On the first call (he called), she made it clear: “Do you want to go have dinner with me?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “Yes, I do.”

“Like a date,” Hazel said, unwilling to entertain any maybe fantasies anymore. “You realize this, right? I’m asking you to go on a date.”

I sound like I’m his boss, she thought, leaning against the kitchen cabinets while her mom’s dinner burned.

“Yes,” he said again. “Yes. I want to go on a date with you, too.”

They went to Paradise, that Italian place by Gordon Bell with the tinted windows. It was almost empty, with a sweet, apologetic, middle-aged waiter and menus with two-word items and no descriptions and prices that, if Christopher didn’t offer to pay, were just low enough for Hazel to still make it to next month.

“Well, fuck, I dunno—you were in Toronto, then?” he said to her. Christopher was in a hoodie and khakis, and Hazel was in a pencil skirt.

“Montreal,” she said. “Though I did live in Toronto a couple years. And Vancouver before that.”

“I went with my parents to Montreal once,” he remarked. “In high school. For a fencing competition.”

“The fuck?” she said with a laugh. “A fencing competition?”

“I was on the fencing team in high school! I did it all four years. I”—he paused with a sense of grandeur—“was internationally competitive.”

“Internationally competitive?”

“We went to Fargo once,” he said.

“Wow.”

“Montreal was better.”

“Yeah.”

“You still play hockey?” she said. (Christopher was always into sports, Hazel tagging along to his games. What kind of fucking boy in grade school goes to watch his friend’s hockey games?)

“No. No, I haven’t played anything since high school.” He tugged at his hoodie. “I don’t mind.”

“No?”

“It gets—stupider, as you get older.” He frowned. “Competition is more fun when you’re a kid. It’s literally the entire world, but, like, it still gets to be pointless.”

He took a huge bite of his food. He ate by slowly gathering a large forkful on his plate, lowering his head, and then quickly and decisively stabbing the food into his mouth, like domination. “It gets ridiculous when adults make it mean something,” he said. “You know?”

“I think so,” said Hazel.

“I go to Jets games with my dad sometimes.”

“I hate the Jets.”

“Aw, c’mon, really?” He bit into a piece of garlic bread and Hazel followed suit, sawing into it with her knife like an animal.

“I fucking hate hockey,” she said, scooping up butter.

“Nobody’s perfect,” he returned, unfazed. “How’s your mom doing?”

“Fine. She’s fucking some guy who owns an art gallery.”

“Good for her,” he said. “She still—aw, shit. What does your mom do again? I can’t believe I don’t remember this.”

“Hospital tech. Sanitizes instruments. They ever cut you open at Health Sciences in the last five years, good chance my mom cleaned that scalpel.”