It all started with a spilled coffee.
Not in a poetic way, either. Not the slow-motion kind where two people bump into each other, their eyes lock, and the world pauses.
No, this was the chaotic, real-life kind. One second, Ava was balancing two oat milk lattes and her phone between her teeth, and the next—bam. A shoulder slammed into her from the left, and hot coffee exploded across her cream blouse like some sort of caffeine-based Rorschach test.
"Oh my—shit, I am so sorry," said a voice—deep, startled, and definitely male.
Ava blinked, stunned, blinking hot liquid out of her eyelashes. Her phone clattered to the ground.
"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
The man crouched, grabbing her phone before she could. "Here, let me—damn, it's not cracked."
She took the phone, her fingers still trembling slightly from the surprise. "Well, at least there's that."
"I swear I wasn't looking," he said, stepping back, holding his own coffee like it had betrayed him. "I just came out of that meeting and was answering an email and—" He cut himself off, finally really looking at her. "You okay?"
Ava glanced down at her blouse. "Nope."
His eyebrows lifted. "Can I make it up to you? Buy you a new shirt or—uh, dry cleaner recommendation?"
She stared at him. Tall. Disheveled. Designer coat. Sharp jaw. Total stranger. Possibly unhinged. Definitely handsome.
"Are you always this eloquent when you ruin people's days?" she asked.
To his credit, he didn't flinch. Just gave a rueful half-smile. "Only when I'm trying to make a great first impression."
There it was. The line.
Ava sighed. "You know what? Just… walk away. It's fine."
"Can I at least get your name?"
"Nope."
He tilted his head. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
She stepped around him and kept walking, ignoring the growing stickiness down her front and the way her heart was thudding louder than it had any right to. She didn't have time for meet-cute disasters. She had a pitch meeting in twenty minutes and a boss who believed punctuality was a religion.
But still—she looked back.
And there he was, still standing there, watching her go. Looking like someone who didn't quite know what had just happened.
Neither did she.
Ava survived the pitch meeting.
Barely.
Despite arriving two minutes late with a giant coffee stain acting like a visual warning sign, she had somehow managed to charm the room with her deck on "micro-influencer authenticity and the Gen Z consumer." When the room applauded, she plastered on a professional smile, but inside, all she could think about was how she'd forgotten to blink for the last four slides.
Her best friend and coworker, Riley, slid up to her afterward, wide-eyed.
"Girl. You just presented to the exec team looking like a walking Starbucks crime scene."
Ava dropped into her office chair. "Thanks for the support."
Riley grinned. "I'm serious. You crushed it. They loved you. CEO guy even said, 'Smart work.'"
"I think he said 'start work.' Like, as in, get back to it."
"Let me have this moment, Ava. You're a badass. But also—what the hell happened to you this morning?"
Ava rubbed her temples. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Elsewhere in the city, the man responsible for the coffee collision was staring out a window on the thirty-second floor of a glass-walled office building, trying to forget the mess he'd made of his morning.
Julian Reed wasn't used to being flustered.
He was used to closing deals, signing checks, and delivering dry, clever one-liners at dinner parties full of people pretending not to Google him under the table.
But ever since he crashed into that woman—Ava? He hadn't even gotten her name—he couldn't stop thinking about her.
Something about the way she hadn't melted under pressure. The way she hadn't flirted or tried to be cute. She had looked him straight in the eye, dismissed him, and walked away like she had planets to rearrange.
And he… kind of admired that.
"You're distracted," said a voice behind him.
Julian turned. His assistant, Max, held out a stack of folders. "Board meeting materials. Updated with this morning's reports."
"Thanks," Julian said, taking them.
"You usually don't space out after meetings," Max added. "Something happen?"
Julian hesitated. "I… spilled someone's coffee."
Max raised an eyebrow. "You?"
"Yeah."
"Like… you, Julian Reed, CEO of a tech consultancy worth half a billion, spilled someone's coffee?"
"Don't make it a headline."
Max smirked. "Was she cute?"
Julian didn't answer.
Max's grin widened. "I'll take that as a yes."
That night, Ava sat on her fire escape with a blanket, her laptop on her knees and a glass of wine balanced precariously on the ledge beside her.
Her inbox was full. Her nerves were fried. But her mind?
It kept replaying that damn moment—the look on his face, the coffee burning across her shirt, the strange jolt of electricity that had nothing to do with caffeine.
She didn't even like tall, broody, probably-rich guys with chaotic energy and excellent cheekbones.
Still. There'd been something in his eyes. A softness that didn't match the rest of him.
She closed her laptop and pulled her blanket tighter.
It was just one of those weird New York moments, she told herself.
A glitch in the daily grind.
Nothing more.
Probably.