“It’s okay. I’m not tired, but I do smell like garlic.”

“I like garlic.”

“Good thing.”

Lily leans back on her heels and looks down at her outfit. “I wasn’t sure what to wear since I’ve never been to this restaurant.”

“I’ve never been there, either, so I have no idea. But I have a feeling you’ll be fine.” I chose a new restaurant I’ve been wanting to try. It’s about a forty-five-minute drive, but I figured that would give us time to catch up on the way over.

“I have a present for you,” she says. “It’s in my car. Let me grab it.”

I follow her to her car and watch her retrieve something from the console. When she hands it to me, I can’t hold back a smile. “Is this your journal?” She read another quick passage to me last night, but she was so embarrassed reading it out loud, she refused to give me more.

“That’s one of them. We’ll see how tonight goes before I give you the other one.”

“No pressure or anything.” I walk her to my car and open the passenger door for her. She starts to yawn again as I’m closing her door.

I feel bad, like maybe she’s too exhausted for this date. I have no idea what it’s like to raise a child. I feel kind of selfish that I’m not offering to reschedule, so before I back out of the parking lot, I speak up. “If you’d rather go home and sleep, we can do this next weekend.”

“There’s nothing else I’d rather do than this, Atlas. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” She clicks her seat belt. “You actually do smell like garlic.”

I think she’s kidding. Lily used to joke all the time when we were younger. It’s one of the things I loved most about her—that she always seemed to be in a good mood despite all the bad things surrounding her. It’s that same strength I admired in her in the days I was with her after she found out she was pregnant in the emergency room. I know that was one of the lowest points of her life, but she was able to smile through it all, and even spent an entire evening impressing my friends with her humor during a poker night.

Everyone handles stress differently, and none of those ways is necessarily wrong, but Lily handles it with grace. And grace just happens to be the quality I find the most attractive in people.

“How’d you manage to get away on a Saturday night?” Lily asks.

I hate that I’m driving because I want to look at her while I respond. I’ve never seen her look this… womanly? Is that a compliment? I don’t even know. I probably shouldn’t say it out loud in case it isn’t, but when Lily and I fell in love, neither of us were what we would now consider adults. But it’s different tonight. We’re grown-ups with careers, and she’s a mother and a boss and independent. It’s sexy as hell.