wallet.
John shook his head.
“I’ve got it.”
“John—”
“You can get the next one.”
The words came out easily.
Then both of them heard what he had just implied.
The next one.
Olivia’s hand stopped inside her purse.
John looked almost surprised by himself.
Noah was not.
“Can we have pizza next time too?”
John smiled.
“I think that’s negotiable.”
They left the restaurant twenty minutes later.
The rain had softened to a mist.
John walked Olivia and Noah to the parking garage even though she insisted he did not need to.
Noah, fully awake now, jumped over every painted line on the pavement while carrying Sir Chomps-a-Lot by the tail.
At the elevator, Olivia stopped.
“Thank you for tonight.”
“You’re thanking me?”
“You could’ve left.”
John’s expression changed.
There it was again.
That word.
Left.
“I didn’t want to.”
Olivia studied him, trying to decide whether that was simply something a decent man said at the end of a date.
John looked toward Noah, who was attempting to press every elevator button at once.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “this was probably the most honest first date I’ve ever had.”
“Because my son interrogated your finances?”
“That helped.”
She laughed.
The elevator doors opened.
Olivia stepped inside with Noah.
John remained outside.
For a second, she expected the usual ending.
A polite smile.
A promise to text.
Nothing more.
Instead, John put one hand against the closing door.
“Saturday?”
Olivia blinked.
“What?”
“Another date.
Saturday.
Something less ambitious than a restaurant.
Maybe coffee.
Somewhere Sir Chomps-a-Lot is welcome.”
Noah lifted the dinosaur.
“He likes muffins.”
“Useful information.”
Olivia smiled before she could stop herself.
“Saturday.”
John removed his hand.
The doors closed.
He stood alone in the garage for several seconds after the elevator disappeared.
Then his phone rang again.
His brother.
John answered this time.
“You alive?” David asked.
“Yes.”
“You vanished.”
“I was on a date.”
“And?”
John looked at the closed elevator doors.
He could still hear Noah’s question.
Are you rich?
And the sentence after it.
She needs one who stays when things get hard.
“It was different,” John said.
David laughed.
“You always say that for forty-eight hours.”
John normally would have laughed too.
He didn’t.
“Maybe.”
“You coming over?”
John glanced at the time.
His brother lived fifteen minutes away.
John had promised to stop by for a late drink after the date.
Normally, a promise made to family felt flexible to him.
He would cancel, reschedule, appear another night, and assume nobody minded.
Probably because nobody had ever made him confront the pattern.
“Yeah,” John said finally.
“I’m coming.”
David went quiet.
“Really?”
John almost smiled.
“Apparently I’m trying something new.”
That Saturday, John arrived at the coffee shop eight minutes early.
Olivia arrived six minutes late.
This time, Noah was with Maya.
Olivia looked almost suspicious when she saw John already seated.
“You’re here.”
“That was the plan.”
“Plans change.”
“They do.”
He pushed a coffee toward her.
“But this one didn’t.”
The second date became a third.
Then a fourth.
John learned that Olivia hated olives but loved olive oil, that she graded preschool artwork as though she were judging an international exhibition, and that she could fall asleep during any movie made before 1980 despite accusing him
