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“Are you ready to order?” The waiter came over to our table, saving me from answering. I was relieved. I loved Alex’s interest. I loved that he was so easy to talk to. But I couldn’t continue talking about moms and keep it together. And I didn’t want to cry on our first real date.

“We’ll have a bottle of the cabernet, and I’ll have the eggplant parm,” Alex said, handing his menu to the waiter. He looked back at me and I ordered the fusilli with tomato and basil.

I loved that Alex didn’t know about the wine, or that he was supposed to let me order first; it made me feel more at ease. Peter knew all these things-all these weird rules and strange manners-and it always made me feel like there was something I was missing or forgetting. With Alex, it felt like if we missed something, it probably didn’t really matter to begin with.

Alex grabbed a breadstick out of the basket, took a bite, and then waved his half-eaten breadstick at me. “So where are you from?”

I grabbed a breadstick to wave back at him. “Downstate.” I took a bite of it and crumbs spilled down the front of my dress.

“Where downstate?”

“Outside of the city.” I knew what was coming. It was the normal flow of conversation. I’d avoided it with talk of Joe and Louis and housing issues before, but here it was: Where are you from? Do you go home often? Do your parents still live there? Normal questions, and I hated that I didn’t have normal answers. Alex laughed. “Could you be more specific?”

“About fifty miles north.” I hated saying Westchester. The response was always the same. “Oh,” and then a second once- over, to see if they could pick out the fact that obviously I must have come from money to be from Westchester County. And then I could either explain that not everyone from Westchester was a yuppie snob, or just let them think that I was.

“Are you in the witness protection program?”

“Westchester.” I tried to discreetly knock crumbs off my boob, but in the end I had to just go for it.

“How’d you end up here?” Alex grabbed another breadstick and spread butter on it with his dinner knife.

“School. And then I just stayed.” I knew I should give him more, but I just wanted to change the subject and go back to talking about superheroes and how neither of us knew anything about wine.

Alex balanced his knife in the tines of his fork. “Does your family still live in Westchester?”

“No.” I grabbed another breadstick and broke it into bite-size pieces over my bread plate so I wouldn’t get crumbs on my boobs again.

Alex laughed. “You really don’t like to volunteer information, do you?”

“No.” I tried to laugh it off, but it sounded forced. I realized I should just tell him. He was honest with me about his ex-wife. I didn’t like talking about my mom’s death, but it had to come up sometime. Eventually. I looked down at my bread plate, tracing my finger along the curve of the edge. “My mom died three years ago,” I confessed. I didn’t think saying those words would ever get easier. I felt my throat tighten up. I took a deep breath and tried to keep myself from getting messy.

Alex reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“That’s got to be really hard, Van.” He didn’t stop holding my hand even though he had to hold his arm up and reach around the candle to get to it. He couldn’t have been comfortable.

“It was breast cancer-why she died. I don’t remember my dad. I was two when he left.” I hated feeling like such a sad sack, so I added, “But I do have Joe.”

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better about it.”

“I always feel like I have to,” I said. “It makes people uncomfortable.” I realized I was holding a piece of breadstick like a cigarette. I put it down on my plate. “Thank you for not telling me you know how it is because your grandma died or some aunt you only sort of knew.”

“Do you get that a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, man.” He shook his head and pressed his fingertips to his forehead. “That’s terrible.”

“People mean well, I know-it just makes it worse. Like I feel more alone because nobody gets it.” This wasn’t date conversation. Date conversation was “Oh, my life is wonderful, and I’m so popular, and my phone always rings, and everyone wants me at all of their parties.” Instead, I was saying, “I’m a big lonely mess and no one loves me except my dog,” but the thing was, Alex didn’t seem to mind. He wasn’t trying to change the subject. He wasn’t trying to move on to more pleasant topics like the weather or whatever sport was in season. He wanted to know about me, even when it wasn’t all happy and pretty.

“Well, I won’t try to say I get it, but I respect it.” He squeezed my hand and let go.

“Thank you.”

“So what was your favorite thing about her?” he asked.

I thought about it for a minute, but all I could say was, “Everything.” I thought I was going to lose it. I looked up at the ceiling. It was acoustic tile, which totally didn’t go with how fancy the restaurant was trying to be. “I think she actually could fly,” I said, trying my damnedest not to cry. “Not too into capes, though. Tall boots, no capes.”

Alex got it. “So, does the cape help with the flying, or is it just for show?” he said, pulling me out of the hole.

“I think-” I took a deep breath to collect myself. “I think it’s like how stores hook streamers up to fans so you can see the airflow.”

“Interesting,” Alex said, tapping my foot with his under the table. The way his face softened when he listened, and the way he looked at me so intently, made me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered to him at that moment.

“Sometimes I think I remember my dad,” I said, “but then I’ll see some Italian guy on TV, and I’ll realize that he was the guy I was picturing as my dad. My mom didn’t keep any pictures of him.”

“Did you ever try to find him?” Alex asked.

“Once, but he wasn’t home, and I wimped out.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like he ever tried to find me or anything.”

“That’s too bad,” Alex said. “He’s missing out.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Alex hadn’t poured the wine yet, so I did. I didn’t know what else to say and it gave me something to do with my hands.

Alex puckered up after his first sip.

“Not a wine person?”

“I’m really more partial to beer.” He gave me an apologetic smile.

“We didn’t have to order wine.”

“Louis always tells me you drink beer after you mow the lawn. You drink wine with dinner. He called tonight to remind me.”

“Seriously?” I liked that Louis knew about our date.

“That’s Louis for you.”

The waiter brought our food. With my first two bites, I managed to flick tomato sauce on myself and splatter the table.

“Italian food is always messy!” Alex said, laughing as I blotted my dress with the napkin.

I cut my fusilli into tiny pieces to make it easier, but I ended up getting frustrated and just drinking wine. Alex never had another glass, and I finished the bottle by myself. If he noticed, he was too polite to mention it.

Alex told me he was an only child too, but his cousin Ollie came to live with them for a few years while his aunt got her act together, so it was sort of like having a sibling. Kind of like Janie and me. Ollie lived in Santa Fe now, had long blond dreadlocks, and worked for a guy who made guitars by hand. They still sent handwritten letters to each other, because Ollie didn’t have a phone or a computer. He was obsessed with living off the land.

We talked about everything from making mud pies when we were kids to that awful feeling you get when you first get to college, right after your mom leaves and you realize you’re on your own.

Alex told me he was an Aries, but he didn’t believe in astrology. He and his mom climbed all forty- six of the Adirondack High Peaks over the summers from junior high through high school. Ollie was with them for twenty-three peaks. His dad preferred to go fishing instead of climbing, and they’d come back from their hikes to fresh trout cooking in a cast- iron pan over the campfire. They slept in tents, in sleeping bags right on the ground, and he couldn’t believe I’d never been camping. His first crush was on a girl named Suzie from his kindergarten class, but he got over it when she wiped a booger on his arm. And he had a teddy bear named Rusty that he slept with until he was ten.

When he talked, all I wanted to do was listen. I wanted to soak up everything he’d tell me, and I was sure it wasn’t just the wine talking. I felt like I’d already known him for a really long time. I’d never felt like that before about anyone, not even Peter.

Alex slipped the waiter his credit card before he even brought the bill over. He got up before me and pulled my chair out as I stood up. He offered me his arm as we walked to the door. I wonder if Louis had coached him, or he could tell that the wine had gone to my head.

“Wait here,” he said, in the lobby. “I’ll get the car.”

“It’s not raining,” I said. “I won’t melt.”

“You might freeze.”

“I’ll risk it.” I took my hand off of his arm and fished for his hand.

He opened the door for me. We were quiet walking to his truck. It was a comfortable silence.

He tilted his head up to the sky, pursed his lips, and blew puffs of air into the cold. My heels clicked loudly on the pavement. The air was crisp and there was a ring around the moon.

“It’s going to snow,” I said, using my free hand to point to the moon. “There’s a ring.”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “It’s about time. We haven’t had anything stick for more than a day or two yet. It’s December already.”

I was proud of myself for knowing about the moon. I’d read it somewhere. Maybe it made me seem woodsy and rugged. I pictured us in front of a cabin wearing matching flannel shirts and knit caps like Paul Bunyan, chopping wood in the snow.

“You haven’t gotten your tree yet either, right?” Alex slowed down his pace and looked at me.

I shook my head. I hadn’t ever gotten my own Christmas tree. My mom and I used to get a little one from the parking lot of the pink brick church in Mount Kisco. But the past two years by myself, I’d just tried to forget Christmas even happened. I got grocery store sushi, rented a bunch of Brat Pack movies, and holed up in my condo until it was over. This year I was planning to get a stocking for Joe, but I hadn’t even considered getting a tree.

“I was going to go to the Public Market to get one on Sunday.” Alex swung my hand back and forth. “Do you want to come?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.” The hand he wasn’t holding was getting cold, so I shoved it in my coat pocket.

“I can fit both trees in the back of the truck.”

Both trees. My tree and Alex’s tree. I let my head spin through shopping trips for ornaments, eggnog and bourbon, and listening to Bing Crosby while we decorated my very own Christmas tree.

“We’ve got to get there early, before all the good ones are taken. You know how the Public Market is.”

Alex opened the door for me when we got to the truck. I hopped up onto the seat. He pushed my dress against my leg before he closed the door so it wouldn’t get stuck.

“I’ve never been to the Public Market,” I said. The car wasn’t any warmer than the outside. Alex got in and wasn’t making a move to hold hands again, so I pulled my gloves out of my coat pocket and slipped them on.

“Well, the Public Market here isn’t going to compare with New York City or anything, but it’s pretty cool.” Alex turned the heat way up and fiddled with the air vents.

“It opens at five, but I won’t make you get up that early.” He held the back of his hand to one of the middle vents to test the temperature. “I’m guessing you’re not a morning person.”

“See, you say I don’t volunteer info, but you already know everything about me.”

“I just figured if I worked at home, I’d probably sleep in.” He felt the air vent again, nodded his head in approval, and angled it in my direction.

The warm air started thawing out my cheeks. It smelled like pine needles mulling on an old steam heater, or at least what I imagined that would smell like.

Alex told me a funny story about how his dad used to take him to the market when he was a kid and he’d feed kettle corn to the live chickens at the poultry stand when no one was looking. He told me that he’d wanted to be a vet since he knew what a vet was, and that when he was six he had a guinea pig named Mrs. Frisby, after the book his mom used to read him. I watched him while he drove and talked and I realized that I wanted to know absolutely everything about him.