I had no idea of the many ways my life would change that day.

I sat at the kitchen counter eating a bowl of cereal, just like any other day, as my mother bustled through the room, her white lab coat draped over her arm. My father followed behind her, but he’d left his white coat at the office, apparently.

Dad poured two insulated tumblers of coffee, one for him and one for Mom, and pushed the tops closed. Mom reached for hers with a look of worship on her face.

“Not yet,” Dad said. He slapped her on the butt and pointed toward the door. “Once you’re in the car, you can have it. You’re making me late. Again.” He glared at her.

Mom stopped and kissed my forehead, holding my face long enough to make me grimace. “We’ll meet you at the restaurant tonight,” she said. “You can ride with Aubrey.”

She brushed a lock of dark hair back from my forehead. Everyone always said I looked just like my mom. She was tall and slender, and she had jet-black hair. My dad’s was a sandy-blond, and he looked a lot like the quintessential beach bum. He could have had a surfboard beneath his arm instead of a clipboard, and one of those colorful shell necklaces rather than a stethoscope. I looked nothing like him. But my mom said I acted just like him.

“Are you sure you’re okay with me bringing her?” she asked me.

I brushed her hand away from my face. “Mom, it’s fine.”

My parents were renowned psychiatrists, the kind of doctors who helped those who couldn’t be helped. For months, my parents had been working on some special cases with a volunteer they called Lynn. Lynn had her own problems. She was a product of an abusive home, or so they’d told me. She’d been abused, and she understood the needs of the mentally ill better than anyone Mom had ever met. Mom spent a lot of time with her, and aside from work, they’d been to the mall and they’d been to lunch a few times.

Now Mom wanted to expose Lynn to more, and my birthday dinner was apparently a good place to start.

Meeting people from the hospital wasn’t anything new. Ever since I was small, I’d gone to work with my parents, and they often brought their work home. I’d played Legos with a boy who thought he was a twenty-year-old member of a rock band once. He was my age, eight, at the time. I could still remember how odd it felt, because the week before, we’d played Legos and he’d been my age. Then all of a sudden he was an “adult” who was patronizing me by playing with me.

That wasn’t the only time. There were others. There were people so heavily medicated that they couldn’t speak. And there were others who couldn’t stop chattering. Once when my mom took me to the hospital where they both worked, they let me meet a woman who had to be restrained before I could go into the room. She’d begged to meet me when Mom told her she had a son, and she gave me a chocolate chip cookie recipe while I was with her. The next week, I baked them and delivered them to her. I’d never seen a grin like hers. She died a few weeks later of a self-inflicted wound, but in that moment she was happy, and I’d been the cause of it.

I grew up in that world. It was what I knew. So inviting someone from the hospital to my birthday party, well, that was a normal event.

My parents said they’d been grooming me to follow in their footsteps. However, their footsteps were too big for me to fill. They were the rock stars of mental health. They spoke at conferences and flew all over the world, and they still treated patients. Now, though, they only took the ones no one else could help.

Mom and Dad murmured to one another as they crossed the room.

“How many of them are there, again?” I heard my dad ask as he followed her to the door. He held her coffee cup high over his head, and she pretended to jump for it.

“There are at least four,” she said.

“That you’ve met,” he replied.

She breathed out a heavy sigh. “That I’ve met, yes.” She opened the door and then turned back. “Oh!” she cried and grinned at me. “Happy birthday!”

“Happy birthday, son,” my dad parroted.

I waved a hand at them, still hunched over my bowl of cereal, and watched them as they left. To be as smart as they were, my parents were a little scatter-brained.

I finished my cereal and put my empty bowl in the sink. I had to be at school in thirty minutes, but I still had time to see my girlfriend.

I walked to her house and she ran out the door to greet me. Aubrey had been my girlfriend since last year. We’d met on my fifteenth birthday. She was everything I wanted, and I think she wanted me just as much.

She was two months older than me, so she already had her driver’s license. I got in the passenger seat of her car and she leaned over to kiss me. “Happy birthday,” she muttered against my lips. She laid a small box in my lap, her hand all but shaking as she slid it across my thigh. “Open it,” she said. She covered her mouth and let out a little squeal, then leaned her head forward.

Her hair fell in a curtain around her face, so I pushed it back and tucked it behind her ear. “You don’t want to wait and give it to me at the party?” I asked.

She snorted. “I don’t think you’ll want to open this one in front of your parents.” She nodded toward the box. “Open it.”

I slowly untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Everything in me froze when I saw the contents. On a small bed of cotton lay a single condom in a shiny blue foil wrapper. “Aubrey…” I looked up and met her eyes. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, catching her lower lip between her teeth, holding it for a moment, and then releasing it. “I’m sure.”

Although we’d been dating for a year and all our friends were doing it, we hadn’t done it yet. I’d been ready for quite a while, but she wasn’t. Or at least she hadn’t been. “You’re positive?” I asked.

She nodded, holding tightly to her lip again. “I’m positive,” she said decisively.

“This weekend?”

She nodded again, and then she leaned over to kiss me.

“We’re going to be late,” she said against my lips.

“I know,” I replied without truly lifting my lips from hers. I didn’t care. It was the best birthday ever, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of it.

---

I sat next to Aubrey, waiting for my parents to show up at my birthday dinner. They were thirty minutes late. Aubrey and I had already had two appetizers and my parents were still nowhere to be found. I looked up, searching the crowd, hoping they would show up soon.

Aubrey glanced down at her watch. “I have to be home by ten,” she reminded me.

It was already nine o’clock. My parents always ruined everything.

I supposed I could forgive them. I was going to have sex with my girlfriend this weekend. There was no way Mom and Dad could sink my mood.

The clearing of a throat broke me from my thoughts of sex and Aubrey. I looked up to find someone looking down at me. She had long hair that hung around her shoulders like a blanket. It was the color of the scotch my dad drank at night in his office, and it was completely straight. I stood up, because what else could I do in the presence of such beauty.

“Mason?” she asked. She tugged on the long sleeve of her black ribbed turtleneck. She had it tucked into a pair of tight blue jeans. Yet she looked classy and sophisticated.

“Yes?” I said.

She jerked a thumb toward the door. “Your mom went to the restroom, and your dad is parking the car. They said to come and find you.” She laughed, and I felt like the sound of it settled into my soul and made me happy too. A grin tugged at my lips. She stuck out a hand. “I’m Lynn.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” I stared at her. Because faced with a beauty like hers, I couldn’t help but stare. Her blue eyes met mine, and she glanced away quickly, like I’d embarrassed her with my scrutiny.

I suddenly realized that her hand still hung there in the air between us, so I reached out and took it, planning to give it a firm shake. But the moment I touched her, electricity shot up my arm and straight down my spine. All the hairs on my arms and my head stood up. Hell, even the hair on my balls stood tall. She was electrically charged, and I had no idea why.

She gasped and jerked her hand back, wiping it on the leg of her jeans.

What was that? I had no idea.

Aubrey elbowed my side, coughing like she’d just sucked down a cherry pit. “Oh,” I said. “This is Aubrey.”

Lynn cocked her head to the side. “A friend of yours?” she asked. She reached out to shake hands with Aubrey. Aubrey offered her no more than her fingertips and a snotty smile. For the first time ever, I wondered what I saw in Aubrey. I’d never wondered that before, but now…

Now, I had no idea. The comparison between the two of them wasn’t a fair one. Lynn looked like she’d just stepped down off a cloud. And Aubrey…well, she was just Aubrey. She was a fixture in my life.

“I’m his girlfriend,” Aubrey said when I didn’t answer. She dug her elbow into my ribs again.

“It’s lovely to meet you both,” Lynn said quietly. My mom and dad appeared, and Dad held out a chair for Lynn.

“Where do you go to school?” I asked her.

“I’m homeschooled,” she replied as she took a bite of the appetizer the server had brought to the table.

“What’s that like?”

She laughed and shrugged delicately. “I don’t know. What’s regular school like?” She leaned toward me like she was waiting for me to impart the meaning of life. Her blue eyes sparkled.

Two hours later, I looked up and realized that Aubrey was gone. I didn’t remember her leaving. I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off Lynn the whole night.

That weekend, I broke up with Aubrey. I hurt her feelings in the process and I hated doing that, but I knew the minute that I saw Lynn that she was the one for me. I didn’t want anyone else. Ever.