He put up his palm and made a “V” of his forefinger and middle finger.

“I think that’s a peace sign?” she said.

Silas split his fingers right down the middle, two on each side. “This?”

“Vulcan salute.”

“What?”

“From Star Trek.”

“How about this?” He put up his middle finger only.

“I’m pretty sure you’re telling me to fuck off right now.”

Silas retracted that one quick. “This is not working.”

Ivie smiled, but then got serious. “On that note…I don’t how to do this.”

“If it’s instructing me on human hand signals, you’re doing a bang-up job of things.”

Taking a deep breath, she stared out over the night sky. The heavens were clear, except she couldn’t see the stars because of the ambient light not just of the restaurant, but from the glow of the city off in the distance.

When she exhaled, her breath came out into the cold as a burst of white. “I know I’m not supposed to say this because it’s too soon, but I don’t like to waste time, and if I don’t know where I stand, I’m going to find it out. Bottom line, I’m not insecure, I’m impatient and I like clarity—and you might as well know that up front.” She glanced back at him. “So what are we doing here? I’m happy to be friends, acquaintances, or try another date. The outcome really doesn’t matter to me, I just need to know what the landscape looks like.”

Silas’s eyes traced over her features, and he was so serious, so very, very serious. “I don’t have time to waste. And instead of finding out what things look like, I want to know what they feel like.”

With that, he took her face in his palms, his thumbs brushing her cheeks…and her heart thundered in her chest as he slowly, inexorably lowered his head.

Just before their lips touched, he whispered, “Is this okay?”

She didn’t trust her voice so she put her hands on his upper arms and nodded.

His lips were gentle and soft, the kiss light enough so it was little more than a brief meeting between them, yet the contact was so powerful she felt the sensation throughout her entire body. And, oh, the contrast. The night air was frigid, his mouth against hers was warm, every inch of her was hot.

“Alive,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I feel so alive. Don’t stop.”

His arms went around her and then she was up against his body, the differences in their heights and builds not lock and key, but a shattering jolt that was all pleasure and anticipation. Now the kiss was deeper, a fusing of their lips, and she gave into the impulse to move her hands up to those shoulders of his. Even through his suit jacket, she could feel the shifting muscles, and she had a feeling he was playing about the whole not-in-the-gym thing.

It made her wonder what he looked like without his clothes.

What he felt like.

When they pulled back, there was a lot of staring. A deep breath on both sides. A whole lot of do-we-dare.

“I’m going to just dematerialize,” she heard herself say.

And as it was kind of hard to kick your own conscience in the ass, she then cleared her throat and smiled. “So thank you. For tonight.”

“I’ll call you?”

“Sure.”

On that note, she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. Easier said than done, but after a moment or two, she managed to avoid the embarrassment of having to call an Uber and ghosted out. When she re-formed a block away from her apartment building, she was in a daze, clips from John Hughes movies going through her head, particularly from Pretty in Pink.

Rich boy, poor girl, true love.

Except, of course, he wasn’t a boy, she wasn’t poor, and neither of them was human. But still.

Oh, and this wasn’t true love.

Letting herself into the building, she headed to her apartment and dead-bolted the door closed behind her. Leaning back against the panels, she looked around at her flea market furniture and her one splurge, which was an area rug from Pottery Barn. At the moment, she was saving for a nice head- and footboard to her queen-sized mattress.

Everything appeared diminished compared to how it had seemed before she had left. Then again, she could have lived in a palatial estate, and she would have felt the same way. It wasn’t about that dinner.

It was the kiss.

For that brief moment, the volume of her world had been cranked up to Metallica levels, and she had loved the booming bass, and the spinning and twirling, and the sense that her heart had taken flight and not left her body, but taken her physical form along with it.

Night-to-night life, the plodding along at work, the paying of bills, the moderating of how much she spent and ate and drank, was an even metronome that, over time, would create a very nice existence for herself. But there was a black-and-white, monotoned quality to it all.

When she had been kissing Silas, her movie had been in color and with full sound, IMAX all the way.

And it was hard to transition back from that.

Chapter Three

“Of course he’s going to call you.”

As Rubes threw that one out across the clinic break room, Ivie nodded, but didn’t say anything. It had been three nights since The Date, as she had come to think of it, and she hadn’t heard from Silas.

For the first night, she had been relieved he hadn’t reached out. For one, it preserved the perfection of the time they’d had, that kiss, that floating feeling she’d had afterward. Even though she didn’t like to admit it, she had put that moment when she’d stood against him in a mental snow globe, her recalls of the memory the shake that brought the golden sparkles down all over her once again.

For another, she hadn’t wanted him to be desperate to see her. Everything was so charged between them, from their chance meeting to the date to the kiss, that a quiet, reasonable part of her brain was sending out warning signals to pump the brakes, slow down, stay tight. The fact that he hadn’t rushed to contact her suggested he might be feeling the same way.

Plus, she had to work anyway, her four-night-on, two-night-off schedule forcing her to focus on other things.

“I am so proud of you, Ivie.” Rubes took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich. “You stuck your head out, and you took a chance, and look how it all went well.”

“I think the jury is still out, cuz.” Ivie split open her single-serve of Lay’s. “And that would be true even if he had called me.”

The second night after the date? Her memories had still been sharp, but the physical sensations were starting to fade, each thought of Silas or recollection more an echo of the passion than the sizzle itself. Optimism had still been high, though, and she had expected, at any moment, for him to hit her up. It had made her breaks when she could check her phone exciting, a spring on her step taking her into this break room like she was about to win a lottery.

Now, with night three, doubts were starting to creep in, even as she pointed out to herself that that was ridiculous. People got busy, even those who were, by their own admission, rich for a living. Besides, like he owed her anything?

Ivie looked at the clock on the far side of the tiled room. Two more hours and her shift was over, another eight-to-four in her rearview mirror. And then she got to go back to her apartment and do laundry. Yay.

“So are you going to move over to VIP?” she asked before popping another potato chip in her mouth. “I mean, more money is always good.”

Rubes tilted her head to the side. “Are you changing the subject?”

“Nope.” She crammed her fingers into the tiny bag. “I’m just going to miss you, is all.”

“Aww. I’m going to miss you, too.”

“So is that a yes?”

Rubes nodded. “I told Havers I would start next week. The raise is good, the shift hours are longer, though. I’ll be three nights and days here, four off.”

“You’re sleeping here?”

“In the bunkhouse. But I’ll be making an extra five hundred a week.”

Ivie recoiled. “Are you kidding me? I didn’t know it was that much.”

“The rich can pay for sure.”