Page 29 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

A group has gathered to watch and Dalisay realizes some aren’t strangers. They cheer Evan on by name, hooting and hollering like it’s a sporting event, and a separate group of teenagers films everything on their phones, but still Evan doesn’t break eye contact with Dalisay as he sings to the song in Tagalog, a language he obviously doesn’t know. When she looks back, she sees his eyes burn with a spark that ignites something in her chest.

Perhaps because it’s raining, or maybe because she’s had a nice day so far, or because the imprints of that sex dream still linger on the outskirts of her thoughts, but her heart actually skips for a moment.

It’s like Evan’s looking only at her, trying to say everything he wants to with his body, with his eyes, and—damn him—her smile grows wider. But she presses her fingers to her lips harder.

When the song ends, Evan is totally soaked. She can see his chest through his shirt and can’t help but stare as he strikes a finishing pose. If it were anyone else, what Evan is doing might be cheesy and a little ridiculous, but her smile falls as she stares at him, her breath trapped in her chest, as she’s overwhelmed by something akin to walking up to the edge ofa cliff. It’s scary but exhilarating and it makes her feel a little crazy to even entertain the idea that she could jump, because right now she feels like she could fly.

Oh, she thinks.Oh no.

She’s into him. Like,reallyinto him.

Desire washes through her like a giant wave, exactly as in her sex dream. The same swirling tension in her gut, the gooey wobble of her knees, the pulse pounding in her ears … She could march right up to him, rip his sopping wet shirt off, and kiss him—

It takes superhuman strength to stay right where she is.

Evan rakes his hand through his wet hair and gives her a boyish grin. “Hey,” he says to her.

All at once, the spell is broken. What was she thinking? Heat creeps up her face. She’s being ridiculous and totally embarrassing herself.Get a grip, girl!she thinks.

“So? Did I pass stage three?” Evan asks, a little breathless.

Dalisay’s eyelids flutter as she remembers to breathe too. She has to restrain herself from looking at his chest, visible through his wet shirt, just like that day in the office. For some reason, she’s shivering. She blames the rain.

“Your Tagalog is terrible,” she says. Then, innuendo unintended, she takes a huge bite of her farmers market pickle.

At work, Dalisay acts as if The Serenade never happened, but Evan finds that he can’t keep his eyes off her, especially during their collaboration meeting. She also seems to sense that he can’t stop looking, because she keeps glancing up from her laptop, and Evan tries his best to focus on his own screenwhile being aware of her every movement. It’s like they’re circling the last seat in a round of musical chairs, waiting for the other one to be caught on their heels. Being alone in the same room with her is making him fidgety.

To her credit, Dalisay hasn’t edited his articles since that one time, but he’s been taking care to read and reread his work, knowing full well that she might be reading it too. Either she’s taken pity on him or his writing’s gotten cleaner. He finds himself wanting to impress her and is paying more attention to his style, something he finds both aggravating and confusing. Why does he care what she thinks so much?

“Good job the other day,” she says, not looking up from her laptop, typing away with lightning speed. It makes him look up from his own computer, shocked that she brought it up.

“The Serenade?”

She raises her eyebrows, then drags her eyes up to meet his. His heart thumps in his throat. “It was adequate enough. Your performance would make any other girl swoon.”

Anyother? He remembers the way her face fell when he finished the song, the way she stared at him, and he thought he was done for. Hope blooms hot in his chest.

“I can’t wait for stage four,” she says and smiles wickedly.

That smile sticks with him like glue.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Evan’s sanctuary, outside of The Basement, is the bookstore. Hooked On Books, a little independent shop just down the street from his condo in Noe Valley, is one of the only bookstores in town that allows dogs. He and Tallulah can often be found wandering the aisles of the cramped shelves together. Evan likes it because it has an extensive collection of case-bound classic fantasy novels that make him feel like a wizard reading from a spell book when he holds them, they’re so heavy; Tallulah mostly likes it because it has free treats. The women running the front desk always coo and fuss over her and give her too many. Today, they can’t get enough of Tallulah’s flower-print coat. It’s Evan’s duty to make sure that Tallulah never gets too cold when the temperature drops below fifty, and he honestly can’t blame them for melting down and taking a bunch of pictures. She’s too damn cute.

It’s the perfect weather to go to the bookstore. Granted, he believes any kind of weather is perfect for shopping for books, but on a gray, chilly day like this, it’s almost a cliché. Besides, Evan’s in search of some comfort. His eyes glaze over as he skims the titles, looking at nothing in particular as his mind is still squarely back in front of the museum after the disaster that was stage three. He really thought he had somethingthere. Her smile, the way the skin around her fingers turned pale from pressing them to her mouth so hard, the gleam in her eye, the snort of her laugh … He knows he looked like a fool, but he really tried. He didn’t have to, but he did. For the sake of the bet, of course.

Rationally, he knows that it doesn’t mean anything whether it changes Dalisay’s opinion about him or not, he just has to complete all five stages to win, but a part of him wants her to look at him like that again.

He still can’t believe Riggs told Kyle, Noah, and Leo—old classmates of theirs—to come catcall him while he was dancing. He hasn’t seen them since college. Obviously, when Riggs found out what Evan had to do, he texted them immediately that night.

“Riggs is just teasing you,” JM said at the gym the next day.

Despite their best efforts, Evan thinks he handled the embarrassment pretty well, even if Dalisay told him his Tagalog was terrible. It’s not in Evan’s nature to quit, especially not after he looked like a complete tool in front of everyone. He doesn’t know when to cut his losses.

Every day this week at work has been like a game all on its own. Work has been so busy for both of them now that they’re working on a bunch of separate pieces from their finished analysis. But simply being near her is practically driving him crazy. The scent of her lavender lotion overwhelms him, the ring of her laugh across the office always makes him perk up, and the look in her eyes when she catches him staring … Evan tries hard not to look at her, but each time he breaks from typing notes on his laptop, his eyes lift to Dalisay, and he must force himself to look away again. Like Perseus fightingMedusa—if he meets her gaze, he might as well be turned to stone.

Being around her makes his heart thump with anticipation.

---