Page 32 of Borrow My Heart

For all I knew he was talking about Gemma. He hardly knew me, after all. Gemma probably said confident, profound things all the time.

My phone buzzed in my hand. A text from my sister:Salad’shere.

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I should go eat.”

“I should go order,” he said.

We walked in side by side over the cream-colored floor tiles with grape accents. Not the color grape. The fruit. A bunch of grapes was painted on every fifth tile. Had someone hand-painted those or were the tiles sold that way?

His family loomed in the distance, all smiles and lively conversation. They looked so animated next to my family. My dad and sister seemed frozen, like a poorly connected FaceTime call.

I suddenly stopped. Asher took two more steps before turning back to look at me with a quizzical expression.

“I’m not your girlfriend,” I said. It came out ruder than I meant it to, but my mind had jumped forward to being introduced to his family at the end of this walk. “I mean, for when I meet them. I’m not…” Was I making this worse? It wasn’t like he’d ever impliedI was. “I’m glad we met and I want to keep getting to know you, but I want to…” I wanted to be completely honest, start over, not try to straddle this line of being me and some girl I didn’t know.

“Hey,” Asher said, leaning forward a bit so his eyes were level with mine. “It’s fine. I like how things are too, but we can remain titleless.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“Asher!” his sister called when we reached the table. “We ordered for you because you were taking too long.”

“Cool,” he said. “What did I get?”

“It will be a surprise,” she said.

“Even better.”

Did he mean that? I would not like that kind of surprise.

“Everyone,” he said. “This is—”

“Gemma?” his mom asked, eyes going from mildly interested to fully engaged. “Is this her? So nice to meet you!”

“Her name is Wren, Mom,” Asher said.

“Wren?” She looked at Asher’s dad. “Was that always her name?”

“I thought her name was Elinor,” his dad said.

Asher sucked air between his teeth, making the smallest noise, which only I heard. I gave his hand a short squeeze.

“We don’t speak that name, Dad!” Brett called out.

“Seriously,” his sister said. Speaking of sisters, my eyes darted to my table. Sure enough,mysister’s attention had turned our way. She had a questioning tilt to her head. My dad was preoccupied dishing salad onto his plate.

“I’m sorry,” Asher mumbled. Then, louder, he said, “This is my family. My mom, Cori; my dad, Timothy. That’s Leah and Robbie, and you already met Brett,” he finished, pointing to his siblings.

“Hi, everyone,” I said.

“We heard you were a world-class dungeon master,” Cori said.

“What now?” I asked.

“We heard you were joining the D&D campaign tomorrow with Asher’s friends. Did I get that wrong too?” she asked, eyes wide and on Asher now.

“No, Mom. She is.”

“World class?” Brett asked. “Is there a worldwide ranking system for D&D?”

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