I WAS DOWNSTAIRS IN THE KITCHEN, laying the pink chops down into sizzling butter, when there was a hard rap on the window of the back door. The butterflies swirling in my stomach surged, changed formation. I looked at the clock on the microwave.

Eleven on the dot.

Here it was, here he was, I thought, dabbing the sweat from my forehead with a kitchen towel as I crossed to the door. It was actually happening.

Right here.

Right now.

I took a deep, deep breath and slipped open the dead bolt.

"Hi, Lauren."

"Hi back at you. You look nice. Great."

"For somebody who's soaking wet, right?"

The rain that swung in with the door spattered a constellation of dark, wet stars on the kitchen's pale stone tile.

And then he stepped in. Quite the entrance, I might add.

His tapered, six-two frame seemed to fill the room. In the candlelight, I could see that his dark hair was freshly cut, the color of wet white sand where it was shaved close to his skull.

Wind roared in, and the scent of him, cologne and rain and leather from the motorcycle jacket he wore, hit me head-on.

Oprah has probably devoted a couple of hours to how you get to this point, I thought as I struggled for something to say. Harmless workplace flirting that leads to infatuation that leads to a furtive friendship that leads to… I still wasn't sure what to call this.

I knew some married female co-workers who took part in harmless flirting, but I'd always put up a wall when I was dealing with men professionally, especially the handsome, funny ones like Scott. It just didn't feel right, going there.

But Scott had gotten over my wall somehow, gotten inside my defenses. Maybe it was the fact that, for all his size and good looks, there was an innocence about him. Or maybe it was how he was almost formal with me. Old-fashioned in the best sense of the word. Or how his presence in my life seemed to have increased in perfect ratio to Paul's pulling away.

And as if that weren't enough, there was something nicely mysterious about him, something subtle under the surface that pulled at me.

"So, you're actually here," Scott said, breaking the silence between us. "Wait, I almost forgot."

For the first time, I noticed the wet, tattered brown bag he was holding. He blushed as he took a little stuffed animal out of it. It was a Beanie Baby, one I'd never seen before, a little tan puppy. I looked at the name tag, "Badges." Then I looked at the birthdate, December 1.

I put a hand to my open mouth.

My birthday.

I'd been looking for one with my birthday only forever. Scott knew, and he had found it.

I looked at the puppy. Then I remembered how Paul had forgotten the charm for my bracelet. That's when I felt something break like thin ice inside me, and I was crying.

"Lauren, no," Scott said, panicked. He raised his arms to embrace me, then stopped as if he'd run into some invisible wall.

"Listen," he said. "The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you. This is all too much. I can see that now. I… I'll just go, okay? I'll see you tomorrow as usual. I'll bring the Box O' Joe, you bring the cinnamon Munchkins, and this never happened. Okay?"

Then my back door opened again, and Scott was gone into the night.

I LISTENED TO THE MEAT SIZZLE rather melodramatically as I wiped my eyes with a dish towel. What was I doing? Was I crazy? Scott was right. What the hell had I been thinking? I stood there dumbly staring at the puddles he'd made on the floor seconds ago.

Then, the next thing I knew, I turned off the stove, grabbed my handbag, threw the door open, and ran outside in the dark.

He was getting on his motorcycle half a block away when I caught up to him, completely drenched now myself.

A light went on in a neighbor's house. Mrs. Waters was just about the biggest gossip on our block. What would she say if she saw me? Scott noticed me looking up at the window nervously.

"Here," he said, handing me his helmet. "Don't overthink this, Lauren. Just do it. Get on."

I put the helmet on and took another, even stronger hit of Scott's scent as he started up his red Ducati racing bike. It sounded like something detonating.

"Come on," he yelled, offering his hand. "Quick!"

"Isn't it dangerous to ride in the rain?" I asked.

"Outrageously," he said, grinning irresistibly as he gunned the throttle.

I put out my hand, and the next second, I was climbing on behind Scott and wrapping my arms around his sides.

I had just enough time to tuck my head between his shoulder blades before we screamed up the hill of my cul-de-sac like a bottle rocket.

IT'S POSSIBLE I LEFT CLAW MARKS on Scott's leather jacket while I hung on for dear life. My stomach bottomed out whenever we hit a dip and then seemed to bang off the roof of my skull when we topped rises. The rain-slicked world appeared to melt away as we hurtled past.

I cursed myself for not drawing up a living will when the bike's back tire fishtailed onto the entrance to the Saw Mill River Parkway. Then Scott let the bike run loose!

The next time I breathed and looked up, we were pulling off the Henry Hudson Parkway into Riverdale, an upscale neighborhood in the Bronx.

We came roaring down a hill and only slowed as we turned onto a street lined with dark, gated mansions. In a flash of lightning I saw the wide silver chasm of the Hudson close below us, the stark, shattered face of the New Jersey Palisades directly across the water.

"C'mon, Lauren," Scott said, suddenly stopping the bike and hopping off. He waved for me to follow him as he started walking up the cobblestone driveway of a colonial about the size of a Home Depot.

"You live here?" I called to him after I removed his helmet.

"Kinda," Scott called back, waving some more.

"Kinda?"

I followed him into a free-standing, three-car garage that was almost as big as my house. Inside, there was a Porsche, a Bentley, and a Ferrari the same color as Scott's bike.

"Those aren't yours!" I said in shock.

"I wish," Scott said, climbing a set of stairs. "They're more like my roommates. I'm just house-sitting for this friend of mine. C'mon, I'll get us towels."

I walked behind him into a small, loft-style apartment above the garage. He popped open a couple of Budweisers and put on a Motown CD before he went into the bathroom. In the massive bay window, the storm-racked Hudson was framed like a billboard.

After Scott tossed me a fluffy towel that smelled of lemon, he stood on the bathroom threshold, just staring at me. Like I was beautiful or something.

It was the same way I'd caught him looking at me down a corridor or in the parking lot or stairwell at work.

A kind of pleading in his almond-shaped brown eyes.

For the first time I allowed myself to stare back. I took a sip of cold beer.

Then my beer dropped from my hand as I suddenly realized why I was so attracted to him. It was crazy, really. When I was in high school, I met a boy on summer vacation at Spring Lake on the Jersey Shore. He was in charge of the bike-rental place by the boardwalk, and let me tell you, Lance Armstrong didn't put in as much roadwork that summer as I did.

Then one Friday night, the most momentous Friday in my life up to that point, he invited me to my first beach party.

I guess every life has at least one golden moment, right? A period of time when the glory of the world and your place in it briefly and magically align.

That beach party was mine.

There I was. My first honest-to-God beer buzz, the ocean crashing in the background, the evening sky the color of turquoise, as this perfect, older boy reached out across the sand and without a word took my hand in his. I was sixteen years old. My braces were off, my burn had finally started to turn to brown, and I had a sense of infinite possibilities and a stomach you could bounce a quarter off.