I hung the denim jacket I hadn’t needed in the hallway closet. Mother Nature, in loud and clear opposition to the unofficial end of summer, had shown us who was boss with record-breaking ninety-degree temperatures, days after Labor Day. “My date stood me up. Maybe he fell off his Citi Bike and twisted his ankle, or perhaps he liquefied in the sun. Don’t know. Don’t care.” I hadn’t expected a first date with a guy I’d met on Hinge to lead to marriage, a committed relationship, or even a second date—at twenty-five years old, I’d been dating in New York City long enough to know better—but was showing up too much to ask?

Mom raised her glass of wine. “There’s an open bottle on the kitchen counter. You look like you need it.”

After pouring a glass of rosé, I sat beside her on our deep-blue velvet sofa in the apartment where we’d lived since I was four. I kicked off my sandals and wiggled my toes. “It’s hilarious how tourists paint this city as the romance capital of America when it is the worst. The worst.” I pointed at the screen. “Even Louise had to go back to her hometown to snag her man.”

Mom wiped a smudge from the glass surface of the coffee table. “I’m not sure I like how hard you’re being on our fair Manhattan, Squirt.”

I made a face. I’d asked her to stop calling me that when I reached puberty and decided it was disgusting, but my complaining had the opposite effect and sealed the nickname into eternal status.

“All of your big moments happened here,” she continued. “You learned to read and ride a bike. You became a woman. And I mean that in all of the important ways—you got your period, you lost your virginity, you had your bat mitzvah.”

“Not in that order.”

She huffed. “I should hope not. I’ll report myself to child services if you were already sexually active when you stood on the bimah at East End Temple and sang ‘Adon Olam’ to a room of tweens from PS 19.”

I snuggled into my mom’s side and took comfort in her familiar scent of Estée Lauder Beautiful. “No need to call ACS.”

“Relief. The blow-offs and false starts are all part of the adventure, Adi.”

My bad luck with men went as far back as sophomore year of high school, when I’d been catfished by a pimply thirteen-year-old pretending to be his hot eighteen-year-old cousin. I wanted off the ride.

I muted the TV. We’d both seen the first Sex and the City movie at least five times.