Page 28 of Falling Off Script

I raise an eyebrow. “Did he ask for your number?”

“No,” she says. “But we talked for a few minutes. And then he left.”

I smile again and say, “Let’s talk about what made that moment land.”

Because if this is the start of something, I want her anchored before the tide rolls in.

He was... kind of intense,” Rachel says, like she’s still processing it. “But not in a serial killer way.”

I jot that down in the margin.Intense, not homicidal.Comforting.

“And it felt different,” she adds. “I don’t usually get that kind of attention. Like, not the curated, LinkedIn-adjacent kind. This was... shy? Earnest?” She pauses. “He didn’t give me a pitch. He gave me a pause.”

Okay. Now she’s romanticizing.

But I don’t stop her. I’ve seen too many women preempt disappointment by talking themselves out of possibility. Let her have the moment.

I ask the usual questions—what did he look like, what did he say, how did you feel—and she answers like she’s recounting a dream. The kind that lingers, even if the details blur.

Then she drops it:

“He never asked for my number. But he showed up at the same coffee shop this morning. Just sat two tables over. Didn’t say anything. Just... smiled.”

My coaching face stays on. Inside, my eyebrows lift.

That’s either a green flag in disguise or a beige one fraying at the edges.

“He said hi?” I ask.

“Just nodded. Then left after ten minutes.”

Alright. Not red flag territory. Yet.

No emotional negging. No backhanded vulnerability. No “I usually don’t do this but...”

Just a guy being... weirdly normal.

Either he’s winging it, or he’s the rarest type: a man who means what he says and says very little.

I make a mental note.

We’ll see where it goes.

12. Adrian

Matt texts me while I’m halfway through a protein bar and a podcast about dopamine fasting.

“We talked again. She smiled. I made her laugh.”

And just like that, I’m grinning like a moron in the middle of my kitchen.

He doesn’t know it yet, but this is what progress looks like.

Not the laugh — the courage to tell someone about it.

I shoot back:

“Good. Keep the momentum. Stay calm. Stay curious. You’re not performing. You’re connecting.”

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