“So the opposite of what you just said.”
“Exactly.”
“The opposite of me, specifically.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying.”
“I’m implying that you’re writing about me.” He looked far too pleased about this. “Am I the love interest? Do I have good dialogue? Am I sufficiently morally gray?”
Earth, please open and swallow me right now.
“You’re not in my book.”
“But if I were. Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically, you’d be a secondary character. A comic relief, probably.”
“Ouch.”
“Maybe a villain. The kind of villain who gets a redemption arc in book two.”
“Ah.” He nodded solemnly. “So I’m the love interest.”
“That’s not what I said!”
“It’s what you meant. Villains with redemption arcs are always the love interest. I’ve done my research.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve done research on romance tropes?”
“Yes, extensive research, thorough in all things.”
We talked about his home, vague references to cold winters and family obligations and a place that sounded less like a country and more like a fantasy novel. About our shared love of books, our different opinions on coffee (I needed it to survive, he thought it was “interesting but aggressive”), our mutual bewilderment at reality television.
“Why do they compete to marry a stranger?” he asked at one point, genuinely baffled. “This seems inefficient. In my...” He caught himself. “Where I’m from, courtship is more deliberate.”
“Deliberate how?”
“You choose someone. You pursue them, prove yourself worthy.” He said it simply, like it was obvious. “You don’t leave it to chance.”
“And if they don’t want you back?”
“Then you try harder.” His gaze held mine. “Unless they tell you to stop. Then you stop. But until then...” He shrugged. “You keep trying.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded like a promise.
“Is that what you’re doing?” I asked, surprising myself. “Trying?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you brought me an army’s worth of pastries and a signed book before nine in the morning.”
“And?”
“And I think that’s very... deliberate.”
He smiled. Not the boyish grin from earlier, but a slower curve, satisfied and certain. “Good. I wanted you to notice.”
“Hard not to.”
