As he drove home on automatic, he imagined what it would be like really dating someone like Leanne, so put together, working a professional job—smart, successful, beautiful. He laughed softly, shaking his head. Yeah, right. What would I bring to the table? That wasn’t just him being hard on himself. She didn’t even have a yard for him to mow, so she didn’t need the maintenance skills he’d mentioned the night they met. Being willing to remove spiders—and frankly, he was sort of scared of them anyway—get things on high shelves, and change light bulbs in the ceiling didn’t seem like enough.

At home, he headed in without seeing either of his parents. Part of him wondered if they’d even notice if he stopped coming back. Hell, his old man might be pleased he was finally moving out, even without asking where he was headed. They’d told him Tanner was coming home this weekend, bringing the wife and kids too.

That’ll be fun. I wonder… No, I can’t ask her to do that.

He paused, staring into his mini fridge despite not being hungry. But why not? It would be fair to ask Leanne to come to the family dinner and get him off the hopeless hook. If she could benefit from this pretense, so could he. Trev chewed his lip, trying to decide if he had the balls to ask for this favor in return.

Just then, his phone beeped, making him juggle it. He opened his messages to find one from Leanne. Smirking, he changed her contact to “My Honey,” knowing she’d likely hate it. Though he hadn’t known her long, she didn’t seem like the gushy, sticky-sweet type. Trev tapped on the message notification and read.

Leanne: We should talk.

Huh. That’s not ominous at all.

Trev: Name the time and place.

She sent him a pin on the map for a restaurant near the old courthouse. Apparently, Leanne’s office was a few streets over in the new government building. With a shrug, he agreed to be there in three hours and killed the rest of that time doing a Twitch stream. He’d hoped to get some followers and maybe spin his hobby into something more, but it seemed like that wasn’t his thing either. Currently, he had fifty-eight followers—wild that some people had millions.

Trev couldn’t believe it, but for the second day in a row, he went looking for a decent outfit and got himself ready to go out. He even tried to style his hair, though that didn’t go well. Maybe I’ll get a trim. The layers were beyond grown out, and in all honesty, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d done more than shear it off himself when it got too long to see.

That’s probably not a good sign.