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“Okay, everyone,” Kathy claps her hands and addresses the room.

“Thanks so much for joining us here this morning. We’re just about to get started with our panel of experts from all over the country.

These people are here to do a live Q&A, so ask any questions you may have about the building’s structure.

We want to assure you, should you put in an offer, everything will be just fine. ”

“ Everything will be just fine. How’s that for some famous last words?” Yas whispers to me with a nudge. “These are all going to be hired actors, I’m calling it now.”

It doesn’t take long before a hand raises in the audience.

“Sir, go ahead,” says Kathy, calling on the man.

“I thought there was going to be four experts. There are only three people here.”

“He’s right,” whispers Yas. “Whoever it was probably got booked for a Crest commercial last minute and had to bail.”

“Thank you for your observation,” Sam chimes in. “Flying in the country’s top experts is no easy feat. It may be beautiful here, but in other parts of the country there are…weather delays.”

“Weather delays?” whispers Yas. “Come on.”

Just when we are doubting the legitimacy of this whole thing, in barges a man breathing heavily as he rushes to find his seat next to the other panelists.

“My sincerest apologies for being late,” he speaks to the room. “All flights out of Chicago were at a complete ground stop this morning. Snowmageddon.”

“He’s too young and too cute to be an expert,” Yas whispers. “This one is an actor for sure.”

I can barely process her latest commentary as my eyes are trying to process that Ollie has just entered the chat.

“No worries,” says Sam. “Go ahead and introduce yourself to the crowd?”

“Greetings, all. I’m Olrik Zetterlind. I am employed by WorldEnge and have my PhD from Harvard. I’m currently the Acting Civil Engineer at The Brockmeier Hotel in Chicago, but I’ve worked in San Diego before and actually am quite familiar with this very building.”

“Thanks so much for being here,” Sam says. “We’re so lucky WorldEnge was able to match us with you at the last minute and that The Brockmeier was generous enough to let us borrow your expertise for a morning.”

“What do you think?” Yas whispers. I don’t have the wherewithal to explain how insanely full-circle this is right now, so I just shrug my shoulders and keep quiet.

“Mr. Zetterlind, seeing the physical space with your own eyes, what is your initial impression of the new building?”

Forty-five minutes go by and between Ollie and the three other experts in the room, the panel has successfully convinced Yas that the investment would be as solid as the structure itself.

I feel the same, except I’m basing my conviction off just the last five minutes, which was when the shock of seeing Ollie in the flesh finally subsided enough for me to be able to minimally concentrate on the actual discussion.

“That concludes our panel this morning. I want to thank our special guests for joining us in person,” says Sam. “They’ll be sticking around after for anyone who wants to ask some additional questions one-on-one.”

“Look, mama,” Yas says. “I’ve got to get to another appointment with one of my vineyard reps.

But this looks good, really good. I wrote down some numbers on this piece of paper and circled the offer I think you should present to Sam and Kathy, barring you have no additional questions that you want to stick around and ask.

If you do, go with the cute Swedish meatball in the gingham button down.

He seems to know what he’s talking about more than the others. ”

“So you don’t think he’s a hired actor after all?” I have to ask.

“He’s most definitely not a hired actor…too nerdy and too much J. Crew.”

Yup, that about sums up the Ollie I know.

“Good. Then I might stay and ask him a few questions,” I casually mention.

“Cool, mama. Call me later.”

Yas departs, as do most of the busy-looking people who attended this morning’s meeting. Ollie is still sitting in his chair. His face is buried in his phone. From the screen, I can tell he’s looking for flights back.

“I would ask you the odds of meeting like this again, but I don’t see your graphing calculator anywhere. So instead, I’ll just go with: why are you here? ”

“ Moonie . Wow. ”

Ollie becomes visibly nervous in a way I’ve not seen before. I’m tempted to call it an ick , but I want to hear him out.

“This is kind of crazy, right?”

“Can you just answer my question?”

He takes a breath and regroups.

“WorldEnge got a high-priority request from these realtors looking for experts on structures built near bodies of water and it got forwarded to me. I took off from TheBrockmeier this week to clear my head and figured an impromptu, all-expense paid trip San Diego in the dead of winter was a welcomed change in scenery.” Ollie pauses and looks me up and down.

“But I guess it wasn’t that big of a change in scenery after all. ”

Sorry for existing?

“Are you actually considering uprooting your life?” he probes.

“I’m considering rooting my life. Did you see what happened with my business in Chicago?”

“Yes and I’ve been trying to check on you. You haven’t been answering my texts.”

He’s not wrong, but he should know full-well why not. I let him sit in silence a little longer.

“So what’s next for you? What do you want?”

“I want to see how this plays out,” I say, wondering if I should clarify that I’m just talking about the impending real estate deal and nothing about us.

“Look, I’m going to come right out and say it: what happened at your sister’s house was a complete failure on my part.”

Definitely should have clarified.

“It’s okay,” I say, as I hold up a hand, the universal symbol for let’s not do this right now.

“No, it’s not. I was just trying to rush to make sense of the unknown, which I suck at.

I got frustrated when I couldn’t piece it— you, me —together fast enough, so I gave up.

It’s not an excuse. It’s just another shitty part of being an engineer.

I swear, sometimes the way my brain works feels like a… ”

“A curse?”

Ollie pauses and stares deeply into my eyes.

“Yes. A curse.”

And with that admission, the room feels surprisingly lighter.

“I have to confess something to you, Moonie Miller.”

“Are you a paid actor?”

“What? No. But I did know you’d be here. See, the morning you left on your flight to San Diego, I showed up at the coach house hoping to talk. You weren’t there, but I ran into your sister and I introduced myself.”

“You met Nora?”

“I met Nora. She’s nice. A little particular, but nice. She invited me into the main house, but wouldn’t let me sit on any of her furniture. Still, we ended up having a long talk.”

“About?”

“You. Me. Her. Your family. Your...flight info.”

“I’m shocked she sold me out to you so quickly.”

“I sort of…poured my heart out to her? Even cried a bit.”

“You CRIED?!”

“I blame Angeline. It was the Reiki. It really worked.”

“Of course it worked, she’s a goddam pro.”

“This is going to be a ‘no-shit’ moment for you, but I realized my obsession with things being set in stone isn’t a realistic way of life.

No matter how much I want concrete, logical answers to life’s greatest mysteries, I can’t always have my way.

Sometimes, things are just…special. That’s you. And, dare I say, us .”

“I know you’re the math and science guy,” I say. “But this a lot to process for me. I have questions.”

“I love questions.”

“How did you get this gig to coincide perfectly with your tour-de-apology? It feels a little too coincidental, even for you.”

“It’s not a coincidence. It’s the universe,” he says definitively. “Sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways and things just line up perfectly.”

That’s it? That’s the explanation? No statistical probability mumbo-jumbo? He really has changed.

“Not trying to cut you off, but how can I help you with whatever it is you want to do with this building? They’re starting to walk around and collect the offers,” Ollie points out.

He’s right. I have to shift gears for the moment and get the business part of my brain going.

“Tell me honestly if it’s going to get washed into the ocean in a year.”

“It’s not. Like I said in the presentation, the anchors they installed are forged from a triple-reinforced steel carbon.”

“Pardon me,” says Sam, inserting himself into our conversation. “I just wanted to check in and see if—”

“Best and final,” I say, handing him the folded piece of paper from Yas. I never even looked at her suggested offer, but I trust her, and I trust the universe.

“Very well,” says Sam. “We’ll be in touch later today.”

“I hate to be so brazen,” says Ollie when it’s just the two of us again. “But you submitting an offer written on a cocktail napkin was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It was on the back of a sales brochure, actually.”

He rolls his eyes. And here I thought he’d appreciate the technicality.

“You’re one resilient chick, you know?”

I should take it as the nice compliment he means it as, but I can’t. Ollie’s cute, but he doesn’t have that kind of a spell over me.

“I know they flew you in to be the pro, but can I offer a little free advice? Don’t mistake resilience for being forced to just go with the flow and figure it out later because that’s the only option you have in a world full of people who are too afraid to reallyunderstand you.”

Ollie takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. Maybe I flew too close to the sun on that one, reminding him I’m just as bitchy as I am witchy —when I need to be.

But then, he does the unthinkable: he reaches for my hands and holds onto my palms, completely unprotected from Exexveei .

“Ollie, no!”

But it’s too late. I suck in all the air from the room and close my eyes. I try with every fiber of my being to ward off the visions but they come in clear like a movie being projected on the big screen.

“It’s okay,” he says back in the calmest of voices.

“I have never been able to stop thinking about you, Moonie . Ever since we accidentally swapped bags in Lincoln Park. I looked through your books, all of them, and I thought about the person who bought them. I admired whoever they belonged to. The ability to think about things from a point of view other than one that’s entirely mathematical and rigid…

is a gift. A gift I don’t have. That is just one of the many reasons I am in complete awe of you.

From here on out, you have my word, I will always try to understand you. ”

I drop his hands and we both open our eyes.

“What happens if you get scared again?”

“Oh, I’ll get scared again, alright. But I’m going to stick around. Promise.”

“I mean that sounds great. But how can I trust that you’re going to follow through?”

“What day is it?” he asks out of nowhere.

“February 14th,” I say, a little annoyed. “Why?”

“I asked you to be my Valentine in your sister’s bathroom and you said yes.

It might be a silly holiday, but I’ve flown clear across the country to make good on that.

On top of that. there’s a Dairy Queen a mile away and I ordered a couple of cookie dough Blizzards on the app to be ready at noon.

Don’t make me eat both by myself. Ready to go? ”

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Ollie reaches for my hand. This time, I grab onto his, feeling sure that the universe has got our backs—or, at the very least, our palms.