“It was me. But anyway, no, this isn’t love den related. I was just wondering if Milo was available to be on Dad duty if I’m gone.”

“Let me guess,” Fred says. “Mikey Danger rented a room in a lovely B&B and you’re getting out of town for the weekend.”

Both of us laugh, and maybe it should be sad that the idea of Mikey Danger making a reservation or even setting foot in a B&B is a joke, but whatever. I’ll take what I can get right now.

“Uh, no. I was thinking about going to a coffee convention with Nick.”

Fred stares at me.

“Oh. He’s my boss.”

Fred nods and points at me. “Right. Movie Guy.”

“I . . . What?”

“Milo told me all about it. The movie, the flirty banter, I know the drill.”

“The flirty . . . wait, what? Milo’s never even been into Nick’s.”

Fred shrugs. “Well, you know. The Internet.”

“Ugh. The stupid Internet causes so many problems for me. Listen, can I ask you a question?”

“As long as it isn’t about Mikey Danger. I already have to share a bathroom with him. I deeply don’t want to know anything about his love life.”

“No, it’s about Nick and the trip. Should I go? I mean, Milo’s right. We do have flirty banter. And, okay, we did kiss once.”

Fred raises his eyebrows.

“But it was during a thunderstorm!” I point at him accusingly. “Don’t say you’ve never made poor romantic decisions under the influence of lightning!”

Fred shakes his head. “I’m honestly afraid to disagree with you right now.”

“Anyway, is it a bad idea to go to the convention with him?”

Fred presses his lips together, then pulls out a chair, removes junk mail from it, and sits down. I do the same.

“No offense, but . . . why are you telling me this?” he asks, steepling his hands.

“Because I’m desperate, Fred!”

He tilts his head. “But couldn’t you talk to Milo about this?”

“God, no.”

“And don’t you have friends?”

“Of course I have friends!” I snap, because duh, I have exactly two friends and one of them is usually out of town and the other one I only see at her place of work. I’m doing just fine, friendwise. “But you’re a neutral party. I can trust your opinion.”

Fred nods. “Okay. So the problem is you wanna hit that, but you don’t want to wanna hit that.”

I think about it for a second. “In a nutshell, yes.”

“Well, this is a tricky situation. Because he’s your boss, and it sounds like he’s doing everything possible to make this less creepy. I mean, you’re getting separate rooms. This isn’t, like, an HR violation.”

I roll my eyes. “Trust me, I’m the HR violation here. Not him.”

“And you do want to go, right?” Fred asks, leaning forward.

I shrug. “Well, yeah. I’ve been trying forever to get Nick to update things at the shop because I think we could be doing so much better. And I’d like to be there to help Nick make decisions.”