Just as I’m pulling into my driveway, my phone buzzes in my purse. A text message came while I was driving. I sift through a surprising number of loose tissues in my purse—you can never have too many tissues when you have a young son—before I retrieve my phone.

Hey, it’s Tim Reese. I got your number from the parent directory. Hope that’s not too creepy.

Despite everything, I have to smile. Tim is a lot of things, but he’s not creepy. But if he looked me up in the parent directory, he must have figured out that Josh is not a kindergartener. And inexplicably, he still wants to talk to me.

Only slightly creepy.

He writes back almost instantly:

So I was just thinking, coffee in the evening is just going to keep us up. How about getting a drink one night this week?

A drink. That’s a bit more serious than coffee. That’s a very date-y kind of get-together. Do I want that?

I have no idea. But I do know that if there’s one guy I can trust to back off if I need him to, it’s Tim. And I haven’t socialized outside of work in far too long. Maybe I should just let myself have a little fun for once. Don’t I deserve it?

Let me check with the babysitter and I’ll get back to you.

Any negative feelings from work today and the shock of seeing Shane after so many years (and knowing I’ll have to see him again in a week to take out the sutures) fade away as I contemplate a night out with Tim. It will be nice to hang out with him again. Growing up, Tim was always my favorite person in the whole world.

I feel bad that I shut him out for nearly eleven years. But it wasn’t like I had a choice.

I get into the house, and this time Josh doesn’t come running when I call his name. I take it as a good sign though. If he were clingy, that would be worse. But he’s got a few days of school under his belt now, and he seems more confident.

I reach the kitchen, where Margie is pulling another of her delicious concoctions out of the oven. It looks like some sort of lasagna. It’s bubbling hot when she lays it down on the kitchen counter.

“Hey, Margie,” I say. “That looks great. You don’t have to cook every night though.”

“Oh, I like it!” she says. “When my kids were growing up, I had a home-cooked meal for them every night. Home cooking prevents cancer, you know.”

I’m not so sure about that, but I’m not going to say anything else to dissuade her from cooking for us. I am obscenely grateful that she does it.