cherry, not strawberry

“I will leave the room,” the researcher- the one Mike keeps sending glares El can’t quite decipher and unpack (they’re cute glares, that like everything else about him leave El a little bit more light headed and a little bit weaker in the knees)- points to the door with her pen and then gestures with it to the mirror Mike and El stand dripping rain water in front of, “But I will be behind the mirror keeping an eye on the equipment to make sure it keeps working after our little mishap this morning. Once I leave the room-”

El tears her attention away from the way the corner of Mike’s mouth slants upward at the researcher’s announcement of her plans to leave. Does the idea of being alone together, just the two of them, like they were in the waiting room, render him breathless, too?”

“Please step forward, and kiss each other.”

“What?” Mike almost breaks the mirror behind them with his exclamation. El’s mouth drops open.

That’s what this study was? Kissing? Max hadn’t said one word about the experiment concerning kissing! Oh, El was now without a doubt lightheaded and weak in the knees at the prospect of kissing Mike, a handsome, intelligent, charismatic, mesmerizing man who with no effort swept her off her feet in the first five minutes they’d met. This handsome, intelligent, charismatic, mesmerizing… stranger. 

Intrigued by the tasty bait of fifty dollars in exchanged for a few hours of their volunteering as participants in a study conducted by some of the most loved people in their life, Mike and El find themselves stumbling not just into a psychology study but a lion’s den on a rainy Saturday afternoon when it’s revealed the experiment part of the experiment is to kiss each other despite the fact they just met. But if it’s a connection these grad student researchers are looking for, then it’s a connection they’ll find, because Mike and El might have just stumbled onto a connection every hopeless romantic dreams off…they just have to get over the “being strangers” part first and kiss each other.