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Still, I work up an answering smile, the better to sell the lie that I’m happy conversing with a near stranger and not wishing I were home. Making eye contact with him, however, is a rookie mistake. Eye contact says, Talk to me, baby.

“You’re direct.” Now he’s laughing at me, although I’m sure he’d argue that the correct preposition is with .

I shrug. “And you’re still standing in shark-infested water. I’m not the one who’s risking amputation, Ozzy.”

The skin between his eyebrows crinkles as he wades to shore. I’ve confused him. His eyes roam over my face. “Do we know each other?”

He’s met me, but he’s not the first to forget me.

He is, however, the most recent. Ozzy was trotted around our workplace like a passed app on a platter.

He met the entire staff in the space of an hour, and my muttered greeting was not unique.

There was insufficient time for him to have been struck by my good looks or my wit.

I should help him out here, but I don’t.

“Maybe it will come to you.” Despite our admittedly brief personal history, I’m still a little testy, because this isn’t the first time tonight that I’ve had to remind someone I work with of my name, occupation, and reason for being at tonight’s company event.

The lead on my team forgot my name, and the assistant director of engineering called me Doreene, which correlates to my sulking down here in the shadows like Gollum 2. 0.

Ozzy grins some more. No one has forgotten his name tonight. He’s Mr. Popularity, so fun and likeable that he gets paid for it.

“The silent disco in Ibiza? That night is way too fuzzy.” He winks at me. Maybe he’s got sea water in his eye. He’s certainly got it everywhere else—little drops snake down his amazing chest. “Wait. I know! The escape room I did last week—were you the murderer?”

I know my next line in this weird script. “You have a good night now.”

And…exit stage right.

Except that before I can leave, Ozzy stomps toward me, kicking up dead seaweed and sand. He discards his board in front of me as if he’s a medieval caber-tossing Scotsman.

“Don’t go,” he begs. His accent is disappointingly Scots-free.

His eyes twinkle, and while I do actually possess a (well-hidden) sense of humor and (sometimes) enjoy a good joke as much as the next person, I’m still not convinced that he’s not laughing at me.

He’s the social media star, the famous surfer who competes in exotic locations like Tahiti and Australia.

He gets paid to spend the day at the beach and can do whatever he wants, unlike us mere cubicle-dwelling mortals.

Proving that life isn’t fair, he seems to be a disgustingly, genuinely nice guy—he’s laid-back, full of smiles and far too pretty.

Worse, he’s smart . He has a brain and he uses it.

Surfing is highly mathematical, all dependent on working out Newton’s equations about mass times the acceleration of the surfer, plus he’s built a successful business out of being himself.

Everyone likes Ozzy Wylder. After he won a few big surf competitions, people waved money in his face to say nice things about them and their products.

Currently, he’s whispering sweet nothings about a cardboard-tasting protein bar, which I know because he had boxes of the new chocolate and strawberry flavors sent to us for free.

The day he toured our offices, he took endless photos and signed ball caps for the engineering team.

We shook hands, and I stared into his beautiful, beautiful eyes.

Now he’s standing in front of me, half-undressed, bare feet planted on the sand, smiling away as if we’re friends—if only he could remember my name.

“I’d like to use my lifeline.” He takes a step toward me. I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I stare into his hazel eyes some more. “Can I buy a hint?”

He’s looking over my shoulder and up the beach as he says this, which is why he doesn’t notice the large wave that barrels out of the darkness toward us.

I’m too busy calculating acceleration and distance traveled to remember my words.

In fact, I’m still doing the math when the wall of water slams into his broad, bare back, pushing him up, up, up the beach.

As Ozzy flies into the air, off balance, I learn that I am a decent person after all.

I’m also unusually coordinated because I plant my tote bag up above the waterline with the skill and speed of a professional shot-putter before I reach for Ozzy.

I’m rescuing him, I realize with no small amount of glee, as his forward momentum halts abruptly, the soles of his feet sinking into the wet sand.

He’s going down like the biggest pine in a Christmas tree forest.

I hold my arms out, and the universe tosses him into my embrace.

My Christmas wish list is complete.

As dropping him would be rude and I’ve worked hard on my manners, I cling to him, trying to hold him upright.

I lose to gravity and Newton’s first law of motion.

We crash-land gracelessly—and loudly—on the sand. I sprawl like a beached starfish, my back rubbing against the wet, gritty stretch of broken shells, rocks, and general detritus. Since this is California, not paradise, there’s trash, too. Ocean water sinks through the back of my black dress.

Ozzy braces himself above me on an impressive pair of forearms. He’s laughing, but his lower half is pressed against mine. My brain short-circuits.

I replay the last ten seconds and am strongly tempted to lie here forever. The sun will come up and I’ll still be clutching Ozzy Wylder.

Ozzy is warm. His massive body radiates heat. Despite the skunk-weed stink of wet neoprene, I wriggle closer until our bodies touch from waist to toe. As there’s still too much space between us, I push up on my elbows.

Neoprene funk aside, he smells good. Salty and masculine, apples and mint. I want to bottle him. Drink him up. Devour him down to his bare toes.

He’s impossibly big, his mouth out of reach, an observation that makes me realize I’ve shifted gears from well-intentioned rescuer to something more personal. An unanticipated heat unfurls in me, starting in my cheeks and fleeing south.

He grins down at me. “Is this all right with you?”

Yes. Yes, it is.

I surprise myself sometimes.

We’re two almost-strangers who met briefly for a minute. Lying on top of each other on a beach.

The surf rushes in. My heart beats harder, my cheeks heating up.

I’m not a random kisser, but I’m also not the same person I was ten seconds ago when I didn’t know what it felt like to have Ozzy lying on top of me.

I study him for another second and come to the conclusion that tonight is not going to plan.

And I’m fine with that.

“Yes.” Please accept my enthusiastic consent and continue down this carnal path.

Now would be great. Yes, yes, YESSSSSSSS, my body shouts. My mouth stutters some more affirmative monosyllables. If he wants Shakespearean sonnets, he should have crash-landed on some other girl.

He stares contemplatively down at me. He might be thinking. Or maybe he’s memorizing my face, coming up with his own plan. Because he curves one big, warm hand around my jaw, his thumb stroking over my cheek. He’s looking.

At me .

My insides warm. My reserve melts like an icicle in July, feelings drip-drip-dripping down my throat, from my heart, rushing southward.

“You’re something else.” He memorizes me with his thumb.

“You… What?”

“May I?” His eyes hold mine as his thumb investigates the corner of my mouth. “Kiss you?”

The logical answer is no.

I abandon logic. “Yes.”

Consent confirmed, he closes the distance between us fast, spearing his hands in my hair as he angles my face up.

There’s some rolling around because the ocean’s cold and kissing in the surf is an advanced level in the kissing game, but somehow we end up on the sand where it’s dry, and then his mouth is devouring mine.

I’m on top, riding him like my very own sea cowboy, and he’s sprawled beneath me, warm and hard, his hands keeping my mouth on his and…

Ozzy Wylder is an amazing kisser. It’s better than any book kiss I’ve read, better than anything I’ve ever imagined, let alone participated in.

Because of how he cups my face gently but firmly, as if he’d let me go if that was what I wanted but he really can’t bear to do so.

Because of his hair, tousled on the sand and spread out around his face, clinging to my fingers where I hang on to him.

Because I’m not alone. Because he’s right here with me.

He’s my new favorite flavor, my new best thing. A day past shaving, his jaw is stubble-roughened beneath my fingertips. There’s nothing soft about him now, which is perfectly, amazingly, wonderfully clear from my perch on top of him.

We kiss and kiss, familiarizing ourselves with each other.

Touching, lightly at first, then harder.

His lips part, sharing a breath. I open, take it in, give back.

Our kiss achieves lift off, punching through the atmosphere.

Our tongues tangle. He grunts, a male sound that punches through my shields.

I’m more of a silent kisser but this…this…

“You…” I start to say when his mouth lifts off mine for a nanosecond, but then he’s kissing me again and complete sentences are overrated.

“Yes?” His mouth detours, kissing eastward up my cheek, toward my ear, as if I’m every direction he wants to go.

“More.” I demonstrate by wrapping myself around him. Personal space is overrated.

Ozzy is hard. His wetsuit does nothing to hide his enthusiasm for our kiss. He’s unashamedly openly turned on, and that makes me burn faster for him. My hands head south, burrowing beneath him, exploring his back, mapping the man dimples at the base of his spine, groping his amazing, amazing ass.

“You’re amazing,” he groans against my skin, stealing the words from my mind. Of course, he possesses superhuman powers. “This is—”

“Yeah.” I might whimper. I follow this with more incoherent sounds, seconds and seconds of noises that I will never, ever admit to making, as we kiss and kiss and I realize that I might not want to slow things down or do anything other than stay here all night with Ozzy.

The universe has other plans for us. There’s a horrible noise like a thousand seagulls shrieking or nails on a chalkboard. We’re not alone. An invasion of talking people spills over the sand dunes. Keep kissing, I tell myself. He’s used to having an audience, and you can learn to ignore it.

Sadly, Ozzy jackknifes upright. Since he brings me with him, I decide our new position is acceptable. It lets me wrap my legs around his waist and hold on tight, and he’s…he’s…

Sliding me gently off his lap and onto the sand.

It’s over?

He certainly seems to think so, popping to his feet with an impressive flex of his abs.

When he extends a hand to me, I take it automatically. This is not an outcome I predicted.

“That was AMAZING !” he whoops, pulling me upright. His hand slips out of mine.

Did I think tonight was amazing? Because it’s not. It’s a disaster. An epic, total, colossal, insert-your-adjective-here calamity of a night.

Ozzy grins back at me. Back is the operative word. Because he’s already padding up the beach away from me, waving and calling at the group of people spilling over the dunes toward us. And then it gets worse.

“You coming, babe?” He tosses the endearment over his muscled shoulder.

He doesn’t know my name.

Could I be any more invisible?

The universe accepts my dare. My phone blares the incoming transmission sound effect that plays when my boss texts.

He’s up there on the pier, so I don’t know what’s so urgent that it can’t wait until he sees me.

Perhaps he’s in the crowd wading through the sand and wondering why I’m kissing the company mascot?

I slog over to my bag and fish my phone out.

We’re cutting the team. Sorry, Doreene. You’re terminated, effective immediately.

Ozzy disappears over the sand dune. There are whoops, laughter, and likely a video of our kiss winging its way onto the internet. I can’t help but wonder if he’ll bother to find out my name. It’s time somebody noticed me for me.

It’s time to rewrite my life.