“Emmett—you said no to a free drink?” Patrick asked.

I rolled my eyes. “You do realize alcohol isn’t the only thing I love in life, right?”

Patrick was pouring coffee beans from a large silver bag into the grinder, preparing for the morning rush that was inevitably coming. “I just kind of can’t believe you’d say no to that guy,” he said.

I put my towel down on the counter, crossing my arms. “Why’s that?”

Patrick lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, I saw him yesterday,” he said. “He looks like some sort of male model.”

“He does not.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right—he’s even better. He seemed nice and hot, which is the rarest combination of them all.”

“Oh come on, you only saw him for approximately one minute,” I said. “Also, you’re my manager, not my life coach. Why do you care what guys I go for?”

Patrick was technically my boss, as the owner of Brew For You, but our relationship had been friendly long before he’d ever opened the shop. I’d gone to school with him and we’d always been good acquaintances—he was one of the few popular people in high school who would talk to me despite my status as “one of the weird punk kids.” When he’d opened Brew For You, he had known I was looking for work, and I’d been working there ever since.

Patrick shrugged, grinning. “Just sayin’, a guy like that won’t be on the market for long. You’re the one who was telling me you’re getting tired of anonymous hookups.”

“I’m not tired of them, really, just… they aren’t as fun as they used to be,” I said. “Well, except, the one with him kinda was.”

“You’re kidding me,” Patrick said, meeting my eyes.

“What?”

“You already hooked up with him? You said he was just some guy who was new in town!”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but yeah, I kinda… sorta… hooked up with him at the wedding,” I said, keeping my voice low so that none of the customers in the shop could hear me.

Patrick shook his head. “You’re lucky you’re my employee,” he said, “I would smack you right now if it wasn’t workplace inappropriate.”

“What did I do?”

“What you did is complain to me for the past three months about how you were never going to have another wedding hookup again. Do your promises even mean anything to you, Emmett?”

I sighed. “I tried, Patrick, I really did. But this guy, Ryan… he really wanted it. Something about him made my brain go haywire. I can’t explain it.”

“And did you feel good about yourself afterward?”

I paused, inspecting the espresso machine and pretending to clean it. “I mean, I didn’t feel great,” I said.

“Do you feel bad because you did it, or do you feel bad because you secretly want more?”

I turned on the espresso grinder, pausing while the loud, abrasive sound filled the room. Patrick rolled his eyes, knowing full well that I’d purposely started the grinding so that I didn’t have to answer his question.

After it stopped, I let out a sigh.

“You should let that guy buy you a drink,” Patrick said. “You complain about being sick of hookups, and then a guy like this falls into your lap, and you don’t jump on it?”

“I have a very good reason not to jump on it.”

“What’s that?”

I turned to Patrick. “Ryan has a… a baby,” I said in a hushed whisper.

He stared at me blankly. “So? Lots of people have kids.”

“So?” I said, “So, clearly he is well-off, smart, stable enough to have a baby, and he fucking cries at wedding ceremonies. The guy is the polar opposite of me. He would probably recoil in horror if he ever saw how I live. Do you want to guess what I had for dinner last night?”

“Not really.”

“Half a tray of brownies. That is the level of adult that I am.”

“I see nothing wrong with that. You’re thirty-two, you can do whatever you want.”

“I live like an overgrown child. No self-respecting guy is going to want to deal with my shit for any length of time.”

“Opposites attract, Emmett.”

I shook my head. “Not like this. I guarantee you, he’s probably somewhere right now putting together a mood board for what he wants his future wedding to look like. No thank you,” I said, grabbing the empty bag of beans that Patrick had left on the bar, and shoving it into the trash.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Patrick said under his breath, nodding once toward the front door.

I turned around, and through the window, I could see Ryan crossing the street, wrapped up in his scarf, jacket, and hat. He was headed right for the coffee shop.

“Fuck,” I said, running my hands through my probably disheveled hair. “Why the hell is he coming in again? He was just here yesterday.”

Patrick laughed. “Looks like you care more about him than you claim to,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said, but Patrick was already disappearing into the back of the store. Of course. He was leaving me up here alone to help Ryan. I was on my own, and I felt my heart rate spike as Ryan entered the shop.

I didn’t know what I was more anxious about: was he here to tell me something? Was he going to try to ask me out again? Obviously I would say no, even if he did—but some part of me was stupidly hoping he would, after my conversation with Patrick.

It was nice to be wanted, even if the person wanting you was so clearly wrong for you in every way.

Ryan met my eyes and smiled at me as he walked in, his cheeks flushed slightly from the cold. I looked down at the little garland we had wrapped around the register, trying not to make it obvious that I’d been staring at him since he was on the other side of the street.

“Morning,” he said as he came up to the counter. He rubbed his hands together. “Whoo, it is cold out.”

“Warmer now that you’re here,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat as I realized what I’d said. “I just mean—it’s cold out, and we’ve got the heat on in here,” I said too quickly, cursing at myself internally.

“I am in full agreement with you,” he said, pulling off his hat. His hair wasn’t even messed up or matted into hat-hair—I swore, the guy was some sort of superhuman being.

“Small coffee?” I asked, remembering what he’d been drinking the day before.

He looked up, his eyes dancing over the menu boards. “I don’t know. What do you guys have here that’s good?”

“Everything we have is good,” I said, leaning on the counter. When he lifted his eyebrows, I shrugged in response. “What? It’s true. I can’t lie.”

“What do you like best?” Ryan asked.

“I like all kinds of stuff,” I said. My eyes drifted to his mouth—he was biting his bottom lip as he browsed the menu, and it was distracting. “How about I make you a latte?”

“A plain latte? Is that too boring?”

“It’s not boring if you do it correctly,” I said, reaching over to grab a clean mug.

Ryan met my eyes, a smile spreading across his face. “And I can only assume you do it perfectly.”

“I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

“Sounds great,” Ryan said. “But make it a large. I’ve gotta get some work done this morning. I’ve got four junior software developers in the city who are probably wondering why their boss isn’t online right now,” he said. Of course, he had some important-sounding job in tech—I was standing around bragging about how well I could make a glorified cup of coffee, and he had a whole team of workers waiting on him. I turned quickly and headed over to the espresso machine, pulling the shots and getting the milk out of the fridge below.

As I worked, my movements were unusually jerky and clumsy. Something about him, standing right there, watching me work, made me feel nervous and exposed. He had seen me half-naked, for God’s sake, and yet making a cup of coffee for him felt so much more intimidating.

I knew why, really. When we’d been having sex, we’d been fully in my wheelhouse. I knew how to make a guy come. Ryan and I had been equals, in that small supply closet—actually, I had been the one with the advantage and experience.

But did he pity me, seeing me working here? I was in my thirties, just like him, and yet he’d probably never worked a food service job in his whole life. I could see the gleam of his watch out of the corner of my eye as I worked, and I wondered if it was more expensive than my monthly rent.

“Been busy here this morning?” Ryan asked over the sound of the milk steamer.

I looked over my shoulder. “Not really, actually,” I said. “Tuesdays are one of our slowest days. Especially after around eight o’clock when all the professors have already come through. It should pick up soon, though.”

He nodded.

“I’m sure your work will be a lot more demanding than mine, this morning,” I said.

He smiled. “It can be a lot sometimes, but I’d be lost without it.”

I wondered what that was like, having a job you truly loved. I didn’t mind making coffee—I liked it—but I would never have said it was my ideal career. Graphic design was my dream, but especially in Rose Falls, I couldn’t compete. There were so many artists in town with far more education than me, and I had long since accepted that graphic design would probably always be just a hobby.

“No baby in tow today?” I asked. “She with her mom?” For me, talking about babies might as well have been speaking a foreign language. But I didn’t know what else to say. Maybe this was just further proof that we were completely incompatible outside of a supply closet, and that the only thing we had in common was how much we liked sucking each other’s dicks.

“I have a babysitter with Anna until noon, so I’m going to try my best to finish all my work by then. So far, since I moved here, I’ve been failing at that. Lot of late nights.”

“This is a good place to get work done,” I said. “Or so I hear.”

I spent extra time on the design in the milk foam—I usually didn’t bother with latte art, but for some reason, I wanted to impress him in whatever way I could. I painted a leaf with the foam but fucked up the finishing touch right at the end. I swore lightly under my breath before bringing it over to him.

“Here you go,” I said, pushing the drink slowly across the bar. He pulled out his wallet, taking out some cash, and I shook my head. “No,” I said, “Trust me, this one is on the house. I owe you.”

He smiled, putting away his wallet, but he dropped the five-dollar bill in the tip jar anyway. “Okay. But tomorrow, you’re going to have to let me pay. The design on this is amazing, by the way.”

“Not my best work,” I said, “but thanks.” He took a sip, nodding in approval, his eyes widening a little as I watched him. My cheeks were still a little hot.

“Delicious. This will keep me going,” he said. “Thank you.”

“I’ll stop bothering you now and let you get to work.”

“You aren’t bothering me at all,” he said, his eyes softening. “I need to talk to someone who isn’t six months old sometimes.”

I nodded once. “Glad to hear I have better verbal processing than a baby.” Shit. Was that rude? “Um, enjoy the latte.”

Luckily, Ryan laughed. “Thank you, Emmett.”

He went to sit at the far corner of the store, sandwiched in between two sleepy-looking students hunched over laptops. In comparison to them, Ryan looked like some sort of glowing god—it was only a little past eight in the morning, and yet he was clean-showered, energized, and had perfect posture as he sat over his shiny computer. For all I knew, he’d already run many miles that morning. People like him always seemed to go for long runs early in the day.

I jumped slightly as the door to the back swung open behind me, breaking my train of thought. Patrick came through, walking up to the counter next to me.

“Nice timing,” I said, arching an eyebrow at him.

He grinned. “I thought you just might need some time up here on your own,” he said, keeping his voice low. “How was it?”

“How was what? Serving a customer a latte? It was fine.”

“You guys have plans to meet up again?”

“Of course not,” I said, darting a glance back over to Ryan, making sure that he wasn’t watching us behind the bar. “It’s not going to happen, Patrick. I had an awkward little conversation with him about the weather and his job, and he told me about his babysitter.”

“Sounds like the beginnings of something beautiful, to me,” he said, cleaning off the milk steamer wand with a wet rag.

I shook my head, stealing one more glance at Ryan, who now had a big pair of headphones on and looked completely absorbed in his work. “Nope,” I said. “He’s just another nice customer.”

I finally began to realize that this was what my relationship with Ryan would be. He’d probably come in sometimes, do work, tip well, and that would be it. It was good that we’d be able to be pleasant with one another, and hopefully it would stop being so awkward over time.

It was hard to believe that same man, sitting so diligently and doing his work, had been so needy and vulnerable with me just two nights ago.

But it was simpler this way. Maybe after a while, I’d forget all about his strong hands against the small of my back, forget the warmth of his breath against my skin when he’d kissed me slowly in the dark.

Before long he’d just be an acquaintance like anyone else.

* * *

I wouldn’t say that I was waiting for Ryan to come in the next day, but the thought floated through my mind as I opened up the store and served the morning rush their cups of coffee. It was rattling around the back of my mind like a song you can’t quite get out of your head—Ryan’s face, how maddeningly adorable he’d looked when he was absorbed in his work, and the fact that I got to steal glances at him for a few hours yesterday morning.

It was a bad road to be going down mentally, of course, but when had I ever let that stop me?

So on Wednesday morning when I saw him walk through the front door again, I had to work to suppress a smile.

I was an idiot. But he was nice to look at, and a breath of fresh air compared to our usual clientele.

“Large latte?” I said as he came up to the counter. He shook his head.

“I want to try something new,” he said. “Need some excitement in my life.”

“Okay, what sort of flavor are you looking for?”

“Surprise me,” he said, smiling at me before heading over to the same table he’d sat at the day before.

I turned to the back of the bar, finally letting myself smile as I brainstormed what to give him. I hadn’t seen him order a sweet drink before, so I didn’t know if he’d like that, but I decided to go out on a limb and try making him a dirty chai. Two shots of espresso in an otherwise sweet and spicy drink was always good on a cold day.

I brought the drink over to the table where he was sitting and carefully placed it down in front of him.

When he glanced up at me, I got a sudden flashback to when he’d glanced up at me from below, in the supply closet at the wedding, right before he’d taken my cock between his lips. I swallowed hard, averting my eyes from his gaze.

The last thing I needed was an unwanted hard-on while I was at work. I needed to get my mind out of the damn gutter.

“This looks great,” he said, sliding the drink forward. “What is it?”

“Give it a try,” I said.

He sipped, humming low as he drank. “That is incredible. Chai? With something else?”

“Chai with espresso,” I said. “Sweet, but with a bitter back edge to it.”

“Mmm,” he said. “Best things in life are both bitter and sweet. Coffee, spices, people….”

I nodded, standing at the side of the table for a beat too long before turning and heading back behind the bar.

The morning rush was surprisingly late on Wednesday and lasted for an absurdly long time. After the crowds finally died down I had to wash a mountain of dishes in the back, and when I walked back out to the front of the store, Ryan’s table was vacant.

While cleaning the table, I saw that he’d tucked a ten-dollar bill and a small folded piece of paper underneath his empty mug. I opened the note.

Thank you, Emmett. See you tomorrow. -RB

I almost crinkled up the paper and tossed it in the trash, but at the last minute, I tucked it into my pocket instead.

* * *

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I bake.

Cakes, cookies, brownies, muffins, bread—it can be anything, though realistically, it most often ends up being things that indulge my sweet tooth. On a morning when nothing else seemed right, it was beyond relaxing to feel the rasp of a whisk against a mixing bowl.

On Thursday morning, I woke up much earlier than normal. I’d had too many dreams in the morning and knew that sleep was no longer an option. So I got up, found that I had three lemons that were going to go bad sooner rather than later, and got to work baking a lemon cake. I lost track of time icing it, cutting it up, and putting two big pieces into Tupperware containers, and before long I realized I needed to leave for work fifteen minutes ago. I booked it to the coffee shop, my lungs burning slightly in the bitter cold. The sky was a blanket of grey, and when I was a couple blocks away from work, wet splatters of snow began falling across my face. I ran in through the back door at Brew For You seven minutes late.

I caught my breath as I slipped my snow-spackled jacket off and nodded to Patrick, who was setting up in the back of the store.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

Patrick waved a hand. “No biggie. I’ve been holding down the fort. What’s that? Did you bring cake?”

“Yup. Iced lemon. Have at it.”

“Fuck yes. You can be late every day if you bribe me with sweets. We need to start selling this in the store.”

“I think lemon cake would be better than the egg sandwiches you were trying to sell last month.” I pulled my apron on over my head, taking in a big lungful of air.

Patrick grabbed the top container and dug in. “Who’s the second one for?”

“Whoever wants it,” I said with a shrug.

He hummed. “Bullshit.”

I met his eyes. “What?”

“You brought that piece for your favorite Mr. Beautiful Wedding Hookup Guy, and you know it.”

“I did not.”

“I call it as I see it,” Patrick said.

I paused. “I might give it to him, but only because he’s been tipping so damn well.”

“I know you’re waiting for the moment he comes into the shop today. Don’t lie,” Patrick said.

“Ugh, no. I hope he doesn’t come in, actually. I always act like a goddamn idiot around him.” I picked up two gallons of milk from the back room and brought them out to the front. Patrick followed behind me.

“You definitely do seem more nervous around him,” he said.

I glanced up at him. “I do?” I hadn’t realized it had been that noticeable. Apparently, I’d been making a bigger fool of myself than I’d even known.

“Yeah,” Patrick said, “You do.”

I sighed. “It’s awful. Nobody gets me all nervous like that. Usually I’m the one making people nervous.”

Patrick laughed, finishing his slice of cake. “Emmett, the only time people get nervous around you is when they hear the awful music you listen to.”

“There is no better music than punk music, Patrick, shut up. I know you’d prefer Enya,” I said, grinning at him.

“Now, you definitely did make people nervous in high school,” he said. “Green hair, nose ring, making out with guys in the hallways….”

“If anybody was bothered by me being openly bisexual in high school, that was their own problem,” I said. “And you remember my green hair? Admit it; the hair was cool.”

Patrick nodded. “Okay, fine. It was kinda cool.”

The first rush of the day started soon after, but otherwise the morning passed slowly. When eight o’clock rolled around, I found myself checking the front door every time I heard it jingle.

Ryan was nowhere to be found, though. I made coffee for students, professors, and people from town, but when nine o’clock came, I had all but accepted that Ryan wouldn’t be coming in.

It was a little weird, considering his note had said he’d see me today. But I had no clue what he was doing. I didn’t know anything about his life, actually, and as I worked the rest of my shift, that realization started to gnaw at me. What was I doing, really? I’d developed some weird fixation on a guy I’d had sex with once and certainly had no future with. All I knew about him was that he was new in town, had a baby, worked for a software company, and that he was good with his mouth.

By the end of my shift at one o’clock, I was exhausted, irritated, and just wanted to go home. I grabbed the remaining piece of uneaten lemon cake from the back room and headed out. I had to stop at the grocery store on the way back home—I had no food left, and I refused to let another day go by where I ate only cake for dinner—so I braced myself against the windy snow flurries, making my way to the supermarket.

A few minutes into the store trip, when I rounded the corner to the pasta aisle, I got hit with a wallop of sound. There was a baby wailing at the other end of the aisle, having a complete and total meltdown. I averted my eyes, trying to get down the aisle and get the pasta as quickly as I could.

But when I approached I heard a familiar voice. A voice I knew.

It was Ryan.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, it was him—here in the store, with his baby. I turned to the side, pretending to look at jars full of artichoke hearts. Ryan was facing the other way, and I was fairly certain he hadn’t seen me.

“Anna-banana, sweetie, what do you need?” he was saying, drowned out by her wailing, and when I turned to steal a glance at him again, he was picking her up. He leaned back, lifting her in the air.

The sound of crashing heavy glass clattered through the aisle, and I shouted involuntarily, jumping back. The baby went silent for a fraction of a second before her screams doubled in intensity, startled by the sound of the falling glass. When I turned back toward them, a pool of white sauce was forming a river in the center of the aisle. Ryan’s elbow had caught on a display case full of Alfredo sauce jars, and there was broken glass everywhere, at least a dozen jars cracked open and spilling out.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I put my grocery basket on the ground and ran over to Ryan’s side. “Ryan—is she okay? Do you need help?”

“Oh my God,” he said, gripping Anna close and looking down at his Alfredo-splattered pants and shoes. “Shh, shh, it’s okay baby,” he said to her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. It did no good, her face still twisted up and red.

Ryan was sweating, disheveled, and looked like he was about to come apart at the seams.

“Jesus, Emmett—I’m sorry,” he said.

“Let me go get help,” I said, nodding once before turning and running back down the aisle to find a worker. After a minute a pimply teenaged worker sauntered down the aisle with a big squeegee and a mop in a bucket. Anna was still screaming like it was the end of the world, and an old woman in the aisle was gawking at us from under her thick glasses.

“God, you’re soaked,” I said, watching the white sauce soak into his perfectly tailored pants.

“I know. But I can’t put her down; she will go nuclear,” Ryan said. “She’s been like this all morning.”

Shit. So this meltdown wasn’t already nuclear?

“Um,” I said, my mind racing. “I can—I can take her,” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth before I really thought about them.

Ryan looked at me, his eyes wild and red-rimmed. “Really?”

I pulled in a breath, nodding. My hands suddenly felt clammy, and I wiped them quickly on my pants before holding out my arms. “Yeah. Let me take her, and you can at least take care of your pants in the bathroom before going home to change.”

Ryan looked like he had just been told he’d won the lottery. I didn’t know why—it was literally the least I could do, and for most people, it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all. But clearly Ryan seemed to know that I wasn’t exactly used to holding babies. “Thank you, Emmett. God, thank you,” he said. He held out Anna toward me, and I took her under the arms, lifting her squirming body toward me.

Holy shit. Baby. In my hands.

She was warm, and a lot heavier than I’d expected. The last time I’d held a baby had been twenty-one years ago when my baby sister Natalie was born, and even then, I’d only done it a few times.

This was something else entirely.

Anna kept screaming as I held her against my chest, and I tried spinning slightly and bouncing her, but nothing helped.

“It’s ok, Anna,” I said toward her ear. “Your dad needs to get that sauce off his legs. It would be horrible, otherwise. Just think of all the dogs that could come after him in a parking lot!”

Yeah, great, Emmett, I thought to myself, tell the baby how dogs are going to think her dad’s Alfredo-pants are a snack. You’re definitely not the worst person ever right now.

Anna stopped crying when she saw the grocery clerk begin to use the mop, and took a brief interest in the swishing motion it made. For a second, I thought I’d won. But the screams started right back up again a second later.

I carried her up and down the aisle, rubbing her back until Ryan appeared again a few minutes later. His pants were wet at the bottom and certainly didn’t look good, but at least there was no more thick sauce on them.

“You are amazing,” he said, holding out his arms. I passed Anna back to him, and finally she began to calm down.

“Are you okay, Ryan?” I asked, a little hesitant.

“Today has been monumentally awful,” he said. “My babysitter canceled early, and of course it was the one morning where work really needed me to be available. I had a screaming baby in the background of my conference call, and then it started snowing, and Anna has just been upset all day long. I was just coming here to get pasta and some jars of sauce, but clearly I can’t even do that right today.”

Wow. Ryan was really flustered in a way that I’d never seen. Of course, I knew that he was only human, but in my mind, I had decided that he was kind of an abnormally perfect human. It was still a shock to see him in such a different state than his normal cool, calm and collected.

“Um,” I said, pointing to a small piece of something stuck to the bottom of his shirt. “What’s that?”

He craned his neck around Anna, looking down. I reached out and pulled it off.

“That,” he said, his face falling, “is a Cheerio. That Cheerio has probably been there since this morning when I fed Anna breakfast.”

I couldn’t help it—a smile spread over my lips.

“I’m a mess,” Ryan said, but a second later, he started smiling, too.

“You might be a teeny bit of a mess right now,” I said, “but don’t worry, people as good-looking as you look great even in disheveled-mode. If I’d had your morning, I’d probably look like a half-dead rat at the bottom of a sewer.”

“I certainly feel like that right now.”

I turned back, reaching for my grocery basket. I’d put the slice of lemon cake inside. “I, uh… I made a lemon cake this morning, and I was going to offer it to you in the coffee shop,” I said. I reached around him and placed it in his grocery cart. “You can have it later. It’s nothing special.”

“You cooked that?”

“I baked it, yeah,” I said.

“Wow,” he said, “I don’t even know what to say—thank you. You’re an angel, you know that?”

I laughed. “You’re probably the first person in my entire life who’s ever called me that.”

“It’s true. I come here looking for boring jarred pasta sauce, and I get to go home with a cake you made from scratch. You’re good people, Emmett.”

I reached up to bury a hand in my hair. “You, uh… you were just gonna get one of the jarred pasta sauces?”

He nodded. “I can’t cook even on a normal day, and on a day like this, boring pasta is the easiest thing I can manage.”

“Hm,” I said, pausing and gazing over at the cans of whole tomatoes. “You know… I make my own simple pasta sauce all the time,” I said. “Do you have olive oil and salt at home?”

He nodded.

“All you really have to do is get an onion, dice it up, sauté it, add the whole tomatoes, then if you’ve got some good herbs, maybe fresh basil—and wait. You do have a blender right? If you’ve got one, then—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Emmett,” he said, shaking his head. “It sounds great, but I’m just telling you right now, with full honesty… I’m not making my own pasta sauce today, no matter how easy it might be. I told you, I’m not a cook. I wish I could.”

“Of course—Jesus, I’m sorry. You’ve got your hands full.”

I met his eyes, seeing the dark circles that had formed beneath them, and the utter resignation in his face. And for the first time since meeting him, I actually felt like there was something I could do for him—something I could give him that actually had value.

It was a long shot, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was help him.

“Or… I could come over and make it for you,” I said.

His eyes shot wide. “What? Hey, you don’t have to do that—you’ve already helped so much,” he said.

“I want to,” I said. “I was just going to go home and make it for myself anyway. You certainly seem like you could use the help today… I mean, if that’s something you’d even want.”

I saw a flash of something in Ryan’s eyes as he watched me, something I had no idea how to read.

But then a moment later, Anna let out a piercing cry, and Ryan broke my gaze, soothing his baby again. I picked up my shopping basket. It was clearly time for me to say goodbye.

“Alright,” Ryan said from behind me, and I turned to meet his eyes. “Pasta and homemade sauce sounds like an amazing dinner. I can’t promise Anna will do anything other than cry the whole time, though. I’m sure it’ll be the last time you ever try to help me out.”

I turned to him and shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”