Mikey opens the door and takes in the sight of me in my red raincoat. “Chloe!” he says with his genuine childlike surprise. “Perfect timing! I just got my knives!”

“What?” I step in, brushing my hood off my head. Normally I would apologize for spraying water droplets everywhere, but something tells me Mikey Danger doesn’t mind. “Oh.”

Mikey now stands at the counter, a plastic grocery bag full of round, red tomatoes in front of him, his knife poised over one on the cutting board. “Watch this.”

He slices through it with no effort. The knife, just like it did on TV, glides right through, leaving a perfect, paper-thin slice of tomato in its wake.

“Wow,” I say with genuine surprise. “That infomercial wasn’t lying.”

Mikey shakes his head in wonder. “This is killer. Oh, you should stick around! Milo went out to the store to get more produce to practice on.”

I raise my eyebrows, surprised but glad that Mikey and Milo are bonding, even if it’s over knives.

“Actually, I came over here to talk to you. Can you, uh . . . sit down?” I gesture toward the table, which is covered in junk mail.

“Yeah!” Mikey says, pushing a stack of papers off one chair.

I sit down across from him. “So, Mikey . . . I don’t think this is working.”

Mikey shakes his head. “Are you kidding? It’s working great. You saw that tomato.”

“Not the knives, Mikey,” I say, trying and failing to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Us.”

“Us?” Mikey asks, confusion in his beautiful, ridiculous eyes. “But you’re so chill, Chloe.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” I say. “I’m not. Like, at all. No one in the history of ever has called me chill. I came out of the womb and the doctor was like, ‘Whoa, get this newborn into a baby yoga class, she’s stressed.’”

Mikey’s eyes wander, and I realize he’s thinking about those tomatoes, so I keep it brief.

“You’re nice, Mikey,” I say, meaning it. “But I don’t think we should waste any more time together.”

Mikey nods. “I respect that. But damn, Chlo. I’m gonna miss you.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well. My brother lives here, so you’ll probably see me around.”

We smile at each other for a moment, and then I remember. “Oh! I brought you a pie!” I pull the dish towel off the blueberry basil pie with an oat crumb topping. It looks objectively beautiful, like something that should be in a bakery case. I know we could sell the hell out of this pie at Nick’s.

Mikey waves me off. “I’ll save it for Fred and Milo. I don’t like pie.”

“You don’t . . .” I trail off, willing my mouth to form words. “You don’t like pie?”

Mikey shakes his head.

“But there are so many different kinds of pie,” I say. “Saying you don’t like pie doesn’t even make sense. I could understand, theoretically if not personally, how someone could dislike fruit pies. Or custard pies. But all pies? A pecan pie is a fundamentally different beast than an apple pie, and a key lime pie is in its own category. How can you not like pie?”