Rosario was still battling the second thoughts when Cathal appeared. Maybe, she'd thought as the M train rattled over Williamsburg Bridge, the cute, funny t-shirt she'd chosen wasn't as cute or as funny as she thought. Maybe it was just weird. Maybe Cathal was gonna take one look at her and realise she was a weirdo.
She was being stupid, she knew that. Wasn't like Cathal didn't know she was a nerd. They'd just had a whole conversation of museum-based light flirting. (Had they been flirting? She'd been kinda flirting, and she thought he'd been flirting, but it'd been all over text and she could've just misread his entire tone, or hers hadn't come across, and also she was so outta practice she didn't know that she'd ever strictly been in practice.) Anyway, they'd swapped nerdy book recommendations and joked about bugs and meteorites so, what, was he gonna walk into the museum and take one look at her space t-shirt and be like 'nah, that's it, that's the line for me'? (Maybe. She couldn't comprehensively rule it out.)
Argh, why'd she have to go and wear this dumb top?!
Twenty minutes later, standing in front of the rearing barosaurus skeleton, it was still preying on her thoughts, paranoia chasing logic chasing paranoia. Figured that when Cathal did arrive, he didn't really glance at her t-shirt, just greeted her with a wave and a grin. Rosario found herself smiling back. "Well, we were getting on great till I told him I was here to see the meteorite. Things got awkward fast."