I was charmed by my mom’s offbeat standards. She’d met Terry on Plenty of Fish. After their first date, the week before I left for Pleasant Hollow, she came home buzzed off two glasses of wine and had effused over Terry’s colorful checkered shirt. On the second date, when he’d worn an equally appealing pink-and-green gingham button-down, she learned his brother owned a men’s dress shirt company based out of South Africa. “Take a picture this time. Or bring him home so I can see for myself.” I waited for her insistence it wasn’t going to happen and was taken aback by the full-on blush on her cheeks. “Well then. I will retire to my room early just in case,” I teased.

“I’m going with an open mind.” She ducked her head. “But yes, if you could make Adi ‘Scoop’ Gellar scarce, I’d appreciate it,” she said, referring to the time I’d peppered a date with twenty questions, prompting him to escape when she went to the bathroom.

I mock-pouted. “I was ten. And, by the way, any man worthy of your assets”—I started to waggle my eyebrows until I remembered Finn’s discouragement of the gesture—“wouldn’t be scared off by your precocious offspring. We’re a package deal.” Even though I was joking, my lungs constricted at the realization we’d be living separately in a few months and she’d no longer have to tell prospective boyfriends about her live-in fully grown daughter. It was a good thing. Adulting. Still.

“Enough about me. How are you holding up?”

I’d confessed everything that had happened with Finn from the time we’d walked out the door on Rosh Hashanah until I stepped back in with my suitcase in tow—a whole hell of a lot for a measly thirty-six hours—immediately upon my return. “Do you think I’ll ever get it right?” I tapped my feet against her thigh.

She placed her glass on the table and pulled my legs onto her lap. “Get what right?”

“Romantic love.” I blew a hair out of my eye. “Will I ever meet someone where everything comes together naturally without obstacles, like you and Dad?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “What makes you think your dad and I had no obstacles?”

“Obviously, you were deprived of your happy ending, but before that.”

She let out a low sigh.

“What?” I bounced my legs.

“Things with your dad weren’t as cut-and-dried as you think. We broke up at least three times before we were married.”

My mouth dropped open. “You did? Why?”