“How far is it? I can drive us,” he offered. “I’ve already exhausted all the places you circled for me.”

I felt bad that I didn’t feel guilty about distracting him. Maybe I had some of Penny’s Slytherin wiles after all. “Not too far. We could stop at some pretty spots and you could sketch, if you wanted. I know a couple that weren’t on your map.”

“I’m in,” he said, a smile spreading from cheek to cheek. “Can you meet me at the house at nine in the morning?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I could have chosen one of the many blueberry stands that dotted Maine’s highways, but I had a special destination in mind.

“Hey!” I called out, approaching Levi’s house. He was waiting for me on the porch and raised a hand in greeting.

“What’s that?” he asked as I got closer, eyes trained on the bright blue cooler I had in my hand. “Did you walk all the way down with that? You could have called me.”

He’d noticed my lack of bike. “Got a ride from someone,” I said. “Mind if I put this in the back?”

When he unlocked the car door for me, I leaned in and slid the cooler onto the floor. His sketchbook lay on the seat, a freshly sharpened charcoal pencil point sticking out to mark his place.

“Just some lunch,” I explained, closing the door behind me.

His face lit up. “Yum. I thought we could just grab sandwiches somewhere, but your cooking sounds way better. What do you have for us?”

“Cobb salad, sans blue cheese because I didn’t know how you felt about it, Mexican Coke, and pecan pie brownies.”

He made a noise of appreciation and I grinned, thinking of the age-old adage that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. Food was something my mom’s boyfriends had always appreciated, because she’d taken it to heart, if her amazing Sunday dinners were anything to go by.

More interested in hanging out with my friends than playing happy families, I usually spent Friday night and all of Saturday with Penny. Mom probably intended for me to stay at one of my preppy friends’ houses, where the mother and the father wore Ralph Lauren polos and kissed their kids good night, but instead, I spent those lost weekends at Penny’s. Her parents were happy to let us use the kitchen under supervision, which was great for when the novelty of Penny’s Easy-Bake Oven paled.