I was busy with meetings for two days straight after the party, with people I’d met at the conference, but I still managed to find a farm in Alaska that shipped out peonies long after they stopped blooming in the lower parts of North America. Gemma had been busy breaking down the film sets and returning rented props all over town, but when she came home to a big package of fresh cut peonies, our late-night call quickly devolved from her squealing with glee to her asking if she should come over, to her hanging up and texting me to say that she temporarily lost her mind and had to go to sleep.

This behavior was so strange for her. I was used to her being grounded and confident and…sane. Still, it didn’t turn me off. If I was making her this nervous, it could only mean good things for when all that nervous tension gets released.

The next day, after back-to-back meetings, I got out of my last one at five-thirty and was surprised to see seven new text notifications from Gemma Kelly when I’d gotten into my car. I was worried that something awful had happened.

What had actually happened was: she’d sent me a picture of her new bra and panties on top of the bed in Chloe and Ethan’s guest room. She wasn’t wearing them. She was just showing me what they looked like laid out, with lots of pretty flower petals surrounding them. It looked like every girly picture I’ve ever seen on Instagram. However, it was a good use of all the flowers I’d sent her.

Twenty minutes later, after getting no response from me, she’d sent another picture of her wearing the lacey black panties, but it was just a shot of the corner of her hip.

Ten minutes after that, she sent a picture of her shoulder and the matching bra strap.

Every ten minutes after that, she ordered me to delete those pictures immediately and forget she’d ever sent them.

It was the kind of textual downward spiral I was used to getting from women a few weeks into dating when things had started to cool down on my end. Gemma was hitting the panic button after not hearing from me for about ninety minutes. If it had been anyone other than her I would have blocked her number and expected to return home to a boiling pot on the stove with a bunny in it. But I was steadfastly encouraged by her lunacy, and would have told her so if she’d just answered my calls.

Now I was really getting worried—that she had been texting while driving and gotten into an accident, or that she’d actually come to believe I was ignoring her and decided she’d never speak to me again. But then when I pulled into my garage, she finally called.

“Hi.”

“Hello.” She sounded sheepish.

“How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know. Just sitting here calmly, being very zen, chillin’…So you’re…Are you home?”

“Yeah, I just got back from my last meeting. Where are you?”

“Just ignore all those crazy texts, okay?”

“Do I have to delete them? Because, I really liked that shot of one square inch of your hip and a tiny portion of your shoulder.”

“This is humiliating.”

“Where are you? I’ll meet you wherever.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

That was when I got out of the car and heard an ambulance siren going by a few blocks away, and distinctly heard the same siren through the phone. I peered out around the edge of my garage door and saw Gemma’s car parked half a block away. The poor little maniac had probably driven herself mad imagining I was at home boning someone else instead of responding to her texts.

“Why not, Gemma?”

“I just…”

I sent her a text that said I want to see you. “I just sent you a text.”

While she was looking down at her phone, I ran over to her car and bent down to look inside the driver side window. When I tapped on the glass, she screamed and dropped her phone. I’ve never seen her look so humiliated in her life. She scrambled to turn on the car engine, all the while I pleaded with her to just come out or let me in, and she sped off.

She didn’t hang up, because the phone was still on the floor of her car, and I didn’t want to hang up because I wanted to listen to make sure she didn’t crash her car. I kept yelling at her to stop and wait for me to come to her, and she kept mumbling about traffic, becoming a nun, and then something about Josh Groban. It was stressful. She wasn’t kidding when she said I’d have to work for it.

Finally, she pulled over and I heard her fumbling with the phone.

“Are you parked?”

“Yes. I’m on Pico.”

“You’re un poquito loco.”

“You think I don’t know that?! I can’t do this. I’ve turned into a crazy person. It’s too much.”

“You don’t have any work scheduled for the next few days, right?”

“No. Why, are you going to have me institutionalized? Did you even hear what I said? I can’t do this.”

“Just calm down.”

“Calm down?! Tell me exactly how many times since you’ve known me have you ever had to tell me to calm down before?”

“Once.”

“What?! Zero!”

“Once. That night after you and Andrew broke up. You jumped around, yelling and swearing and flipping me off.”

“I did not.”

“You did. After you tried to kiss me.”

“I did not try to kiss you.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“Okay, I remember being a tad on edge that night. But this isn’t me—this isn’t us—this doesn’t feel right.”

I laughed. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hide it, and I couldn’t help it.

“You’re laughing at me. That’s great”

“I’m laughing at us. In case you haven’t noticed—I’ve been feeling things I’ve never felt before and acting like a crazy person too.”

“Yeah. You have.”

“I think this is what happens when two people are crazy about each other. Señora Crazypants.”

No comment from Gemma, but I swear I could hear her smiling.

“So, this afternoon I did something really crazy. Are you finally ready to let me talk?”

“Maybe.”

“Good enough.”

“I still don’t—”

I talked over her and launched into it. “Okay, here’s how it’s gonna go, kid. The other thing I was busy doing today, and what I’ve been trying to tell you is: I’m taking my first vacation in five years. I’ve got two tickets to paradise and I’m taking you with me. We’re gonna have the real honeymoon we never had. We’re gonna have fun. We’re gonna relax. We’re gonna spend time together. We’ll see how it goes. If we decide we want to go to town on each other we are gonna fucking do it until we can’t do it anymore, and then we’re gonna eat and sleep and then we’re gonna do it some more, because otherwise, we will have unresolved feelings for each other for the rest of our lives, we will always wonder what it would have been like between us if we just stopped playing it safe and risked everything. So…Pack your swimsuit and a book and clothes and shoes for lots of different kinds of weather and have that sweet ass ready to be picked up at seven tomorrow morning. I’ll email you the information.” Drop the mic. Exit, stage left.

I ended the call before she could protest.

That felt good.

This would keep her busy so she wouldn’t have time to find another apartment to move into, because that was a dumb idea. More importantly, it would put both of us in a new place so we could feel free to be this new version of ourselves with each other. And even more importantly—vacation sex.

If she wasn’t ready and waiting for me the next morning, I would eat my swim shorts.