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“What are you gonna do while I’m reading?”

“Read something else on my e-reader.”

I took a dramatic breath and turned off the TV. “Fine. Give it to me.”

Two and a half hours later we were arguing.

“I don’t buy it,” she said. “You can’t convince me that he’s been living in the Alaskan woods with no running water, no toothbrush, and he gets not one but two gorgeous women to fall in love with him? He only showered once a week. I’m calling bullshit.”

“He was a homesteader,” I said. “A really good one.”

“So these women were impressed with his root cellar? Is that what I’m supposed to believe? That circumvents personal hygiene?”

“How do you know the women had good personal hygiene? Maybe they didn’t shower and brush their teeth either.”

“One was a producer on the show covering him and the other one was a model he met during the week he was in LA to film the reunion episode. I’m going to guess they both own toothbrushes. See, this is why I can’t deal with books that try to add romance to check a box. Half the time I can’t suspend my disbelief. You can’t just say to the reader, ‘These two are in love.’ You have to make us believe it.”

“I believed it,” I said.

“Then you have never fallen in love.”

I fake gasped. “That is an assumption. That is wrong.”

“Who’s the last person you were in love with?” she asked.

I made a show of thinking about it. “Kendra Watson.”

She gave me a look. “You just told me someone from grade school, didn’t you.”

I blinked at her. “How’d you know that?”

“Because you came at me with her first and last name? That is so third grade.”

“You don’t tell people you’re dating Michael Maddox?”

“No. I say ‘I’m dating a guy named Mike.’ Like a grown-up.”

“You know, technically Kendra and I are still together. We never broke up. She just ghosted me after recess one day and then I saw her wearing Liam McGillicutty’s Ring Pop at snack time. I was devastated.”

She was laughing. “Okay, so maybe you have fallen in love.”

I smiled.

Mike was still knocked out.

We’d eaten the soup an hour ago. She set some aside for him and put the rest into containers for her customers while I blew through her paperback.

She was right, it was a convoluted book. But I argued with her about it anyway just to play devil’s advocate, and because I liked debating with her for some reason.

She made a clicking sound with her throat.

I eyed her. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, my throat’s a little itchy. I think maybe there was some peanut butter on the sponge I washed the cutting board with,” she said. “Mike makes those peanut butter banana protein shakes.”

“Your allergy’s that bad?” I asked, watching her dig in her purse for Benadryl.

“Yeah. It sucks.”