It started at a concert.  All great love stories seem to involve music somehow, so why should this one be any different?  She didn’t even mean to fall in love with him, hell, she didn’t know who he was before the show.  Or at the show.  It wasn’t until after the concert was over, the bar cleaned up, equipment backed up and the whole place locked up that she even met him.  Or maybe it was somewhere in the middle of all of that, she would never be exactly sure.  One too many beers had left her fuzzy at this after party in some huge house in the hills.  Isn’t that were all house parties were?  She didn’t know anyone there, the friend that had stuffed her into this bright red dress and mile high heels had long since taken off, leaving her to wander alone.  There was a boy, she couldn’t even call him a man, just a boy who was following her around and she kept trying to brush him off, a hint of an accent that wasn’t quite Californian but trying to be, surfacing as she smiled and tried to lose him in the crowds of people.  It was like she had a magnet hidden somewhere on her person and he was the opposite polarization.  Finally, she managed to shake away from his questions and wandering eyes and slipped inside a room on the far end of the house, muting the sounds of the party still going on around her.  Resting her forehead against the heavy wooden door, she sighed, her bearings starting to come back to her now that she was alone.

“Who are you hiding from?” A low draw, a smokey voice, like snagged satin.

Maybe she wasn’t so alone after all.