Andie actually let me DJ the playlist from my phone as she drove us in Travis’s car over to Gram’s house for Sunday dinner, which rarely happened. We were singing Taylor Swift’s ME! at the top of our lungs when Andie glanced over and caught me scrolling through Mickey’s Facebook page. He’d texted me last night, just checking in on how I was doing with all the family stuff. Seeing his caring words sent a little thrill through me and when I’d replied about being nervous about today’s dinner, we’d ended up texting until two in the morning about our messy family histories. It was casual but I couldn’t lie to myself. Unexpected feelings were developing, on my side at least, and the urge to stalk him on social media had taken over. I’d hoped Andie would be too distracted by driving and the music to notice. No such luck.

Andie lunged forward to turn the volume down, cutting our performance off mid-verse, and said, ‘So you were at the bar with Mickey for a pretty long time the other day.’ She had a mischievous grin on her face, her eyes darting between me and the road.

‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said, playing it off with a shrug and switching from Facebook to my email. If Andie knew I had any level of attraction to Mickey she’d never let it go. I could just picture her sticking her nose in and embarrassing me in front of him next time we went to The Beast. Subtlety was not her strong suit and I wanted to navigate it on my own. If there was even anything to navigate.

‘So? Is there something going on there? I mean, he’s not too hard on the eyes, now is he?’ Andie pried with a playful nudge to my side with her elbow. ‘I know he’s not your normal type, but you can’t deny he’s a hottie.’ I knew she was trying to heal any lingering tension between us after the adoption photo incident and I was trying my best to forgive Andie, to move forward and focus my energy on finding answers to my family mystery.

‘He’s great and all,’ I said, deleting a few junk emails as I spoke. ‘But I just have too much on my plate right now, Andie. I can’t think about that too. He was cool though, we haven’t spoken that much one-on-one before.’ Even though I wanted to steer Andie away from my love life, I had to admit, Mickey had been popping into my mind at random times since our chat.

‘Well maybe he’s just the kind of fun distraction you need. You know you tend to get a bit serious when—’