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Less than an hour after setting foot in her new house, Rose stormed out of it, then took off running. She didn’t know the terrain of Meadow Falls yet and had only the road to guide her. She ran as the tangerine sunset bruised into the purple-blue night, until there were no more houses and hardly any cars; only a gas station store, buzzing bright and electric as a bug zapper. And like a doomed fly, she went straight to it.

Now Rose stood in the freezing fog of the store fridge, hoping to cool her body—and her emotions—down, but the rainbow rows of soft drinks only seemed to mock her with their neon brightness. She breathed in the cold, let it chill the sweat that had gathered in the hollow between her collarbones and the dip in the Cupid’s bow of her upper lip. She glanced at her phone. Three missed calls from her dad. She’d need to use Google Maps to find her way back. Also an address, which she had forgotten and was in no rush to remember.

Behind her, the bell above the store entrance chimed.

Rose couldn’t have known, on what was shaping up to be one of the worst nights of her existence, that she was about to meet the love of her life. Here he is , the bell seemed to say. Just in time. And when she turned, the sight of him made her breath hitch.

A boy about her age. Rose stared at him too long, the way she often did with a painting in a museum: curious, absorbed. Without trying to, she made eye contact. Maybe it was a trick of her mind, but she could’ve sworn he looked happy to see her. Relieved, even. Coming from New York, Rose didn’t make eye contact with strangers, much less strangers who smiled in return.

It was highly disconcerting. She ducked into the nearest aisle, behind a wall of chips. Then she peeked around it. The bell chimed again, and a new boy walked into the store. Also her age. Yet he drifted through her field of vision in a blur that hardly registered. Rose went back to focusing on the first boy.

Was it the color of his shirt that drew her? Not red, exactly. Quinacridone Coral, if she had to narrow it down. Like a huge traffic sign telling her to stop, yield, pay attention. His back was to her as he lingered by the slushie machine, plying a cup out of its holder. Rose made a split-second decision that would help her make sense of the weirdly discombobulating moment she found herself in. If he picks cherry, he likes me.

The boy was ostensibly serving himself a drink, but with the rigid posture of someone who knew he was being watched. His hand hovered over the handle that controlled the blue flavor. He glanced over his shoulder, right at Rose. Maybe she froze, or maybe she shook her head slightly, like a pitcher on the mound, signaling to the catcher. The boy pulled the other handle, and frothy red liquid spurted into his waiting cup. Rose bit her bottom lip in a futile attempt to curb her grin. From here, she got a good view of his profile. Was it just his looks that hooked her? He was hot. Aesthetically and literally. Beads of sweat misted the top of his smooth forehead, cheeks ruddy like he’d rushed here. The same cheek Rose was staring at now rounded with a smile. Rose turned quickly, sweeping past a row of Pringles cans.

At the other end of the aisle, she watched him cross to the wall of fridges and heave a bag of ice over his shoulder. Rose really didn’t know why she was staring and figured it was time to get out of there. But when she emerged from the aisle and turned, she collided with the boy, chest-to-chest, his cup squished and spilling between them.

Forty-four ounces of cherry-flavored slush oozed down both of their fronts. The mess blended perfectly with the boy’s shirt, but it splattered over Rose’s clothes like someone had plunged a knife into her heart. And as she stood dripping, cold, jaw hanging open, the worst night of Rose’s life—which had only taken a small break to catch its breath—now crossed triumphantly over the finish line.

“Oh no,” the boy said. “Oh no, I’m so sorry.” He put the bag of ice down next to the toppled cup and reached a long arm to the top shelf. He grabbed a paper towel roll and ripped the plastic wrapping open. The shock of the crash and of the ice down her body immobilized Rose, and all she could do was pinch the hem of her shirt and hold it out so the wetness didn’t stick to her. She noticed the guy behind the register. Steve—according to his name tag—wore the same slack-jawed expression that she did.

The boy kneeled, wiping the floor, his head of light brown hair veering awkwardly close to Rose’s thighs. When he was done with the floor, he stood. “I can’t believe I just did that,” he muttered. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, look Rose in the eye, and busied himself by tearing another yard from the roll. But even though he extended the crumpled cloud of paper towel to Rose’s shirt, he couldn’t seem to actually touch it, dabbing nothing but the air around her. “I, uh—”

Rose took the wad of paper towel from him and patted her own self down. “It’s not your fault. I bumped into you.”

At this, he finally did look her in the eye. Only for Steve to choose that moment to speak, breaking their eye contact again. “Uh, you’re gonna have to pay for that?” he said from behind the counter. “The slushie, the ice, the paper towel roll—the mess?”

The boy grabbed the ice back up again, sidestepped Rose, and headed for the counter. “You want anything?” he called over his shoulder. “Let me get you something. I’m really sorry.”

In her haste, Rose had run out of the house without grabbing her wallet first. She wasn’t particularly hungry, and yet, she wanted something from this boy. Anything would do. She followed him to the front and plucked a candy bar from beside the cash register.

He fished his wallet from his jeans and planted a crisp hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “For your trouble,” he told Steve. The bill was big enough to wipe the frown off the guy’s face and the red mess off the floor. “Hey, let me make it up to you,” he told Rose.

She kept wiping at her shirt, though the red had seeped into the cotton’s weave by now. Not knowing what to say, Rose simply nodded.