’re in Carnegie Hall instead of a narrow shop front.

Jamie peers over at me, pressing his glasses up his nose.

I stare back at him.

“Excellent,” Grace says. “This is a vital step in our evening. Now we open ourselves wide and forge the bonds that deepen our erotic energy.”

Jamie’s eyes widen, then shut as he inhales slowly through his nose. I bite my lip and remind myself of the time my little sister, Kate, stuck hot sauce in the ketchup on my plate, and my tongue was on fire for hours. It barely keeps me from laughing.

“We open ourselves,” Grace says, “to our partner’s love by breathing fully from our heart chakra.” She puts a hand over her heart and holds her partner’s gaze. He might have glanced my way earlier, but he only has eyes for her now.

“The heart chakra,” Grace says, “or anahata, translates roughly to ‘unhurt.’ This is the place within us that unlocks our capacity for love, compassion, and forgiveness—for ourselves and others.”

Jamie’s eyes meet mine, and every drop of hilarity drains between us.

“Examining our love,” Grace says, “contemplating how our heart will guide our brush, we open ourselves to a fuller appreciation of the one before us, for the healing energy they bring to our lives. Old wounds have no place in our hearts now. No place for hurt in the unhurt space.

“Surely, we are none of us strangers to pain,” she says. “But tonight, we create and connect from the newness of an open heart that does not beat for fear but instead finds itself stretched as a fresh canvas, ready to be altered by the beauty of the one we love. Let us begin.”

Breaking our gaze, Jamie and I turn to face our canvases.

A blank canvas is always a daunting thing. But right now, that white rectangle feels more than daunting. It feels like a rip in the universe, about to suck me in to God knows where. This newness Grace talked about, this fresh start, it’s staring back at me. And I’m scared shitless.