Page 38 of Accidentally Amy

I was such a loser.

There I sat, at a table in our Scooter’s, essentially begging him to be my friend.

But I knew I’d regret not throwing it out there.

Because the truth of it was, I didn’t know how to make friends. Maybe I had at one time, but I had no idea how to do it as an adult. Like, I felt I’d missed a class on this or something.

In high school, I had the friends that I’d always had, since kindergarten. In college, I immediately started hanging out with my dorm-assigned roommate, who’d been my bestie for all four years.

But when I moved to Omaha after graduation to take a grown-up job, things were different. I had a lot of nice coworkers, but I’d never put myself out there to make those relationships anything other than workplace acquaintances. Like, how did that work?Hi, can I play with you guys?The idea of doing that made me too anxious, so I’d just said goodbye to those people every day at five and then I’d gone home.

Rinse and repeat until now.

Thank God my cousins were fun. It was pathetic that at the moment they were my only friends, but that was, in fact, my reality.

Which was probably why I was so desperate to hang on to my new friend. I’d connected with Blake in such a natural way,especially when we were texting. I was somehow totally myself with him, and I didn’t want to lose that.

His eyes were on my face, intense enough to make me nervous, and then he said, “Keep talking, Iz.”

Iz.Oh, God.

I cleared my throat and said, “I come to this Scooter’s every morning at seven. So if you ever want a coffee on a weekday and happen to be here, and we run into each other, it’s totally acceptable to sit down and have a coffee together, right?”

His mouth twitched, like he wanted to smile, but he gave a nod instead.

“Now,” I said, encouraged that he was staying with me. “I go to the Bookworm after work every Tuesday to look at new releases. If I ran into you there and we happened to chat while book shopping, well, that would be absolutely aboveboard.”

“Agreed.”

Agreed!

I sounded calm and casual when I explained, “This way, nothing is a lie. If we see a coworker, we actuallydidrun into each other, so it’s completely legit.”

Blake did grin then and said, “They have an incredible happy hour at Upstream that I often hit after work on Thursdays. I usually belly up to the bar and have a pizza for dinner, and if you happened to show up on the stool beside me, also eating, that would just be a wild coincidence.”

I couldn’t be cool—I beamed at him, my gorgeous new friend. “I love Upstream!”

He grinned back in a way that made me need supplemental oxygen. “Same.”

We spent the next ten minutes sharing our habitual schedules, tossing out a handful of occasions where we might possibly run into each other. I added them all to the spreadsheet and emailed a copy of it to Blake (his personal email, of course), just in case he wished to reference it at a later date.

“So we should probably cover texting next,” I said, taking a drink of my latte.

“You have texting rules. Of course,” he said, and his small smile reminded me of Edward inPretty Womanwhen he was negotiating Vivian’s payment.

“Well, I think that if we both agree to never discuss work, never discuss people from work, and never text during working hours, then texting is probably a feasible form of communication.”

“And phone calls?” he asked, his dark eyes twinkling with amusement.

Have I mentioned how gorgeous this man is? Like, I want to take Polaroids of his every expression and catalog them with perfect adjectives.

Yes, I am aware I sound like a creeper.

Totally Blake’s fault.

I was happyhewas the one to ask about calls, because I really liked talking to him on the phone. Which was weird because I was usually an avid hater of phone talking. “I think the same rules would apply, don’t you?”

“Same rules,” he agreed, nodding yet again.

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