Chapter Two: Dinner, Disaster, and Aunt Linda's Third Glass of Wine

The Whitaker house was warm and loud and smelled like garlic bread, and Nora had made a critical tactical error.

She had not prepared for how much she would like it.

She'd expected awkward. She'd dressed for awkward, dark jeans, a nice blouse, the kind of outfit that said 'I'm a good influence: without trying too hard. She'd rehearsed answers to standard parent questions in the car. She had a strategy.

What she had not strategized for was Cole opening the front door before she even knocked, like he'd been watching for her, and saying, "You actually came," with something so genuinely relieved in his voice that it knocked all her prepared sentences clean out of her head.

"We had a deal," she said.

"Right." He exhaled. "Okay. Ground rules recap: we've been dating for two months, we met through Maya Chen because she's both our mutual friend and she already knows so she won't blow it—"

"You told Maya?"

"She's my emergency contact, she had a right to know." He said it so fast she almost missed it. "We like each other a normal amount. You don't have to hold my hand. You can leave if Derek is actually awful."

"Is he?"

"Scale of one to ten, he's a nine. He once told my mom her pot roast tasted like a gym bag."

"Noted." Nora straightened her blouse. "Let's go meet your family."

---

Cole's mom was a small woman with enormous energy and the kind of smile that made you feel immediately guilty for every lie you'd ever told. She pulled Nora into a hug before they'd even been properly introduced.

"Oh, she's lovely," she said, to Cole, about Nora, while Nora was standing right there. "Cole never brings anyone home. Did he tell you that? Three years, not a single—"

"Mom," Cole said.

"I'm just saying." She beamed at Nora. "I'm Diane. And I'm so happy you're here."

Nora's chest did something uncomfortable. She smiled back and said, "Me too," and meant it more than she'd planned to.

Grandma Whitaker was stationed in the armchair by the fireplace like a general surveying her troops. She looked Nora up and down with the kind of quiet assessment that made Nora feel briefly like she was being graded.

"Sit," she said, gesturing to the ottoman.

Nora sat.

"You're smart," Grandma Whitaker said. It wasn't a question.

"I try to be," Nora said.

The old woman made a sound that might have been approval. "Cole needs smart. His father was charming and look how that turned out."

"Grandma," Cole said, from behind Nora, his voice a shade too careful.

"I'm eighty-one," she said serenely. "I've earned honesty."

Nora glanced back at Cole. He was looking at his grandmother with this expression she hadn't seen before, complicated and fond and a little bit tired, and for just a second she forgot she was supposed to be pretending.

Dinner was, objectively, a lot.

Aunt Linda was on her third glass of wine before the pot roast came out. Derek, a lanky seventeen-year-old with the energy of a damp sock, had already insulted Cole's stats twice and made a comment about Nora's school that she'd let slide exactly once.

The second time, she smiled and said, "We did beat your school's academic decathlon team by forty points last spring. But I'm sure you're all very proud of your effort."

The table went quiet.

Cole made a sound like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

Derek opened his mouth and closed it again.

Grandma Whitaker raised her wine glass in Nora's direction, which felt like the highest possible honor.

"I like her," she announced to no one in particular.

Under the table, Cole's knee pressed briefly against hers, not holding, not grabbing, just there, and when she glanced at him he was looking straight ahead, jaw tight like he was still suppressing something, but the corner of his mouth was curved up and she thought:

Oh, this is going to be a problem.

They stood on the porch afterward while Nora waited for her rideshare, the night cold and clear and sharp with the smell of coming winter.

"You destroyed Derek," Cole said.

"He started it."

"He absolutely started it." He leaned against the railing. "My grandma literally raised her glass at you. She has never once raised her glass at anyone."

"Your grandmother is terrifying and I respect her enormously."

Cole laughed, a real one, surprised out of him, warm in the cold air. Nora looked at the street and told herself firmly to stop noticing things about him.

"My mom really liked you," he said, quieter.

"Cole—"

"I know." He stood up straight, and the moment passed, the easy warmth of it folding back into the comfortable distance she understood better. "Ground rules. Totally fake. I know." He paused. "You were good tonight though. Really good. I owe you one."

"You owe me three weeks of calc homework and one favor," she corrected.

"Right." His smile didn't fully go away. "Right."

Her rideshare pulled up. She walked down the porch steps, and she was almost at the car when she heard him:

"Hey, Jensen?"

She turned.

He was backlit by the warm light from the house, hands in his pockets, and for one entirely inconvenient second, he looked like something out of a movie.

"Thank you," he said. Just that. No smirk, no angle. Just Cole Whitaker being honest.

Nora got in the car and looked out the window and thought very sternly about calculus all the way home.

It didn't really work.