“No!”

Annie jumped. “Okay, weirdo…who are you?” He moved away from her.

“Hello?” There was no response, but she could make out his shape back under the table. Annie sighed and rubbed her head again. With her dizziness abating, she stood and headed for the light switch. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m-”

“I’m asking you.”

Annie’s hand hesitated on the switch.

“Please,” he implored her. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?” she asked again. There was no response, just a deep silence from the darkness under the table.

In the quiet, she could hear the party continuing in the living room. She turned her eyes to the dim outline of the door and heard Chloe direct, “No, no!

Kitchen is off limits!”

Annie smiled gratefully. At least the door was being guarded for a while.

“Hey, are you still there?” She cringed, mentally slapping herself for asking such a stupid question.

“Yeah.”

Something in his voice drew her to him. There was a strength in it, a certainty that shouldn’t be coming from underneath a kitchen table. She moved away from the door and back toward the voice, getting down on her knees to peer underneath. She thought she saw the shimmer of a pair of glasses. She saw his hands resting in his lap and found herself searching for the glint of a ring.

A moment later, she smiled at her effort.

“So…why are you in here? Why don’t you want me to turn on the light?”

“I don’t…” He cleared his throat. It was the first time she had heard him hesitate. “I don’t want you to see me.”

Annie sat back on her heels, unmindful of her skirt. There was no reason to worry about him glimpsing her panties in the dark! She let out her breath, feeling unsure and a little ambivalent about her sudden desire to reach out to him, this strange guy sitting alone in her sister’s kitchen. Empathic by nature, she knew what it was like to want to get away from a party like this.