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Doesn’t tell me I shouldn’t be nervous.

Instead he nods, like he understands exactly what I mean.

“My friends are the only reason I even went last Sunday. They kind of dragged me.”

“They sound like good friends.”

“They are.” The smile lingers, but there’s an ache behind it now, and I keep going before it can settle. “Harper and Micah moved an hour and a half away a couple months ago, and Gray and Ivy just had their baby. They’re still around, they’re just...busy.”

As they should be.

“I guess I’m figuring out what church looks like when I have to walk in on my own.” I shrug. “What about you? Do you go every Sunday?”

Luke takes his time before he answers. I get the sense he’s a man who thinks before he speaks.

“When I’m not working,” he says. “The job takes a Sunday here and there. Twenty-four on, forty-eight off.”

“So some weeks you’re there, some you’re not.”

“Something like that.”

I wait for the rest. Not much rest is coming. Whatever else there is about Luke and church, he’s keeping it on his side of the table for now, and I find I don’t mind. I do the same thing with nearly everything.

Then he leans in, forearms on the table, and the guarded thing gives way to something more.

“Can I say something, though?” He waits until I nod. “The walking-in-alone part. You don’t need to wait until you’ve got somebody to walk in with. You go. You keep going. And somewhere in six months it quits being a room full of strangers and turns into your people.” He shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ll find your people, I promise.”

I look at him for a second.

It is not what I expected a firefighter I met through a wrong number to say to me over coffee.

“That was annoyingly wise,” I say.

“It’s the truth.”

I laugh, and he lets me, and I notice he’s eased back into his chair again, like he caught himself leaning too far in and drew the line back to wherever he keeps it.

“For the record,” he adds, and the warmth comes back into his face. “My grandmother made sure of it. Raised me in it. Still the most faithful person I’ve ever met. She prays over everything. My shifts, the weather, whoever stole her parking spot. She lives with me now. Honestly, I’ve learned more watching her faith than I ever have from a sermon.”

“She sounds incredible.”

“She is. Dottie’s one of a kind.”

The way he says her name, easy, warm, like she’s a gift he assumes everyone should be lucky enough to have, makes me glance down at my coffee. Some people grow up with someone like that. I didn’t.

He taps his finger against his coffee cup.

“I still think you should do it.”

“What?”

“The dare.”

I blink.

“The dare?”

He nods.