Page 11 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

By nine that Monday morning, Evan is already at his desk eating a ham and cheese croissant, looking over an article before he has to turn it in, when he hears the elevator doors open.

Evan’s eyes flick toward the lobby to see Dalisay walking toward her section of the office. Her hair is braided today, a plait lying delicately over one of her shoulders, and she’s wearing a knitted gray sweater and gold bangles on her wrists. In one hand, she carries a packed lunch from home. He doesn’t mean to stare, so he snaps his attention back to his work; this article about Pompeii isn’t going to finish itself. But out of the corner of his eye, he sees her coming his way. The closer she gets, the faster his heart races. Is she coming to chew him out for staring? She must think he doesn’t know that “no” is a complete sentence.

Evan frantically brushes away any lingering croissant crumbs that might be on his chin right before she gets to his desk. When she arrives, she pauses for a moment, like she’s trying to think of something she’s forgotten, but she doesn’t look angry.

There’s a beat while they both stare at each other.

“Hi?” he says, filling in the silence.

At his desk nearby, Riggs hears Evan’s voice and swivels around in his chair to see Dalisay standing there. She looks at Riggs briefly before turning her attention back to Evan. “Do you have a moment?”

Evan juts out his lower lip, confused but intrigued. “Sure.”

Riggs makes an open-palmed gesture and mouths:What’s up?But Evan only shrugs as he gets up from his desk and follows her into the kitchen. She puts her packed lunch in the fridge, then turns around to face him, the color high on her cheeks. Is she blushing?

“I wasn’t fair to you the other day,” she says, jumping right to it.

Evan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Is this an apology or something? Because I really don’t need one. Message received.”

Dalisay shakes her head and folds her arms over her chest, making her bracelets chime when they clink together. “It’s not that. Listen, where I come from, when people ask each other out, there’s this courtship ritual—”

“The Five Stages, I know.” This time Dalisay’s eyebrows shoot up, so Evan explains, “My friends told me. And believe it or not, yes, Ihavefriends.”

She almost laughs but catches herself and tongues the inside of her cheek. A thrill rushes through him at almost making her break. But she made her views quite clear last week.

Dalisay twists the ring on her finger. “Well, I thought about it some more, so I’m giving you a chance to try again,” she says.

“To ask you out?”

She nods, and Evan lets out a laugh. Now it’s time for some payback. “Ah, I see. Well, five seems like a lot of steps just for one date.”

Dalisay’s eyes flash but a smile curls her lips, making dimples appear on her cheeks.

“Are the Five Stages really that intimidating?”

“No, I just know when to cut my losses.”

Dalisay narrows her eyes slightly, like she’s X-raying him. “And here I figured since you were so bold as to ask me out on my first day, nothing could scare you.”

“I’m not scared.”

She tilts her head. “No?”

“No. I’m not really into pursuing women who aren’t interested in me.”

Dalisay inspects him for a long second. “Well good, because you’re right, I’m still not interested.”

There’s no way Evan is looking away first. He lets his eyes bore into her. “So then why were you giving me another chance?”

Dalisay shifts her weight from one hip to the other, looking right back at him. “I wanted to see if you would try it, maybe to prove that you’re not like other American guys.” Then a spark of something ignites in her eyes that makes Evan’s heart squeeze painfully in his chest. “You know what, Ibetthat you can’t do all Five Stages.”

A buzz of interest hums through his brain. Is that a hint of playfulness in her smile? He can’t help but smile back. “A bet, huh?”

Those are fighting words. Once, in college, his friend Yoon-gi bet him a hundred bucks that he couldn’t eat ten ghost peppers in one sitting. Granted, they’d had too much tequila and not enough sense to realize how dumb of a bet thatwas, but Evan agreed anyway, and used those hundred dollars on a plumber to fix his toilet. It was one of the worst experiences of his life. One may have expected that he’d learned his lesson, but he just smiles and licks his lips. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“Hmmm, yeah.”

“Is this some reverse way of getting me to ask you out?”

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