“I need a knife and a cutting board,” she says, and I point at the drawer and then move my hand to under the stove. “Thank you,” she says.

“Let’s get to know each other,” I suggest, and she looks at me. “Favorite food?”

“I like mostly everything,” she says, and I just look at her.

“If there was one food you had to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess Italian, you?”

“That’s not a food; it’s a food group.” I laugh at her, and she rolls her eyes. “Toss up between burgers and steak,” I say. “I mean, more toward steak but …” She smiles at me. “What?”

“If there was one food …” She starts to mimic me, and I shake my head.

“That mouth is going to get you in trouble,” I say, and her eyes fly to mine. “Favorite drink.”

“Coffee,” she answers without hesitation. “Actually, before I had Dylan, I hated the taste, then when he went through his eight months of crying for twenty-three hours a day, coffee was my lifeline.”

“Just regular?” I ask.

“If there is milk, that is even better, but I can drink it black,” she says. “Sometimes, I used to splurge and buy the flavored creamer.” She cuts up the salad. “You?”

“Water,” I say, and she looks up. “What? I like water.” She shakes her head. “Favorite holiday.”

“Usually, I would pick Christmas,” she says, “but as he gets older, and the gifts get harder and harder to buy, I’m going to go with Halloween.” My heart sinks, but I don’t show her nor do I make eye contact with her. “You?”

“Christmas,” I answer. “Hands down for me, it’s Christmas and not for the gifts. My family couldn’t care less what was under the tree. The thing that I love is being with my family. I don’t even know how many there are of us anymore, but just hanging out with them and being with them for four days.” I look at her, and she just looks at me. “It’s just everything.”

“What do you guys usually do?” she asks.

“We usually have it at my parents’ house since it’s a touch bigger than everyone else’s,” I say. “My mother usually does the cooking, or they cater, but more often than not, it’s my mom who cooks. On Christmas Eve, we just get together. Everyone comes over, and we watch movies, or the kids play games, but it’s just us. We usually all stay at my parents’. Well, we did before. Now with so many kids and since they all live a block away, they usually just go home and come back at the ass crack of dawn.” I laugh. “We open the gifts in our pjs, and then we make a huge breakfast.”