The Exception to the Rule (The Improbable Meet-Cute, #1)

I pop another into my mouth. “Is that right?”

She nods. “But admitting that I don’t know where he lives? I hear it, it sounds crazy.” She leans in, lowering her voice. “Do you ever have a feeling about someone? Like they’re your safe space and, I don’t know, like someday it could be more?”

I swallow, nodding. “Yeah. Of course.”

I’m looking right at her.

“I have a feeling about him.”

But the thing is, when she looks up at me and our eyes lock, I’m pretty sure she has a feeling about me, too.





Chapter Twenty-One


FEBRUARY 16, 2024

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: February 16, 2024

Subject: Emerging from the hungover study cave Hi hi,

I swear it didn’t take me this long to get sober, eeek. I had a test this morning and knew if I wrote back to you yesterday I would obsess about it and put way, way too much time into it.

Thank you for putting the brakes on my tipsy request to share. It was sudden and you were right to wait.

But at the same time, I think I am ready to start to know more about you. Full disclosure: I had lunch with my TA today, you know the one from the party, and he said he went to Madison for undergrad, and I was like, Hey, I know someone who went there! And when he asked me about you, I realized I didn’t have any of the kind of information people usually have, like name, location, favorite Golden Girl.

So, I’ll start, but I’ll start small: I went to Boston College. My brother’s name is Everett. My favorite Golden Girl is Rose.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: February 16, 2024

Subject: Re: Emerging from the hungover study cave If the “full disclosure” means that you’re feeling weird about having lunch with your TA—please don’t. Until you’re able to be right in front of me, connecting my face to my initial, don’t feel guilty for spending time with other people and wondering about them, even romantically.

You already know I went to UW Madison, so I’ll tell you something new: I am six foot three. My favorite aunt’s name is Betty, and she’s a lot like Dorothy on the Golden Girls, so I guess that’s my favorite GG. My favorite fruit is mango.





Chapter Twenty-Two


FEBRUARY 17, 2024

Terra

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: February 17, 2024

Subject: Re: Emerging from the hungover study cave Good morning!

This is crazy! My middle name is Mango! No it isn’t, I’m just kidding. It’s Bernice, and I used to hate it, but I love it now. It was my grandmother’s name. My favorite fruits are the tiny pixie tangerines you can only get for like a month every winter. No one ever spells my first name right. And I’m five foot ten.

Oh wait, that’s four things.

Thank you for what you said about having lunch with my TA. I really, really want to meet up with you. I won’t deny that I’m attracted to Callum, but I barely know him and, I mean, you’re the only person I actually email. If that’s not commitment idk what is.

Also also, I can’t imagine Callum reciprocates, so I don’t think there’s any danger of us seeing each other romantically. I type this knowing how hard it would be for me to read the same thing from you. But I don’t want to hide any more than we already do.

xo

T.

I hit Send and scramble out of bed, throw on clothes, and hop on my bike, pedaling my ass off to get to Williams Café in time for a coffee before I have to be in the lab for an important experimental timepoint. My fussy primary cells do not care if it’s Saturday.

I am a mess. I had a weird dream about going to class with Callum and wearing a shirt I thought was cute, and everyone insisted they liked it, but I realized it was just pants I’d cut armholes out of somehow and actually looked hideous. C was in the class, but he and Callum got in a fight and went outside to settle it with a horse race, and I woke up before I found out who won.

Which is why I nearly startle out of my skin when Callum steps up beside me as I’m getting back on my bike.

“Hey,” he says.

I barely manage to not drop my coffee and, with a mittened hand, coax it into the cup holder on my bike handlebars. It’s freezing out, and he’s wearing a black beanie that makes his hazel eyes glimmer. He has the longest lashes I’ve ever seen on a guy.

Just being this close to him makes my blood hum. C’s permission to feel whatever it is I’m going to feel streaks through me, chased by a shadow of disloyal guilt, and I realize when Callum smiles that I’ve been staring at his lips.

“Hi,” I say, pushing my hat up a little.

“I’m glad I ran into you this morning,” he says.

“You are?”

It’s just starting to snow, and snowflakes land on his flushed cheeks, immediately melting. In his puffy black jacket, he looks warm. And he’s so tall.

The tips of my fingers tingle as the words I am six foot three echo through my thoughts.

Callum nods. “I was just thinking about you,” he says.

“You were?” I am nothing but idiotic questions.

“There’s something about you, Terra Solace . . .”

Suspicion rises in me when he says my full name, a glimmer I can’t quite put my finger on, and when I do, I immediately squash it down. I’m not a dummy. Callum Sundberg could absolutely be c.sun, and the way Callum seems to have come out of nowhere with this flirtatious interest in me is hard to explain. Yes, I am aware that a handful of men have found me attractive enough to sleep with, but still. This is Callum. Most everyone in our department would make deals with Hades to bang him.

Also, the possibility that my pen pal C is actually Callum Sundberg is less likely than the earth being hit by a comet in the next half hour. More importantly, I don’t want to imagine that, to hope for it, because I’m physically attracted to Callum and emotionally attracted to C, and I don’t want to be disappointed in what I see the first time I meet C in person. I will be thrilled to meet him, whoever he is.

“Something about me, huh?” I say. “You barely know me.”

“Maybe I’m intrigued by a woman who goes off to hang out alone at a boring party. Maybe I want to know more about a woman who hides when she’s tipsy.”

“You like a hermit who can’t handle her alcohol?”

I like the way he tilts his face back when he laughs. “Okay. Maybe I’m curious about a woman who played lacrosse at the number-two-ranked school in the country and said that her team was ‘all right,’” he says. “Maybe I’m curious about a student who was the only one in the class to get every question right on a notoriously difficult neuroanatomy exam.”

My eyes go wide. I aced it? “Shut up.”

“Dr. Ashkar cc’d me on the grade distribution. I’m happy I get to give you the good news in person.”

“That is”—I cup a hand over my forehead—“that is really hard to believe, actually, because I was such a distracted mess yesterday.”

He studies me for a mysterious beat. “Well, it didn’t show.”

I make fists, hold them up at shoulder height, and do a little dance. I am so fucking elated.

Callum watches me with sparkling, amused eyes. “Can I take you out to dinner?”

His question comes out of absolutely nowhere, and my fists drop like stones. “What?”

“Dinner.” He cutely mimes spooning food into his mouth. “Sun goes down. People eat.”

“Like a date?”

“I hope so? I intend to flirt.”

“When?”

He smiles and gives a happy shrug. “Whenever you want.”

It feels genuinely impossible that this is happening. Callum Sundberg is asking me out on a date? After two and a half conversations and zero makeup or wardrobe efforts on my part? I look behind me.

When I turn back, he’s fighting a laugh. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Double-checking there wasn’t someone behind me.”

He releases the laugh, tilting my face up with a finger under my chin. “I’m asking you.”

Something crystallizes when our eyes meet, and I realize this is actually happening. “I’m in.”

His reply is instant. “Tonight?”