Page 33 of The Life-Changing Magic of Falling in Love

He throws me a quick smile as he holds the door open for us to walk through and I smile back, reassured.

‘So…’ Out on the street, he shoves his hands into his pockets.

I look up at him from under my lashes. ‘So…’ This is it. The part where he either mentions a third date, or the ‘but’ in ‘I like you but’ comes into play.

‘Next Tuesday?’ he says. ‘Feel like grabbing a meal with me?’

Yes!

Oh!

‘Tuesday?’ I feel the hours between Friday night and all of Saturday and Sunday stretching out before me like a deserted road. In case I don’t get how empty those hours are going to feel, Sarah helpfully appears in my mind’s eye, pushing a piece of tumbleweed across the asphalt.

‘You got to eat, right?’ Zach’s voice is charmingly persuasive.

‘Um, I’m not sure I can do Tuesday.’ Say it. Say what you want. ‘How about Saturday instead?’

‘I can’t do weekends.’

‘At all?’ Oh, the irony. And how am I going to ask Carlos to add such a specific request to his enquiries?

‘Weekends, I go home to my family.’

‘Your family? You have a wife and kids?’ I don’t consider myself a violent person so socking him in the eye or grounding my heel into his foot doesn’t immediately spring to mind. Instead, I settle for staring witheringly at his family jewels.

‘God no – no, I mean I go home to my mom on the weekends.’

I raise my gaze a few feet. ‘Oh?’

‘She’s on her own since my dad left, so I stop by and check on her.’

‘Oh.’ That’s sweet, really. I try not to think about how tired I usually am on weekday nights and how, once again, I’ll have no one to hang out with on the weekends. But maybe … if all goes well, and we progress to lots of dates, well then maybe I could go back to his mother’s house with him to hang out on weekends. Or … maybe he could even come back to my folks’ house on a weekend. And maybe then, a lot further down the line, of course, we could potentially attend weddings together.

I am so proud of the positive spin I have put on this that it takes me a while to realise he is still talking.

‘…I get a home-cooked meal in exchange for doing a few jobs around the house. What about you? You have family, nearby?’

‘A couple of hours away. I go back every few months. Keep the visit short.’

‘I get it. The longer the stay, the greater the chance you won’t want to leave again, right?’

‘Right. If the definition of that is actually the complete opposite,’ I say with a smile.

‘You don’t get on with your family?’

He looks like he may have listed getting on with your family as a deal-breaker on his application form and that he might have to have a word with Carlos. How do I explain the intricacies of pushing family away in a bid to show them I’m totally fine since the best friend I lived my whole life opposite to, and with whom I dreamt of living in the city with as we partied while still slaying in our careers, died without warning and left me here, all alone, in the big, bad city?

Surely that’s the stuff of third dates?

‘I’m joking,’ I say. ‘I get along great with my family. You’re an only child, right?’ He nods his head with confirmation and I continue, ‘I have an older brother and younger sister who both live in the same neighbourhood as my folks so whenever I go back, I’m seeing everyone. It can get pretty crowded and sometimes the only way I’m allowed exit from the homestead is by being in complete accordance with their life goals for me.’

‘I guess that could get a bit much?’

‘Hit the nail on the head.’

‘So … Tuesday?’

‘Sure. Tuesday.’ Feel free to roll your eyes at me. I’ll be completing my master’s in People Pleasing any day now.

---