Page 107 of Fake it ’Til Fall

“Umm, we never said we’d have dinner at your mom’s,” she says. “I thought it was lunch with her.”

“Lunch is inefficient.”

“Lunch is socially normal.”

“Dinner gives us more time.”

“For what? Emotional collapse? Because I’ve blocked out twenty minutes after meeting your mother, but I can move things around.”

“Let me guess, you promised dinner at your family’s,” I say.

“I did not promise dinner. I said if we visit your mother, we’d have to visit mine. That is a warning label, not a calendar invite.”

“Your mother will want to feed us.”

“My mother will interrogate us over something seasonal and pretend the napkins aren’t listening.”

“Still counts as feeding us.”

“Still a felony against my nervous system.”

“Day.”

“What?” Her voice goes light. Bright. The version she uses when she’s hiding the real one under too much polish. “I’m admiring the engineering. You solved an entire emotional problem with a departure time. That’s efficient. Almost romantic in a deeply avoidant way. We should put it in the rules. Rule Eleven: Forrest manages all proximity through logistics.”

“Sounds accurate.”

“Also, next time we should agree on where we’re eating before you arrange my family like a meal-prep schedule.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Lunch with my mother,” I say.

“Thank you.”

“Dinner with yours.”

She turns her head slowly.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, because if we eat dinner at my mother’s, she’ll do the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where she asks a casual question that is not casual and then looks at my face like she’s trying to read the footnotes of my soul.”

“Sounds efficient.”

“It is not efficient. It is maternal surveillance with wine.”

I glance over.

She’s staring through the windshield, jaw set, travel mug untouched, fingers curled around the notebook hard enough to crease the cover.