Or maybe shehadbeen interested, and I blew it.
Again.
I raked a hand through my hair and groaned, earning a side-eye from a woman passing by with a toddler and a bubble tea.
It didn’t help that my heart was still doing this weird, stuttering thing in my chest. Or that I could still smell the bookstore on my jacket — coffee, paper, vanilla — and underneath that,her.
The way she said my name. The way she didn’t back down. The way she looked at me like I wasn’t the version of myself I hated.
And I’d just… left.
Cool, Barlowe. Real cool.
I used to be a Hollywood hotshot, evenwithall the shit I had gotten forBattle for the Cosmos. There was a time I could have had anyone I’d wanted.
Sure, that was twenty years ago, but it had still happened.
And now… I was nearing forty, standing at a crosswalk in Seattle, thinking about how I could see a woman who probably wasn’t interested in me.
Real cool, Barlowe.
I was halfway back to set, sitting at a red light, when I opened Instagram.
Just to check.
Not for her.
Fuck.Who was this girl who had so suddenly wormed her way into my stupid heart? This wasn’t me — not even a little bit. I’dneverbeen the type of man to yearnorto pine…
And yet here I was.Notstalking her on Instagram.
Her newest post was barely thirty minutes old. A stack of trade paperbacks sitting on a romance end cap — one of which Imight’vebeen holding when I panicked and fled. The caption just said:
“In my yearning and pining era. Again.”
I stared at it for a full minute. Maybe two. There was no way.
I shouldn’t.
It’s a bad idea.
A worse idea? Typing out a comment and actually hitting send.
anselbarlowe
Thought I recognized that shelf. Taking book recommendations from mysterious strangers?
I hit ‘comment’ before I could second guess myself and immediately threw my phone into the passenger seat like it might explode.
What the hell was I doing?
That wasn’t chill. That wasn’t casual. That wasblood-in-the-waterbehavior. That was ‘I’m about to download TikTok just to stalk her book recs’ energy.
When I finally picked my phone back up, there was a DM.
From her.
It just said:
