“Fuck, yeah. This room is giving me claustrophobia. You were a bigger all-American dweeb when you lived here than you are at home, and that’s saying something.”

He’s not wrong.

And for the first time, home is not this room, this house. Home is three hours away with two people who mean more to me than they should.

Chapter Twenty

The grocery store on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is fucking nuts. Jenna and I are pushing the cart as best we can through the clogged aisles trying to get the last few items on my mom’s list. Shane got the coveted position of staying at the house and getting the table leaf out of the basement and bringing up the extra chairs.

Fucker.

Jenna is staring at the jar in her hand. “What is mincemeat exactly? Is it like Spam or something?”

“Why would Mom make Spam pie?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I never tried it.”

“All these years, you thought she was serving Spam pie? And you never asked?”

She shrugs. “I thought it might be like the trifle from Friends. Besides, Mom makes a lot of weird stuff. What does she always say? ‘It’s a Minnesota thing.’ Like right before she adds mayonnaise to something that doesn’t need mayo.”

I shake my head. “It’s not meat.”

“Why do they call it meat then?”

I feel like I’m having a discussion with Jessica Simpson about a can of tuna fish right now. “I don’t know.” She is my sister, though, and I love her, so I add, “Don’t ever eat sweetbreads.”

“Why? What are sweetbreads?”

“Not sweet. Or bread. It’s like the sheep pancreas or something.”

She makes barfy sounds and puts the jar in the cart.

We cross off the last thing on the list and get in a line longer than Space Mountain’s. Jenna checks her phone, but while she’s scrolling, she asks me, “Is Shane seeing someone?”

“Yes,” I answer without thinking it through. “I thought you were with that Steven guy?”

She crinkles her forehead. “A month ago.” She shrugs. “It didn’t work out.”

“That sucks. Sorry.”

“In high school, I always dreamed about dating college guys. Now that I’m in college, I think I’d rather just skip to someone in his thirties. No offense, but you dude bros are really immature.”

I’m not really excited about the thought of my eighteen-year-old sister dating a guy in his thirties but if it keeps her attention away from a conversation about Shane, I guess I will go with it.

“What about you?”

We move the cart ahead about four inches. “I’m...in a relationship.”

“Who is it?”

“We’re keeping it to ourselves right now. The ice cream is going to melt before we get out of this line.”

“Why are you being so weird about it? Is she like your professor or something?”