Not gracefully. Not in a rom-com slow-motion way where time stops and the protagonist catches you. No—she tripped hard, her elbow catching the edge of a folding table, sending a cascade of socks—his socks—flying into the air like startled gray birds. She landed on her backside with a thud, surrounded by a puddle of fabric softener that had leaked from a bottle in her pile.
He took a sip of the coffee. It was terrible. He didn’t tell her that. Meet Cute
Elliot felt something shift in his chest. It was small, like a drawer clicking shut—or open. He wasn’t sure which. Not gracefully
“Your socks were clearly suicidal. Look at them—gray, sad, no stripes, no personality. They were begging for a dramatic exit.” She began gathering the fallen socks, shoving them into a pile like she was building a nest. “I’m Luna. I’m sorry I murdered your laundry. Also, you have a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe.” She landed on her backside with a thud,
Luna looked up at him, and her eyes—hazel, with flecks of gold that caught the fluorescent light like tiny suns—widened. Then she grinned. It was a crooked, unapologetic grin, the kind that said she’d been getting away with things her entire life.
Elliot blinked. His first instinct was to check if his laptop was okay. His second, more alarming instinct was to laugh. He suppressed it, which came out as a strange snort.
For the next forty-five minutes, they folded laundry together. Or rather, Luna folded his laundry while telling him about her disastrous production of Peter Pan where the flying rig broke and Tinker Bell fell into the orchestra pit. Elliot found himself telling her about his obsession with tracking pigeon migration patterns in the city—a hobby he had never admitted to anyone, because it was deeply weird.