“Don’t forget to smile.” My mom’s voice on the other end of the call sounded urgent as we said our good-byes.

It’s sort of hard not to smile around Daniel, I thought to myself, then I sighed into the phone. “I know, Mom. I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, referring to her elbow surgery appointment the following day. “Ask the nurse for something so you can get some sleep. I don’t want you up all night worrying about me.”

“I’ll always worry about you,” she said, the urgency in her voice replaced by the usual weariness.

A knot of guilt tightened in my belly as I thought of everything I’d put my mother through in the months after I quit NYU. Inevitably, my mind wandered to Petra.

“I’ll be fine,” I replied, eager to end the call. “Good night, Mom.”

“Good night, sweetheart. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I ended the call with a lump in my throat and shaky hands. Looking into the bathroom mirror, the sheer terror of messing up tonight was plainly evident in my face. I needed to relax before Daniel got here or I was going to pass out at the sound of the doorbell. For the first time in months, my mind conjured a dangerous solution to my anxiety.

My mom kept a bottle of wine hidden in the back of the cupboard above the refrigerator. The bottle was a gift from Leslie for my mom’s birthday a few months ago. Leslie didn’t know about my past. I was certain my mother kept the bottle because she always had a hard time throwing away gifts.

Since the last time I saw Petra, and the brief stint with binge drinking that followed, I hadn’t consumed a single drop of alcohol. Serving cocktails every day at the cantina had never tempted me. According to the therapist who helped me give up booze, I didn’t have an addictive personality. My biggest problem was that I lacked coping skills, which she was going to teach me.

I ran down the checklist in my mind.

Step One: Try to sit down in a quiet location and take at least ten deep breaths.

I sat in the recliner next to my mother’s hospital bed in the living room. Leaning back, I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath through my nostrils, letting it out slowly through my pursed lips. I counted off ten inhales and ten exhales before I opened my eyes and cringed as the image of the wine bottle flashed once again in my mind.

Step Two: Remind yourself of the reasons why you gave up your addictions.

Glancing at the bed next to me, I imagined my mother sleeping, her knotted limbs hidden beneath the thin blanket she used during the summer. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop the image of Petra’s bloody face from jumping to the forefront of my thoughts. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and shook my head in a vain attempt to rid myself of this daymare.

Step Three: Call someone you trust for support.

I had just spoken to my mom. I couldn’t call her right back. She needed her rest. I couldn’t call Leslie. It was 7:30 p.m. Leslie and her family would be finishing dinner and getting ready for bed. Besides, she had already gone above and beyond the duty of friendship since my mom had fallen a couple of days ago.

A sharp ache burned inside my chest as I longed to call Petra. I blinked back tears as I realized I would never be able to do that again.

Before I could stop myself, I opened up my phone contacts and dialed the number.

The phone rang twice before a voice answered, “Kristin?”

“Hey, I’m…I’m sorry to call like this. I was just wondering… Did I leave my sunglasses in your car?” I rolled my eyes at this terrible excuse.

Daniel chuckled. “I don’t remember you wearing sunglasses when you were in my car. Do you usually wear sunglasses at night?”

“No, I wasn’t wearing them,” I replied, silently cursing myself. “I just thought maybe they’d fallen out of my purse or something. No big deal. Just trying to track them down.”

I shook my head, painfully aware that I sounded like a complete idiot who’d cooked up some lame excuse to call him. He could probably hear the desperation in my voice. Now, he was probably wondering why I couldn’t wait a measly thirty minutes—when he was scheduled to arrive at my apartment for our date—to ask him about the sunglasses.

“No, no sunglasses,” he said, and I could swear I heard a smile in his voice. “But I’ll be there soon. You’re welcome to search my car and pat me down, if necessary.”

I let out a long sigh of relief as I smiled. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll take your word for it.”

A brief pause followed, then he spoke again. “Are you okay? You sound… I don’t know.”

I bit my lip as I realized this man, whom I still considered a bit of a stranger, had just helped me through something difficult, without his knowledge. “I’m fine. See you soon.”

I ended the call before he could express any more concern. I didn’t want tonight to be a therapy session. I wanted to go on my first date in years without the dark cloud of my past hanging over us. Tonight, I would spend the evening with a gorgeous man in the most beautiful city in the world, and pretend I deserved it.

Step Four: Distract yourself.

* * *

The knock at the door startled me out of my TV stupor. I scrambled for the remote and, in my haste, knocked it off the arm of the recliner and onto the floor. Scooping the remote off the floor, I pointed it at the TV to turn it off just as the anchorwoman’s face became somber and she said, “We have more details tonight about the deadly crash that left—”

The TV went black and I breathed a sigh of relief that Daniel had arrived at the end of the light and breezy special-interest piece on New Yorkers escaping the hustle and bustle of the city for various seaside vacation hot spots this summer. I didn’t usually watch the local news. It was too depressing.

I glanced down at my dress—a black Victoria Beckham shift dress I’d found at the fourth thrift shop I visited yesterday—and the nude slingback heels I’d found at Nordstrom Rack. I’d heard a girl at work once complain about having to spend $600 on a dress for her aunt’s third wedding. I’d spent $62 on this outfit and I nearly pissed myself with guilt afterward when I looked at my bank account balance.

I took a few deep breaths as I made my way to the door in an attempt to settle my nervous stomach. It didn’t really work, but it didn’t make it worse. I’d have to remind myself to keep finding those silver linings tonight.

I pulled the door open and my jaw dropped at the sight of Daniel.

He looked as if he’d just stepped off the set of a GQ magazine cover shoot in his crisp white button-up shirt with no tie and a trim-fit gray suit that showed off his athletic build. But it was the glint of mischief in his eyes that pulled the ensemble together. It was a look that spoke a thousand words—very naughty words.

I picked my jaw up off the floor and smiled. “You look…”

“Nowhere near as stunning as you,” he said, finishing my sentence, then he nodded toward the stairwell. “Shall we?”

I managed to nod as I fumbled a bit to find my housekey in my purse. Locking the deadbolt, it dawned on me that, with my mom safe in her hospital room, I would be having a night out without having to worry about leaving my mom at home alone. Then, I came to an even more significant realization: This wasn’t just my first date since the accident, it was my first night out with anyone.

As we walked down the steps, Daniel stole another glance at my dress. “You really do look amazing, but I sort of regret not planning a date where you could dress more casually.”

I smiled. “That’s very considerate of you, but I’m really looking forward to checking out a new art studio. I…had a friend in high school who used to go with me to the Met once a month, so I never missed an exhibition. I miss that.”

“Sounds like a good friend,” he said.

She was a great friend, I thought.

His comment silenced me as we descended the stairwells. When we reached his Range Rover, which was parked across the street from my building, he reached past me to open the passenger door. I caught a whiff of his scent and I couldn’t help but breathe deeply to inhale more of it. He smelled like a morning stroll through unexplored forest, and money.

The first time I’d smelled the scent of wealth was when my mom and I took our one and only trip to South Dakota to visit her family, when I was nine. We were queued up at the gate, waiting to board our flight, when a man passed us to get in line with the other first-class passengers. My nose was hit with a flurry of air that smelled like a heady mixture of leather, soap, and incredibly good luck. After that, I began to recognize that scent while I rode the subway or stood in line at the café.

I’d never smelled it on the bus.

I sank into the passenger seat as Daniel closed the door, tapping the roof once before he set off around the front of the SUV. As he slid into the driver’s seat, I got a strange feeling that something seemed different about him tonight. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was the way he walked. No, that wasn’t it. It was the way he looked over his shoulder twice before he got in the car.

I shook my head, thinking how silly I was. I hardly knew the man. How on earth would I know if this wasn’t his typical behavior?

I was reaching. Searching for a reason not to trust him. Desperate for a reason to turn this evening into a disaster before it even began.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, pulling away from the curb.

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows in confusion.

“You’re shaking your head,” he clarified. “Is something not to your satisfaction?”

I chuckled at this phrasing. “How does someone learn to talk like that?”

He smiled. “Like what?”

“Is something not to your satisfaction?” I said in a haughty voice.

He nodded as he waited for a pedestrian to cross in front of us. “How would you like me to speak? Yo, somethin’ wrong, mama?”

I should have laughed, but I couldn’t. His impression of the guys in my neighborhood sounded much more realistic than I expected it to.

“You’re good at impressions,” I replied. “Maybe you majored in sarcasm.”

He smiled and we drove in silence for a couple minutes, not offering any clarification as to what he majored in or what school he went to. Maybe he could tell I was fishing for information and he wanted to maintain an air of mystery. It wasn’t long before the silence became too much for him.

He smiled as he reached for the stereo. Thinking of the deal we’d struck allowing me to choose the music in his car, I immediately reached for his hand to stop him.

He caught my hand in his and laced his fingers through mine. “I didn’t realize we had progressed to holding hands, but I’m game,” he said, pulling my hand toward him and placing a tender kiss on the backs of my fingers.

I rolled my eyes, ignoring the butterfly parade marching through my belly as I gently extracted my hand from his. “Just following through on our agreement,” I replied, focusing my attention on the touchscreen stereo. “I get to pick the music, remember?”

I stared blankly at the screen, which displayed real-time navigation information, then pressed the Home Menu button to the left of the screen. I chose Audio/Video from the selections on the screen. Pressing a few more buttons got me to a decent satellite radio station, which was playing “River” by Bishop Briggs.

He rolled his eyes as he stopped at a red light and relaxed into his seat. “This is the same stuff everyone listens to.”

“I’m sorry it’s not as cutting edge and hip as your elevator jazz.”

He considered his response for a long while. “I don’t only listen to jazz,” he said.

It was a simple statement, but something in the tone of his voice sounded as if he were divulging a dark secret.

“Okay, what else do you listen to?”

He shrugged. “Do you like underground hip-hop?”

I laughed at the cryptic way he was behaving, as if he was asking if I too had a foot fetish. “Not as much as I used to. It’s easier to find that stuff when you’re in school and still going to parties.”

He flicked his head to the right and flashed me a look of utter incredulity. “You don’t party anymore?”

I should have felt self-conscious about this question, but I couldn’t get over how strange the conversation and his voice sounded. As if the Daniel who picked me up had been left behind, standing on the curb in front of my apartment. This Daniel sounded like someone I’d see at the bodega, chatting up the store clerk while paying for his case of PBR.

He didn’t repeat his question. Instead, he moved on to juicier topics. “So…why don’t you ask your family to help you take care of your mom and apply for a scholarship so you can go back to school?”

“Geez, why didn’t I think of that?” I shook my head as the city lights burned streaks into my retinas. “I don’t have family in New York.”

His question had made me irrationally angry. I had to chill or this night really was going to end in disaster.

“I apologize. That was a stupid question,” he said, focusing his attention on the traffic in front of us.

“I’m the one who should be apologizing. That was an inappropriate response. I just… I tried everything I could, but my mom’s family lives in South Dakota, and her mom—my grandma, whom I’ve only met in person once—is also really sick. She’s been battling emphysema for almost a decade. My grandpa is dead and my mom’s siblings can barely afford the nurse that takes care of my grandma. There’s no one who can help me… No one.”

My chest ached as the familiar feeling of being utterly alone became overwhelming.

“Hey, you’ve got Leslie, right?” he said, probably thinking his words were comforting.

I forced a smile. “Right.”

A few minutes of awkward silence later, we arrived at The Art Studio in midtown at a few minutes before eight p.m. We parked in an underground parking garage and took the elevator up to the first floor of the nondescript brick building. When we entered Suite 1B, the tension from our conversation in the car vanished in an instant. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. We had just walked into a kid’s birthday party.