“Well, I promise I have no scary ex-boyfriends for you to worry about.”

“Any . . . not-so-scary ex-boyfriends?” he asked.

“Nice transition,” I said. “You handled that well.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Thank you. It took a lot to get to that one question, but here we are.”

Seriously. The guy was adorable. Confident but in a totally grounded way. That he wasn’t afraid to admit he’d been digging for information made me like him even more. “One boyfriend in high school. Nice guy. Catholic. Pretty sure he’s living in Asheville, working at some brewery downtown. I didn’t date much in college. Just played a lot of soccer. I had one boyfriend off and on through most of my junior year,” I continued. “I liked him, but he had this super traditional family and . . . I don’t know. They never said anything directly, but I got the feeling they were nervous about him dating someone who wasn’t white.”

Jamie stared. “That’s . . . I thought people were past that kind of nonsense.”

I shrugged. “A lot of people are. Others, not so much.”

He leaned back in his chair. “That’s messed up.”

“It is what it is, but I refuse to dwell on all the negative. It’s out there. And, yeah, things are better in a lot of ways, but it’s not going away anytime soon. The thing is, no matter how much it hurts, pain for pain won’t solve anything. Being strong is moving forward, right?”

“My Uncle Anton is black,” Jamie blurted. His face instantly flooded with color, like he realized how trite his words sounded halfway through saying them. “Sorry,” he continued. “I said that like I deserve brownie points for having a little diversity in my family. I only mentioned it because I remember when we were growing up that . . . stuff happened. Especially within the Church—people had a hard time. I was fifteen when he and my aunt got married, and I remember sitting in the kitchen listening to Mom and Aunt Julie talking about some of the stuff people said.”

“Most people just don’t get it. Not because they can’t but because they don’t have the experience. The hard part is that being called out on that makes people defensive, and then you can’t make any progress because people are too busy defending their own narrow viewpoint. It takes time. And a lot of talking. Confronting truth even when it’s ugly.”

“I like that. My mother used to always tell us as kids to see bigger. Take the blinders off, you know?”

“Yeah. It’s hard though.”

“I think your perspective is pretty amazing. I mean, you play it pretty cool considering how many reasons you have not to.”