“All ready to shop until you drop?” Alex asked from the bed as I pulled clothes out of my suitcase.

“Mostly.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. He looked so comfortable in the bed, I almost crawled back in with him. “Your mom made coffee.”

“She’s a good egg,” he replied.

“That idiom makes no sense,” I muttered, looking back in my bag.

“Did you just call me an idiot?” he joked, his tone assuring me that he’d heard exactly what I’d said.

“If the shoe fits,” I said, using an idiom of my own.

I looked over my shoulder again, and he was grinning.

“How long do they usually shop for?” I asked as I stood up and started getting undressed. I was glad that he didn’t reach for me as I set my clean clothes at the foot of the bed. I wasn’t sure I could resist letting him pull me down beside him, and I knew if I lay down, I wasn’t getting back up until a reasonable hour.

“They’re usually done by two or three,” he said.

I looked at him in confusion for a second, then felt my mouth drop open. “Twelve hours?”

“Have you never gone shopping on Black Friday before?” he asked.

“I’m sure my mother went at some point, but I was too young to go with her,” I said, pulling on my underwear and a bra. “But my aunt never went, and I haven’t, either, since I’ve been on my own.”

“Don’t like shopping?” he asked.

“Don’t have the money,” I replied with a chuckle. “Sometimes I do the Cyber Monday sales, though. Shopping online is easier.”

“But according to Ani, it’s not as much fun.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said as I pulled a pair of jeans over my hips.

“I’m pretty sure she just likes elbowing her way through crowds and stealing things out of other women’s carts,” he mused.

“No she doesn’t,” I argued, horrified.

“Not the cart part, but probably the elbowing part,” he conceded.

“She’s so nice,” I said, pulling on my shoes.

Alex laughed, went silent, and then laughed again. “She must’ve been high yesterday,” he joked. “Ani’s not nice.”

“She was nice to me.”

“Probably high.”

“She wasn’t high.”

“Fine,” he said, leaning up quickly to grab my hand and pull me onto the bed with him. “She wasn’t high.”

I made a face, and he kissed my nose. “She’s happy for me,” he said. “But she’s not really the hearts and rainbows type—that’s Kate. Ani is more…leather jackets and sarcasm.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s mean.” I was still stuck on his description of her.