Triple Love Score by Brandi Megan Granett Page B

another ten thousand followers overnight, Miranda dug out the paper marked Ambrose Reed from the bottom of her purse.
    Ambrose Reed, she entered into Facebook. Nothing. Then she remembered the Q and up he popped. Zero security settings. She could see his entire page. Each picture linked to some product or person. She recognized almost all of them. The mouse cursor hovered over the link to his email address. Click. Scott Cramer sent me, she typed in the subject line. Then she sat there, staring at the blank message area. She wasn’t sure what she needed to ask. She wanted something in her life to go somewhere. She wanted this new attitude to be about more than having sex with a hot guy. She wanted it to be about how she lived her life. She didn’t want to be afraid to make things happen. She wanted to stop waiting. But none of that would matter to Ambrose Q. Reed anyway. From the look of it, he mainly cared about selling things; perhaps a means to an end? If her work for Blocked Poet was something you could sell, he would be just that. Finally, she copied in the links to her Instagram and Twitter accounts and added the word “interested” with a question mark. Then she closed the email with her cell phone number.
    The weekend stretched before her like a blank canvas. Finding no coffee in the cupboard, Miranda headed into town. She brought a notebook and a plan to sit in the café and write something. She wanted to watch people and eavesdrop. Research, she called it.
    This town suited her in a thousand different ways, but the ability to walk to get a cup of coffee always ranked high on the reasons she listed for other people. But she really liked the anonymity and fluidity of living in a college town—small town living with none of the guilt. You saw the same people, but every year a whole bunch filtered out and a new bunch filtered in. By the time the coffee girl knew your habits well enough to ask you with true concern how your day was, she was off to Boston to work in finance or attend law school in Manhattan or move back into her parents’ basement on Long Island. You could smile and wave, make polite conversation, but the transient nature of things meant you could sit and stare for hours without anyone trying to interrupt you.
    Miranda looked at her watch. Ten-fifty. Not quite time for lunch. Not quite time for breakfast. She stood there staring at the chalkboard behind the counter still advertising last week’s turkey noodle soup. That can’t be good, she thought. Someone brushed up behind her, so she stepped forward, mumbling, “Excuse me,” under her breath.
    “Can I help you?” the counter girl asked.
    Before Miranda could speak, she heard the Irish accented request for two coffees.
    “Ronan,” Miranda whispered. The air left her lungs. Goosebumps pricked up along the back of her neck. “Hi,” she said. But it came out squeaky, two syllables instead of one.
    He pressed his hand against the small of her back. “Hi,” he said into her hair just above her ear. “I was hoping to find you.”
    “You knew where I was.”
    “But I wanted a sign,” he said.
    “A sign?” Miranda was grateful for the conversation. She felt her skin returning to normal. She turned to face him. His smile, for a moment, disarmed her, but she shook it off. “A sign? What about a phone call?”
    “Exactly. You didn’t call me.”
    “Call you?”
    “Yes, Miranda, you could have called me. You have my number the same way I have yours.”
    Her cheeks flushed. The text messaged poems in class. She did have his number. “Oh,” she said.
    “Barring that, I wanted another sign. I wanted the universe to tell me that it wasn’t just one great night, that I wasn’t crazy for thinking about you, all of you, every minute for the last three days.”
    “And this is a sign? Here at the coffee shop?”
    “I am a desperate man. I will take whatever sign I can. And I hate this coffee shop. I never come in here.” He said this part a