Maybe I wasn’t tipsy last night, I think. Just as my legs wobble, like I’m a marionette cut from her strings.

“Where are your friends?” I ask, pretending to be fascinated by the bartender’s theatrics. He’s making something frothy, punctured by a tiki umbrella.

“They couldn’t make it,” he says, raking a hand through his hair. I scan the area around him, looking for my notebook.

“Do you have my book?” I reply, ever the romantic.

“Ah.” He takes a leather tote bag off the edge of the chair and hands it to me.

Inside, I find the notebook neatly nestled in fancy tissue paper.

“Didn’t want it to get damaged,” he says. As if he’s a soldier who had to carry precious goods through hostile territories to get here.

“Thank you,” I say, plucking it out. “That’s really nice.” And extra, I hear Tai say in my head. I return the tote bag, which he tries to reject, before taking it in hand.

We hover, awkwardly, by two free chairs. This is so brutal, I hear Tai say. Hérrakí eyes the hibachi grill, and I surreptitiously watch him while pretending I still care about the bartender. Hérrakí’s wearing a soft button-down shirt in shallow-water blue and dark-wash jeans. His sleeves are rolled up, and I can spot the edge of the—

The hostess walks into me, tapping her long fingernails to her pleather skirt, and I stumble out of the way and into Hérrakí’s arm.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, just as I blurt, “Have you eaten?”

He looks down at me, expectantly, while I stare back up at him, every muscle tense to avoid body contact. My cheeks burn so hot I could grill on them.

“We could stay and eat,” he suggests, setting the leather bag down.

I smile, and he smiles back, actually grins, before helping me into my seat (seriously), which feels as lush and comfortable as sitting on an actual swan, not that I would ever think of doing that. But I can’t relax, not with him a few inches away. His wrist is almost double the width of mine. How does that work? How— Shut the heck up, Tai says in my head.

“So,” I say, to break the tension between us, “what other kinds of friend dates have you been set up on?”

The corner of his mouth perks up again, and his eyes twinkle, as if he’s about to share a delicious secret. “Well, besides Linos, there’s been the definite serial killer, who showed me bags of something red and meaty in his freezer related to the keto diet he wouldn’t stop talking about. Then there was the guy who text-juggled three different girlfriends the first time we met, who he’d nicknamed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear him speak to Thursday.”