Page 26 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

Evan tries to smile, but the sweat on his palms is a dead giveaway. What did he get himself into?Tokyo, think of Tokyo, he tells himself. He has to win this.Whole-ass.“Fine! I’ll do it. But I can’t break out into song at work, can I?” Evan asks, surreptitiously wiping his hands on his thighs.

“Hey, it might shake up the editorial meeting,” Riggs says, still smiling.

JM says, “No, Evan’s right. He can’t do it at work. It needs to be someplace personal, someplace meaningful. You can’t skirt by like you did in stage two. I think it wasgenerousthat she let you move on to stage three.”

Evan thinks about it for a moment. The community center is out, for sure. The office is a no-go. What’s another place he can meet her? He remembers their first meeting, talkingabout the mochi-making demonstration. “How about the Asian Art Museum?” he asks.

Pinky claps loudly, once. “Brilliant! I’ll text Dalisay, make it a girls’ day, and bring her next Saturday afternoon.”

“That’s not a lot of time to practice,” says JM.

“Love doesn’t need practice,” says Pinky.

“Who said anything about love?” Evan asks.

Pinky raises a shoulder and smiles.

A moan catches in Dalisay’s throat and her eyes snap open.

Evan …

Her insides undulate, pulsing with the rhythm of her rapid heartbeat, even as the dream fades. She squirms, her body curling with pleasure, still half in dream. But when she stretches her arm out, she finds no one beside her.

Of course. He’s not here.

Dalisay squeezes her eyes shut, blocking out the morning light creeping through the curtains, and still she sees his face. Those hooded eyes, the straight line of his jaw, the way one corner of his mouth lifts when he smiles like he knows something she doesn’t. It’s infuriating in real life, but in that dream … She presses her hands to her eyes and blots out his face, trying to scrub it from her brain.

That’s never happened before. Like most dreams, it made no sense, but it felt so real.

She was on her old street in Manila, in her childhood backyard digging for something, but it wasn’t really her yard because it was a bed, and Evan was there, fully clothed, and he didn’t say anything as he leaned in and kissed her and then theywere naked. She remembers the way his kiss deepened and how his hands searched her until the pressure built and hammered through her. She clung to him as …

Dalisay swallows thickly. They had sex. No, that’s too neat to describe what they did.

They fucked. And it was incredible.

She puts her hands to her sweaty forehead and fists her hair, telling herself to get a grip. It wasn’t real, it was only a dream. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t meananything!

It’s not her fault Evan’s been on her mind. He’s made it hard for her to ignore him, intentionally or not.

That stupid coffee incident.

She’s always prided herself on having a brain, some sensibility, measured control over herself for God’s sake, and here she is, being driven half-insane by the first six-pack she sees.

Forget her comfort zone, Evan’s flung her out of orbit.

This is not how it was supposed to go. Plus, she’s getting worked up over nothing. He’s not interested in her since she said she’s not interested in him, she knows that. He said so when they first made the bet. Abs or no abs, that shouldn’t matter. She will not let him get to her like this, even if her body has other ideas.

She can still feel the ghost of his hands as she wrenches herself into a sitting position. Behind her closed door, she can distantly hear the clatter of breakfast being made in the kitchen. It’s Saturday; that means it’stapsilogfor breakfast, and she can already smell the garlic fried rice. That snaps her back to reality.

She checks her phone. There’s a missed text from Pinky last night, something about a girls’ day, but Dalisay is toowound up to pay attention to the details. She can still feel Evan’s breath on her neck, and she stands up so abruptly that, if he were actually here, she would have smashed his nose.

In the shower, she lets the hot water pour over her face and forces herself to take deep, calming breaths, but the thought of him follows her. What would Evan’s hands feel like for real? The stubble on his cheeks? The softness of his lips?

“It doesn’t mean anything!”

She must have said that out loud, though, because Nicole bangs on the door. “What?”

“Nothing!” Dalisay calls back, sputtering on shower water.

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