I scrunched up my nose and covered my ears with my palms. “Nope. You’re crossing the line. I’ve told you before, Richard is in the Never-Want-to-Hear-About-It category.”

She cackled. “Let me go deal with this. Love you. Bye,” Connie said before ending the call only after I’d said bye too.

I was still trying to shake off her TMI as I opened my pantry and pulled out the cans of beans I was going to need for the soup I was making for dinner—because I could eat soup for lunch and dinner and be happy for the rest of my life—when the doorbell rang.

Ah, hell.

Even though the complex I lived in had a gate that required an access code to get in, and even though solicitation was banned according to the signs posted at every entrance, every once in a while, people still managed to sneak through. Just last week, someone holding pamphlets and offering to speak to anyone who would listen about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had rung my doorbell. The only reason I’d checked the peephole ahead of time was because I’d heard voices outside the door—specifically my neighbor Santiago’s voice—and had been curious. And I wasn’t even embarrassed to admit that I’d laid down on the floor for a solid five minutes afterward.

Then again, I pretended I wasn’t home anytime anyone I didn’t know knocked. Even when Girl Scouts came around and tried to sell cookies. I had no willpower.

So, you could say that I knew better than to call out to whoever was ringing the doorbell.

I set my can down beside the Dutch oven I had been about to use and crept as quietly as I could toward the door. Boogie had tried to tell me once you could see shadows move across the peephole from the outside when they were used, but I didn’t totally believe him. I’d stopped believing everything he said when I was thirteen and he’d tried to tell me that kissing boys made babies.

Yeah, I’d found Connie’s condoms two years before that and had that conversation with her. My sister had taught me about the birds and the bees using a carrot and a cinnamon donut. There was a reason we were so close. She could tell me anything.

Anything that wasn’t related to her husband, because I saw him too much and just didn’t want to picture things.

Anyway, one quick glance through the peephole had me dropping to my heels from my tiptoes, then going right back onto them to make sure I hadn’t imagined the face on the other side tipped up toward the ceiling.

I wasn’t seeing things.

It was Zac.

How the hell had he—

That was a stupid question. Obviously there was only one person who could or would have given him my address. But why had he asked for it? And what was he doing here?

Through the peephole, I saw him lean forward, and not even a second later, the doorbell went off again.

Okay.

“One second!” I called out, frowning to myself before undoing the deadbolt and then the bottom lock and opening the door carefully to face the man who had been my friend a long time ago. A man who was very, very busy. And that I was very happy for.

I’m not going to take anything personally. I’m not going to be hurt. I’m not going to be more disappointed than I’ve already been, I reminded myself as I halfway forced a casual smile onto my face.

“Hi,” I told Zac, wincing on the inside at how almost half-assed my greeting sounded.

The dirty-blond-haired man with his freshly shaved face shot me a smile that seemed wary as his eyes, a nearly perfect baby blue, locked onto my own. I couldn’t help but notice his clothing—jeans, a T-shirt, and worn cowboy boots. “Hi, darlin’,” he drawled.

What the hell was he doing here?

He must have known I was surprised by his presence, because he kept right on going, aiming those eyes at me. One corner of that pink mouth hitched up—he didn’t have the fullest mouth, but it was well-shaped and just pretty—and he lifted one of those broad shoulders too as he asked, “Got a minute for me, honey?” He tried to lay it on me, I’d give him that. “Pretty please?”

A sudden flashback of my abuela complaining about letting Zac get away with everything came out of nowhere.

And I understood her completely. Now. So many freaking years later. It was that smile and the earnestness in his face—but mostly that freaking smile—that tugged at me despite everything.

He was here, and he was Zac, and maybe he’d hurt my feelings for forgetting about me, but….

He was here. Being all… himself, or at least showing me the bits and pieces that had made up the person I’d known.

The important parts.

Damn it.

I was going to be fine. I wasn’t going to show him he’d hurt me, because I knew… somehow… he hadn’t meant to do that.

The world was a heavy place, and I had a finicky back.

Plus, if anyone had to feel bad, it was me for how I’d behaved in the first place.

His eyebrows went up. “So… yeah?”

So… yeah?

I stood aside and gestured Zac in. “Sure. Come in.”

That smile of his went wide.

Yeah, there was a reason Mamá Lupe had loved him and why I’d been so in love with him, both as a friend and more, back in the day.

“I was in the middle of making dinner,” I told him, waving at Zac to follow me toward the island that separated the kitchen from the living room. I had two stools lined up along it. “Do you want something to drink? I have water, Pepsi, and pink lemonade powder.”

When I’d first moved in about a year and a half ago, I hadn’t bought too many things for the living room because the deposit on this place had been so pricey. There was a sofa bed, a chair that was only there because I thought it was cute, because it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable, and a TV that my sister and her family had bought me, claiming it was my birthday and Christmas present for the next two years. She hadn’t been joking either. For Christmas, she’d given me a card with a picture of the television in it. I’d cried from how hard I’d laughed. I had old movie posters of Mulan and The Lion King framed on my wall that a friend had gifted me.

The kitchen was the whole reason that I’d moved into this expensive complex in the first place. I’d taken one tour of it and known that this was what I wanted. With white cabinets, pull-out drawers, white granite counters, light blue subway glass tile backsplash, stainless steel appliances, and a cute little island in the middle, I’d immediately envisioned filming video blogs in the small but perfect kitchen. It had been love at first sight.

One day, maybe, I could buy a house with a beautiful, big kitchen. But I’d settle for renting a studio to film. Someday.

“I’ll take some water,” Zac replied, bringing me back to the present and getting me to stop admiring my kitchen.

I nodded as I grabbed a clean glass and filled it up through the tabletop water filter I’d spent an arm and a leg on as the sound of him pulling out a stool told me what he was doing. Getting comfortable. Sure enough, he was sitting on the other side of the counter, giving me another tight-lipped smile when I set the glass in front of him and pushed it just a little closer.

Zac looked… off. His light brown eyebrows were drawn tight, his forehead was scrunched, and the lines along his mouth were deep, and I didn’t like it. I only partially disliked that I didn’t like it.