The server looks like he goes to college. If Skylar was here, she’d flirt with him. She claims that she never flirts, she doesn’t even know how. Maybe she really doesn’t know she does it. Maybe it just comes naturally to her. But if she said No anchovies, please, the server would smile at her and say he hates anchovies, too. But when I say it, he just writes it down with the other stuff.

“So, Abbi,” Greg says. “I told you what I did today. What did you do?”

“Nothing much. Skylar and I rode bikes, got caught in the rain, just boring summer vacation stuff.” While I talk, I study the place mat, a map of Italy with a lot of Italian words written on it.

“Where did you go on your bikes?” Mom looks anxious. To her, the world is dangerous. She worries about lonely places and strangers and all the bad things that can happen. Her worries got passed to me in my DNA, kind of like a gift the wicked fairy might give you when you’re christened.

“No place special,” I tell her. “Just around town.” I point to an Italian phrase on the place mat and ask Greg what it means. His mother was born in Italy, and he knows some Italian.

“‘Essere l’altra metà della mela,’” he reads.

The words are beautiful the way he says them. They sound like music. Maybe I’ll take Italian in high school, but then I remember that French and Spanish are the only language choices.

“What does it mean?” I ask.

“The other half of the apple,” he says. “You know, soul mates, like you and Skylar are two halves of the same apple.”

Yes, Skylar and I are like that most of the time, though not always, especially lately.

Mom looks like she’s about to ask for more details about the bike ride, but the server saves me by bringing our pizza.

Greg and Mom have a beer, and I have a soda. While we eat, Greg tells us another story about his life in plumbing land.

“The house looks okay from the outside,” he says, “but inside, I can hardly get to the kitchen because of all the boxes and piles of books and newspapers and bulging black garbage bags in every room. I mean they’re floor to ceiling, with little tunnels to get from one room to the next. Hoarders, I guess. I see a lot of that.”

“How can people live that way?” Mom asks. “It’s so dangerous.”

Greg takes a swallow of beer. “I tell you, Cathy, you can drive down a nice street and never dream of what some of the houses look like inside. I’ve seen it all—places where the windows are clean and there’s no dust on anything, and others where you need a gas mask or a shovel.”