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even sort of about her books. I guess I could take it as an opening, but I’m not quite ready to mention the dedication. My dedication. We’re only twenty-four hours in, after all.
    “So I feel like we should go out tonight,” she says. “You should see more of L.A., and despite my love of Brad’s cooking, all the domesticity is starting to get to me.”
    “Um, okay, if you want.”
    “It’s a lot of togetherness,” she says, and I’m worried for a moment she means me. “He’s there when I go to sleep and he’s there when I wake up, and we eat almost every dinner together, and—” She kind of cuts herself off and chugs a bunch of soda. “God, sorry. I doubt you want to hear the minutiae of my relationship.”
    “It’s fine,” I say, like we’re on Sex and the City or something. “Brad’s nice, though.”
    “Oh, God, yeah. I’m dating a Boy Scout. I feel like handing him badges when he takes care of things so eagerly.” She laughs really loudly at that. “Seriously, let me shut up about this. I promise I’m not one of those people who wants to sit around and dish about her damn boyfriend. Anyway. I can always kick him out if it gets to be too much.”
    I’m going to be around all the time, too, so does that mean she’ll kick me out if I get to be too much?
    “I really am sorry about timing,” I say, softly. “Since he just moved in and all. I know it must be pretty crappy.”
    “Don’t look at it like that,” she says. “You have enough on your plate.”
    In other words, it must be pretty crappy indeed.
    After we finish eating, we knock out the rest of the list and head back to her car. I thank her when it doesn’t feel awkward and stay quiet the rest of the time. Lunch must have been some kind of anomaly. As surreal as it is listening to my mother at all, much less regarding her Boy Scout of a boyfriend, now I kind of miss it. You know things aren’t great when an awkward moment is what you’re longing for.
    “This is it, right?” I ask as we head to her car again. “I feel like this is a lot.”
    The air seems thick with silence, which is why I decide to tack on another “Right?”
    “For now, sure,” she says as we get into the car and she begins navigating out of the garage. “Let’s go home so you can organize all of this. Hopefully Brad—”
    She stops as her phone rings. I automatically dig it and her headset out of her bag without asking, which hopefully isn’t overstepping any boundaries. Or just plain weird.
    “Thanks,” she tells me, clicking on the phone. “Hey, I was just theorizing to Devan about how nice it would be if you’d already gotten those shelves and unpacked your— fan -tastic. No, we’re heading back now, no, I didn’t kill anyone, yes, we had lunch already, and yes, I’m using my damn headset. Oh? No, it’s perfect; Devan and I are going out tonight anyway. See you in a while.”
    She tosses everything back at me. “He gets a merit badge in shelf-purchasing.”
    “And headset-programming.”
    She laughs. “Right.”
    “Is it, like, a rude question to ask how you met?” I hardly understand how anyone meets anyone. How are you just a person going about things in your life when suddenly another person becomes more to you? I never look at boys like possibilities that way.
    “My friends had a party, we were both there, I thought nothing of it, but he somehow commandeered my number from someone and called me the next day. We sort of ended up going out every night for a couple of weeks, so it was Instant Relationship. Not my style, but sometimes life falls into place and you just have to accept it.”
    For someone like Reece Malcolm, who has everything a person could want, life probably works like that all the time. For someone like me, I’m pretty sure it’ll never be that easy.

Chapter Four
    Things I know about Reece Malcolm:
    12. Even though she has no personal style, she’s pretty good at shopping.
    I get up early again on Sunday and get