“No, not really, but I’m going to go, anyway, because I’m stupid.”

We headed downstairs. Mormor was knitting in front of the TV. Mom was running around looking for her second shoe, the first already donned. She had a tendency to walk around the house kicking them off wherever, so most days leaving the house involved her searching for the other shoe while Mormor berated her for being irresponsible this far into her thirties.

Eventually, she found her other oxford, and we were out the door. Devi was dropped off first, leaving me with a kiss and a pinch for good luck. I gave Mom the directions for Leaf’s house straight from his text message. He lived about fifteen minutes away from me, in a single-story yellow ranch house with white windows. We’d know it was his house, he’d said, by the blue-and-green flag with the red wagon wheel hanging next to the doorway.

Mom pulled into a short empty driveway. The garage was dead ahead of us, the entrance to the house—the side door, Leaf had said—wedged between the garage and the house body. The shrubs were tidy, the grass recently trimmed with no evidence of the brown and orange autumn leaves polluting my own side lawn. I grabbed my phone and my purse from the back seat of the car and turned to go. Before I left the car, Mom snagged my wrist.

“You need anything, you call me, okay?” she said.

“Okay.”

“Do you want a token lecture for old times’ sake?”

“...Mom. No. You dink.”

“Oh, he’s handsome.”

“Who—oh!” Leaf stood in the front window of the house smiling out at us, all six feet something of him, dark hair pulled back, his thick body covered by a...pink frilly body apron with Kiss The Chef stitched on the front pocket.

“So are you gonna?” Mom asked.

“What?”

“Kiss the chef?”

I groaned and climbed from the car. Mom leaned over the passenger’s side seat to shout at me. “I love you. Don’t get doubly pregnant. Mormor might make you live in the shed if you defy science.”

I slammed the door shut. I could hear her laughing as I walked up to Leaf’s side door. Suddenly, the nerves about our first date weren’t so bad. Anything was better than listening to my hag mother continue doing her hag thing.

At least, that’s what I told myself as he opened the door to welcome me inside.

“Hi,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six