"Your mother. Quoting Ellis."
"God help us all."
They ate. The pasta was very good, the bread was still overproofed, and the accordion played "That's Amore" again, because of course it did. They talked about Gerald the starter and Paige's wedding and whether Fran was secretly in love with the bobblehead saint. When dessert came — tiramisu, one plate, two forks — Avery realized she had been at the table for two hours and he had not once looked at the two-top by the window.
At the door he didn't try to kiss her. He just stood in the warm July evening with his hands in his pockets.
"We finished," he said.
"We finished dinner," she corrected. "That's all. I'm not saying—"
"I know what you're saying." He smiled. "Same time next week?"
"Somewhere else," she said. "Somewhere your mother has never been."
"That'll be hard. She's been everywhere."
"Then somewhere she'd hate."
He considered. "There's a sports bar by the high school. Twelve TVs. Sticky floors. She'd rather die."
"Perfect."
She gave him back his phone. He looked at it, didn't turn it on, and put it in his pocket.
* * *
Paige and Ellis were married on the second Saturday in October in Harlan Pruitt's backyard, under string lights on a timer, beside a rectangular pool that Harlan had cleaned three times that week until it shone like a sheet of blue glass.
The orange dispenser was back. HARLAN'S ORANGE-CARDAMOM LEMONADE — STILL TRUST ME. There were white roses everywhere, three dozen on the tables and a dozen more floating on the surface of the pool.
Avery stood up front in a dusty-rose dress that was, Paige had agreed, absolutely not yellow. Across the aisle, Dorian stood beside his brother. Ellis had taken off his shoes. He stood barefoot on Harlan's lawn in his wedding suit, and when Paige came down the aisle on her father's arm, he looked down at his own bare feet and laughed and cried at the same time, and Vivian, in the front row, pressed a handkerchief to her mouth.
Avery's mother had sent a card. It had arrived Thursday: a glossy congratulations card meant for a couple, addressed to Avery, with *Hope the wedding is lovely! — Mom* written inside and nothing else. Avery had stood in the half-empty apartment holding it for a long time. Then she put it on the refrigerator under a magnet shaped like a croissant, because it was a card, and her mother had sent it, and that was what her mother had. You didn't have to love a loaf to admit it had risen.
At the reception, she gave the toast.