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“Just today if everything goes fine. She slipped on some ice and broke her wrist. It didn’t set right.”

“I thought it was cancer or something. You both seemed a little upset.”

“I was upset because I just found out my alcoholic degenerate father with a gambling addiction managed to get my Social Security number and open a twenty-two-thousand-dollar credit card account in my name. It’s in collections.”

I probably shouldn’t have dumped this on him, but I wanted to blurt it out. Hurl it at this stranger and watch him flinch when it hit him.

But he didn’t flinch.

“My mom died three months ago,” he said. “It was unexpected. I’ve just been a little… out of sorts myself. So I get it.”

We looked at each other, some unspoken understanding passing between us, like we were agreeing to be whatever kind of mess we needed to be at this table. That it was mutually acceptable to just eat this bread and be in our feelings and say whatever it was we wanted to say without judgment from either side—which was good. Because sometimes I was too tired and too done to pretend I was fine.

“Has he ever done this before?” he asked.

“To my mom,” I said, watching him butter another slice. “She said he never had access to my Social, so she told me not to bother worrying about it. Obviously she was wrong.”

“You can’t dispute the debt?”

“I can. I will. But it’s a process and it doesn’t always get reversed. They took my tax return money yesterday. I was going to use that to get my car out of the shop. My mom’s been out of work for two months. She’s going to need another month to recover enough to go back. I’m paying all the bills. I just didn’t need this right now.” I stared at the piece of bread on my plate. “You’re a pharmacist?” I said, changing the subject.

“Yeah. I work at Bergmans.”

A big retail pharmacy chain. He had a good job, and he was smart. I couldn’t imagine being able to understand all that chemistry. It felt harder than being a doctor for some reason.

“That’s a lot of school,” I said. “I never liked school,” I admitted.

“Oh yeah? What do you like?”

I shrugged. “I like cooking—sorry if I smell like soup, by the way.”

“You don’t smell like soup. You smell good, actually.”

I paused and looked up.

“Not that I’m sniffing you,” he said quickly. “It was just when I held the door for you and you walked past me, I—”

“I’m glad I don’t smell like soup,” I said, holding back a small smile.

He cleared his throat. “Are you going to be a chef, then?”

“No,” I said, going back to the napkin. “I’ve worked in enough restaurants to know I don’t ever want to cook in a kitchen.”

“Did you go to college?” he asked.

“No. I took a pottery class once.”

“You’re artistic, then,” he said, somehow making my sad education sound interesting.

“I guess so. I sew a little bit. I make my own clothes sometimes, my own jewelry. I got really into paper quilling at one point and I was pretty good at it, but you can’t make that a job.”

His cell phone vibrated. “Sorry, hold on.”

He read the message. “It’s Mike, asking where we are.”

I watched him while he texted a reply. He looked stern when he was focused. Sort of how he looked that first night.

I knew Chris was single from Mom’s prying in the car. Lexi mentioned it, too, when she was auctioning off which guy friend I should get a ride home from the night of the concert. I’d picked Mike, mostly because he actually smiled and seemed less irritated at being asked.