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“Why did she need to apologize?”

“She doesn’t think about what she says, like your grandpa,” I explained.

“He thinks about it. He says it anyway,” Oliver answered.

“Well, she says and does unintentionally hurtful things. One time, when we were in Florida, she was trying to start a tutoring business. She wanted to teach kids in her own way and break their ties with institutionalized, industrial education, which is what she calls the school system. But she tried to hand out pamphlets right in a student pick-up line, and she couldn’t understand why the parents and teachers got upset when she said they were strangling and poisoning the children. Figuratively.” I had to stop talking and pant for a while, because that had been a lot of words.

“I think you’d have to be intentionally obtuse not to realize that parents wouldn’t like to hear that they’re harming their kids.”

“She just thought that they were uninformed.” Breathe, breathe. “But I stopped apologizing and trying to smooth things over. She never argued back to people, not even when they got really mad and yelled at her. She would smile and say that she hoped they’d become more enlightened someday.”

“That must have made things so much worse.”

I nodded, because he was exactly right. “Nothing got them angrier. I talked to her today,” I mentioned.

“Are you still in contact with her?” He sounded surprised by that.

“Sure. Not that often because she’s busy.” I panted for a moment. “I like to let her know how I’m doing. When I was at boarding school, I used to send really long emails. I was supposed to practice my writing because it was so poor,” I explained. “I got really fascinated by grammar and punctuation. That’s why I like editing.”

“That’s your business?”

I nodded. No more speech.

Luckily, he talked more about his grandfather and the record store that had been on our street for decades. Apparently, his grandparents had run it together because they had both been musicians. “They weren’t very good, which they said themselves. I’m not criticizing,” he told me. “Eventually, they realized that they weren’t going to make their living by performing, but they wanted to be around music in some way. That was why they opened the store.”

I wanted to tell him that I was going to a concert that night, but I had to wait until we finished running this block. Then I slowed down and gasped for a while before I mentioned it.

“Are you going with Carmen Crusoe?” he asked. “Apartment 5D? She used to be the music critic for the Detroit Tribune.”

“Really?” She might have been the perfect person to check out my singing toilet, then! “I invited her over for appetizers, so I have to get food today. And chairs.” I breathed carefully. “You’re from here. Do you have recommendations about where I should shop?” I asked.

He had many, for groceries and for furniture. I listened carefully and said thank you. “I’ll order a rideshare and get going,” I said.

“You don’t have a car of your own?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a license, either.” That always surprised people, so I took a moment to explain. “I left my mom when I was thirteen, too young to get one. Then I was away at school and the other girls there all got their licenses when they went home for the summer. But I didn’t ever go home, and I also didn’t have a permanent address.”

“What did you do for your vacations?” he asked.

We stopped in front of the Milaflores Building. “I stayed at the school for the shorter breaks. They allowed that, because there were plenty of international students and they didn’t want to travel huge distances for a little amount of time. For Christmas vacation and over the summers, I would either do enrichment programs on campus or go to camps. Once, I went to my grandparents’ townhouse in New York, but they weren’t there. They were at an art show in Miami and then they went to South America to see friends.” I wiped my face on my sleeve. It was fall now, but it was still warm when you ran too fast.

He looked up from his watch. “I could drive you. I’m not doing anything today.”

“You don’t have to,” I told him. “I wasn’t angling for that.”

He shook his head. “I need to get groceries, too.”

“Thank you!” I was smiling all the way upstairs. I had been so upset about the music and then he had been upset that I was accusing him, and I’d assumed we would be enemies. Now we were going shopping together!

But first, I had to shower and change, and I decided that I would do something to myself. My mom didn’t believe in artificial enhancement so I had never messed with my hair or with makeup until I’d gone to school. I had watched the girls there carefully applying stuff to their faces and expertly styling their hair, and I had bought some supplies for myself. Over the years, I had figured out what worked for me.

Clothes were a different story. The things I wore for work were what I liked to call “business casual-casual.” In other words, it was all pajamas, but I must have had something that was slightly nicer…I looked through the closet again but there wasn’t much to see. When your entire existence fit in two suitcases, it made for light carrying but also few wardrobe choices.

But I had promised to meet him in half an hour. I grabbed a shirt, shook my head, and threw it onto the air mattress. A dress? No, onto the bed. Pretty soon, my closet was nearly empty and the minutes, which always went so damn slowly as I ran, had flown past. I dug around through the pile and found my least-hateful shirt and a pair of jeans that didn’t make me want to cry. I also put on shoes this time before I hurried downstairs.

Oliver was already in the lobby, also wearing jeans that were somehow so much cooler than mine, and a shirt that fit him much better than what I had on. It was a better color, too, because navy really did look nice on him and somehow made his eyes even more purply. And here I was in brown? With brown hair and brown eyes? I probably looked more like a chocolate chip, and I wasn’t even going to think about poop comparisons.

He didn’t mention them, either. “Ready?” he asked.