The after-dinner bat cruise was a risky move for a first date, since it set the bar high, but I was glad I took the gamble when I saw how Kate’s eyes lit up. As the one and a half million Mexican free-tail bats came streaming out from underneath the Congress Avenue bridge where they roosted, they formed great, black rivers in the evening sky above our boat. They went out hunting every night during the summer months, feeding off mosquitos, moths, and any other unlucky insects they happened to find. And yeah, I did read the bat cruise pamphlet that came with the tickets.

“Did you know a person who studies bats is called a chiropterologist?” Kate asked me as the flow of bats tapered off from a massive flood to a trickle.

“I definitely did not know that,” I replied, impressed. Kate’s smile was sheepish.

“I learned that word from Emma,” she admitted. “She’s really good at pub quizzes.”

“They ought to just call someone that studies bats, a Batman,” I told her, pointing to the four or five young kids all dressed as the caped crusader for the occasion. They were running around the boat’s deck like a tiny, chaotic, masked army of bat-children. “I feel like it would increase youth interest in the sciences.”

Kate squinted at them. “You know, I think I recognize one of those Batkids…” she said, right as someone called her name from behind us. We turned around to see a woman approaching from the stairs.

“Cameron!” Kate cried, embracing the woman happily when she got close. “You didn’t tell me you were in town.”

The stranger grinned, snagging one of the smaller bat-children toddling past and scooping him—no her—up into her arms. “Janey and I are just here for the weekend to visit with my grandparents. She’s doing stuff with her friends tonight, so I thought I’d show Maya the bats.”

Maya, who looked somewhere between one and two years old, squealed happily in her mom’s arms and warbled something unintelligible while pointing at the last few straggling bats that were flying out. Her pudgy fingers reached up for the bats eagerly, and then towards her mom’s face. Cameron looked at me interestedly from between her daughter’s stubby digits. She looked about Kate’s age.

“This is Cole,” Kate told Cameron, introducing us. “Cole, this is my friend Cameron. We met through Emma’s old roommate Lily. She even worked at the bar for a little bit a couple years ago.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said politely. It wasn’t that Cameron didn’t seem nice and all, but I didn’t want to share Kate. Lucky for me, Maya seemed like she didn’t want to share her mom, either. She immediately began fussing when Cameron shifted her into Kate’s arms to shake my hand.

The picture of Kate holding the little girl seared into my consciousness like someone took a tattoo gun to the inside of my corneas. All of a sudden, a vision of a different life, a life that included Kate and kids that looked just like Kate but smaller, played out in a millisecond. I found myself thinking how much fulfillment it would bring me to protect and cherish our children. That was new. And terrifying.

“Likewise,” Cameron was saying, instantly reclaiming her kid, who was now fussing loud enough to make Kate pout. The dream-version of my future vanished, and I found myself missing it and being simultaneously very relieved it was gone. “I think it’s time for Bat-Maya to go eat a snack,” she said apologetically.

“Call me!” Kate called after Cameron, and she grinned and nodded over her shoulder, trying to wrangle her red-faced baby at the same time. “Babies always cry when I hold them,” Kate told me a second later. “I’m cursed. I think I must be scary or something.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “According to my uncle Jimmy, a baby can sense fear. If you’re scared, it makes them scared.”

Kate smirked at me and then laughed. “Well that explains it!” She bit her bottom lip. “I like kids a lot, you know, but I’m secretly always terrified I’m gonna’ drop them on their little heads or something and they’ll just explode like eggs,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide like she was telling me some deep, dark secret.

“I like kids, too,” I told her honestly, “but I like them a lot better from a distance at this point in my life.”

“Do you have any siblings?” she asked me, looking at me as if she should have already known the answer.

I shrugged. I’d never really considered my family as being different or incomplete, although objectively I knew my situation was a bit unique. “Biologically? Maybe. But no, in every way that matters, I was an only child.”

“That must have been nice,” Kate replied wistfully, but I could tell it was facetious. She and Ward got along well enough to successfully run a business together, and although neither wanted to admit it, they were close friends in addition to being siblings. I couldn’t help but envy their family and its closeness. Still…

“I was really lucky to be adopted by my mom,” I told her as the bat cruise began to turn back towards the dock. “She wanted to be a mother so bad, and she was great at it.” My mom didn’t let her lack of interest in romance or husbands get in the way of her maternal instinct. Single women didn’t have the easiest time with adoption agencies, either. But she fought them until she won me, and I was sure she did as good a job or better than any couple.

“Your mom raised you all alone?” Kate asked, looking at me with an expression that made me wonder if she was trying to avoid poking any sore spots that I might have about my family. She didn’t need to worry. My upbringing was fairly idyllic.

“Yep. Well, not really. We lived with my uncle Jimmy, who was actually my mom’s uncle and my great-uncle. He raised her too since her parents died when she was little, so if you want to get technical about it, you could say my Uncle Jimmy is my uncle, my great-uncle, my dad, and my grandfather.” Kate looked at me for permission to laugh and I nodded, joining in, and then adding, “I know it’s weird. Trust me. I know.”

“Very Arkansas,” she said.

“Yep. The only place a rich, adopted kid can also sound like he’s an inbred hillbilly.”

“But you grew up with a cook?”

“A housekeeper who cooked,” I corrected, and she rolled her eyes at the distinction.

“Where did the money come from?” she asked. “Your mom?”

“My uncle Jimmy made a fortune in the eighties. He invented a type of industrial insulation and patented it.”

“An industrial insulator?” She arched an eyebrow. “How come I can’t invent something lame that’s worth a bunch of money? I have weird ideas all the time, but none of them are for stuff that people would want to pay money for.”

“If it makes you feel better, he didn’t invent it until he was almost forty.”

She brightened. “That actually does make me feel better. I’ve still got time.”

There’s always time, I thought. Side by side with Kate on the boat, I watched the last sliver of sunlight disappear over the water and I remembered something else that Jimmy once told me. Unlike his usual Hillbilly-isms, this was real advice. It was during the most awkward of my middle school years, when I was growing at a dramatically uneven rate. I looked like a giraffe-human hybrid at twelve: I’d grown out of my baby fat blubber, but suddenly my limbs and neck were too long, and I had no bulk whatsoever. My looks would all change for the better in a few years, but at the time I was human birth control: girls found me repulsive.

One day Jimmy found me sobbing and rejected in my room one afternoon and sat next to me in silence until I told him what happened. It wasn’t a remarkable story. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl tells boy she’d rather kiss a toad. I went home and cried like a baby for hours.

Jimmy listened to my sob story and told me not to worry. He said that no matter the problem, no matter its complexity, everything was fixable as long as I had time. Since I was only twelve, I had plenty of time. Time is the only real independent variable in any problem, he said, proving that he’d once been an engineer.

Looking over at Kate, I knew Jimmy was right. We still had time to fix whatever needing fixing. We still had time to build whatever trust needed building between us. She caught me staring at her and smiled back at me, still wearing a guarded expression, although I thought it was at least slightly less mistrustful than it had been. I knew that I was making progress.

“Do you want to go have a drink after this?” Kate asked, cocking her head to the side and shifting closer to me until I could feel her body heat and smell her light perfume. My heart beat sped up. “I don’t want to keep you up past your bedtime,” she teased, although her voice was also hopeful. Her vivid blue eyes caught the lights from the city. They flashed passionately.

“Are you sure?” I teased back, rising to the challenge. “Because there’s nothing I’d like more than to have you keeping me up until dawn. Don’t you threaten me with a good time.” My voice was hopeful, too. Maybe too hopeful, because Kate blushed bright pink.

Go slow, I reminded myself. We’ve got time.