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I set the phone on my chest, look at the ceiling, and let myself hope that the more time she spends with Bo, the more she’ll start wanting the same thing I do: to be a whole lot more than friends.

Chapter 9

Olivia

I see seven clients on Mondays.

Seven is one too many. I know this. I scheduled it anyway, months ago, because a full Monday meant a shorter Friday, and Friday Olivia has always been happy to sell out Monday Olivia.

My first is a widower. He comes every week and spends the first ten minutes insisting he’s fine, then the next forty proving he isn’t. Today he tells me he finally moved his wife’s toothbrush out of the cup by the sink.

By ten I have a couple who love each other and cannot, for the life of them, talk about money without it becoming a conversation about respect. I hand them the same tools I handed them last week. They nod. They will not use them. They will come back next week. I don’t mind. Sometimes the nodding is the work.

The afternoon is anxiety, grief, and a teenager who answers every question with “I don’t know” until he doesn’t, and then says the truest thing anyone has said in my office all day and immediately looks like he regrets it. I tell him that’s usually how it works. He shrugs, then goes back to his original answer.

I am good at this. I want to be clear about that. I know what to say, and when to say it, and when to say nothing at all. I genuinely enjoy helping people talk through things.

But somewhere in the last few months, I started doing it the way I do everything else. On time. In order. Correctly.

My last client thanks me on her way out. I write my notes. I straighten the chairs. I turn the little sound machine off.

Then I lock the office and go home to make lasagna, because tonight, at least, is not for strangers.

I make the lasagna the way I make everything worth making. Slowly, and in order.

The meat sauce goes first, simmered down until it stops being a list of ingredients and turns into one thing. Then the ricotta, mixed with egg and parmesan and more salt than most people would admit to. Then the layers. Noodle, sauce, ricotta, cheese. Again. And again. Five times.

Every layer matters. That isn’t me being dramatic. Rush the bottom one and the whole thing slides when you cut it, and then it isn’t lasagna anymore. It’s soup.

I like recipes. They ask for exactly what they need and never change their mind. I find that restful.

By the time it comes out of the oven the whole apartment smells like garlic, and I stand there a second longer than I need to, just to enjoy it.

Then I pack the car.

The pan, wrapped twice in foil and set flat in a box so it can’t slide. Two boxes of newborn diapers, because Luke told me that’s what a newborn actually needs.

And one teething toy. A soft blue ring shaped like a whale.

Luke told me not to bring a toy. He said two-week-olds don’t play with anything, that they eat and sleep and fill diapers. He’s probably right. He’s almost certainly right.

I bought the whale anyway.

Because Charlie already has two parents who will be responsible about everything, and I’ve decided the job I want is the other one. The aunt who shows up with something soft and useless and a little bit fun. I want to be the cool aunt.

Ivy and Gray live twenty minutes away, in a condo that is about to be too small for them and that they love too much to say so.

By the time I park, the pan is still warm against my hands, the whale is tucked in beside the diapers, and I am, for the first time all day, looking forward to walking through a door.

I knock.

From somewhere inside, I hear Gray say, “If that’s another casserole from the worship team, we’re not home.”

Gray opens the door with Charlie against his chest and a burp cloth over one shoulder like a sash.

“Oh thank the good Lord,” he says. “Real food.”

“Hello to you too.”