My heart up in my throat, I walked back to the house and followed Lew inside. I remembered it like it was yesterday, the same cheerful yellow hallway, the same hardwood floor. Lew’s mom had changed the living room, painted it white instead of green, and everything inside it was screamingly loud primary color that should have been obnoxious but instead made the place seem fun and cheerful.

The kitchen was changed too, white cupboards and dark countertops. Lots of red in here. Lew was setting out the chicken on the old round table in the breakfast nook. “Plates are in the same place,” he told me. “You can get a couple down for us.”

I did as I was told, doing my best to be absolutely perfect with this new leaf I’d turned over. I also grabbed forks and a couple of tall glasses, though I had to hunt for those because they weren’t where they used to be when we were in high school.

“Thank you,” Lew said and took his plate and glass. “You want water or something else? There might be beer in there, but we’ll have to replace it. It’s Dad’s.”

“Water’s fine.” If I was going to eat this chicken, I needed to cut out calories where I could.

While he filled our glasses, I started doling out chicken and spicy fries, setting the cake aside for later. Maybe I could get out of eating that somehow.

Lew came to a dead stop at the end of the table, eyeing our plates. “There’s more than enough for both of us in the box.”

“I know better than to come between you and your chicken,” I joked. He had two large breasts on his plate and a chicken wing, plus fries, while I had a smaller breast and a leg and about half as many fries.

“Were you serious about that ten pounds thing?” he said in a doubtful voice.

“I was, but it doesn’t mean I can’t eat with you,” I said seriously. “I just have to make sure I’m burning off an extra five hundred calories a day.” I looked down at my plate. “Damn you, Grandpa, for making such fantastic chicken.”

He snickered, but he was frowning too. “That can’t be healthy.”

“I have a nutritionist. She’s going to shit kittens when she hears about this.” I picked up the longest fry on my plate and stuck the end of it in my mouth with an ecstatic moan. “Damn. L.A. has nothing on this.” I chewed away happily, thinking the only thing better than this was sex with Lew.

“You aren’t fat,” Lew snapped.

I stopped chewing and swallowed, recognizing the signs of Lew on the rampage. “No, I know that. But the camera really does add ten pounds. And if I get this part, I’ll have my shirt off a lot. Gotta make sure it looks good.” I ran my hand over my chest and my belly and hid my hopeful excitement as his eyes followed the movement.

“What’s the movie?” he asked, finally sitting down.

“The Kentucky Boys is the name. Kind of a bro show, two country boys saving the world. Word is they’re probably going to sign Tam Laydon for one of the brothers and my agent says she can get me an audition for the other one.”

Lew froze with the skin from one of the chicken breasts halfway to his mouth. “He’s omega, isn’t he?”

I nodded. Everyone knew about Tam Laydon, the omega who played entirely against type. “He’s good, though. Really good. Like, should have an Oscar good, if he had the right movie script.” I picked up another fry and put it in my mouth. “I met him at a party one night. Nice guy, but he came with one alpha and went home with two others. Crazy wild. Not at all my type.” I took a drink of water and watched Lew from underneath my eyelids.

“Oh,” Lew said and popped the chicken skin into his mouth.

A little jealous, Lew? If he was, that was good. It meant I hadn’t killed off all the feelings there. But I didn’t want him to feel jealous because that would mean he was worried I was going to dump him again. I wasn’t, but he couldn’t know that. And if I wanted him to be a part of my life in L.A., I needed to make sure to shoot down any worries he had whenever that part of my life came up.

I had to be honest with myself—sometimes I was slow to figure things out. But once you hit me with that two-by-four, the lesson generally stayed with me.

“Someone I think you would like is this guy that works training animals for movies and TV,” I told him. “He mostly works with horses, but he handles smaller animals too. He had this little rodent thing, I think it was a chinchilla? Used to ride on his shoulder all the time. Softest thing I’ve ever touched, but really bossy. You could pat, but you had to pay the Chinchilla Price.”

He smiled and put his chin in his hand. “What was that?”

“Usually food.” I grinned. “Jamie was the guy’s name. He hated when we gave her donuts because she’d get greedy and cranky. But she got so excited over them we couldn’t help ourselves.”

Lew laughed and reached for his chicken again. "I never thought about that part of the business."

"Me neither. I used to think it was just actors and directors and the guys running the equipment, but it's a ton of other people too and some of their jobs are really weird." I picked up my chicken leg and bit into it.

"Huh," Lew said, and took a bite of his breast. The juice from the meat ran down his chin and he laughed and hunched over his plate.

I handed him a napkin and ate some more chicken, mentally calculating the calories I was going to have to work off after this.

We talked casually about our lives for the rest of lunch, nothing too stressful, and stayed well away from anything to do with our futures, either together or apart. By the time we'd finished the bread pudding, it had started to feel like old times. We cleaned up the table and put the left-over chicken in the fridge for later snacking. I was trying to figure out if I could find a way to extend the visit, when Lew put a cautious hand on my arm and said, "They're doing a movie marathon of Maddie's shows today on one of the channels. Want to watch a few? I'll have to grab a nap later, though—my schedule is switching to nights tonight."

"Sure. I won't keep you up long."

He shrugged. "I'll let you know."

He led me downstairs to the family room his dad had put in back a few years before Lew and I had started dating. There was a bedroom and a small bathroom at the far end and through the half-open door I could see the room looked live in. "You sleeping down here now?"

Lew nodded. "Mom helps out with Ardan’s kids and they needed rooms upstairs. And I kind of wanted something... I don't know. I was thinking about moving out but Mom offered this. The rent's good, anyway." He grinned and sat on the end of the couch. The remote for the TV lay on the arm of the couch and he touched a button to turn up the sound. "Sit down."

I took the other end of the couch, careful not to get too close. If he wanted something more, he'd have to come to me. Knowing Lew, when he made up his mind, I wouldn't be left in any doubt of what he'd decided.

"Oh, I remember this one," I said when I got a look at the screen. It was an old Gothic romance, not one of her best films but there were some good scenes and occasional flashes of brilliance in the writing.

"Yeah. Her clothes were stupid," Lew said.

I laughed. "They were, but you remember the drinking game?"

"Not for this one." He tossed a cushion at me. "I remember some of the other ones."

"How did we survive high school?" I wondered, thinking about the parties in the woods.

“Dumb luck,” Lew said, like it was obvious.

Maybe he had a point.

We watched that movie all the way through—and made fun of most of it while we were doing it, because it really wasn’t one of Grandma’s most shining roles. Then one of Lew’s favorites came on, A Summer Romance, and he gradually slouched down into the cushions of the couch until he was lying with his head on the arm and his feet only inches from me.

Keeping my hands off him was going to be difficult—it was so tempting to pull his legs up on top of mine and rest my hands on them. But I reminded myself, over and over again, that we were doing this on Lew’s timeline and this time the idea seemed to stick. Probably because I knew that if I blew it again, we were done.

Permanently. Lew had always been generous and warm-hearted, but he was smart and practical too. If even I could see that no good could come out of the relationship if I couldn’t learn how to be a better partner, then that understanding had to be shouting at Lew. So I kept my hands to myself and tried to enjoy the movie. And when the urge to touch him grew almost impossible to ignore, I reminded myself of the five years of sitting beside Lew on the couch watching movies that I’d missed out on because I was an idiot and a fool.

Here’s to a hard lesson. Let’s hope it works.

When the movie ended, Lew stretched a little and sat up. “I’m going to have to kick you out,” he said, with what I thought might have been a little regret. “I have to get some sleep before my shift tonight.”

“Sure,” I said, with more complaisance than I was feeling. “You want to do something tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.” He turned the television off and stood up—my cue to start moving toward the door, I guessed. “I usually come home and sleep until the middle of the afternoon after these. What were you thinking?”

“Petting zoo?”

He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Why not?” There was a good one about forty-five minutes out of town. It might have been a weird idea for a date, but it would give me a chance to tell more stories from Hollywood and make him laugh some more. “Unless you have something else in mind?”

He tipped his head to one side and squinted at me. “No, not really. All right, petting zoo it is. I won’t be ready to go until at least three, though.”

“That’s okay. I think they’re open until six. We can grab dinner somewhere on the way home, too.”

“We’ll see,” was all he said to that.

Well, it was a start. Now to prove that I could be a well-behaved alpha. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I told him and headed for the stairs without giving in to the desire to kiss him, even just a friendly kiss on the cheek. He followed me up and showed me out the door—he’d always had good company manners, even if he got a little wild when he was mad—and I got into my car and left.

Back home, Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, just finishing making dinner.

“You’re just in time,” Mom said. “Get yourself a plate.”

“Thanks.” I glanced into the frying pan and sighed. “Do you mind if I just grab a salad and a chicken breast? I can eat that tomorrow, maybe.” Or maybe not, if I was going to be eating out with Lew again.

“Are you not feeling well?” Mom asked, already reaching out to put her hand on my forehead.

“Mom, I’m fine.” I fended her off. “I had fried chicken for lunch today, is all. Tons of calories I can’t afford right now.”

Dad gave me a hard look. “Was that apology chicken?”

I nodded. “But he accepted it. And I was on my best behavior.”

He shook his head. “It needs to be your normal behavior. He’s a good boy and he’ll make someone a fine husband someday. And with anyone else he’s as smart as a whip and absolutely capable of looking after himself, so don’t you go taking advantage of that.”

“I swear,” I said, and crossed my heart. “Lew is in charge this time.” I thought about stopping there, but there was too much emotion built up. “It’s so hard! I never thought a relationship would be this hard.”

Dad put his plate down and came over to pull me into a hug. “Is he worth it?”

“Every bit of it,” I said into his shoulder. “But I’ve never been so scared.”

He rubbed my back and then stepped away. “That’s how you know it’s important.”

I nodded and wiped suddenly damp eyes. “Yeah.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “Come have dinner with your Mom and me.”

I glanced at the jambalaya cooking in the frying pan and thought about the salad fixings waiting for me in the fridge. Screw it. I’ll work it off. “Sure. Why not?”