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I swatted her hands away. “Don’t be weird.”

She laughed.

I glanced back toward the register, my eyes zeroing in on the small wooden box on the counter. I looked at Kamala, then back at the box.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, and we both took off running toward the counter. I reached it first, but she was right behind me, her hands slamming over mine before I could open the box. “This is private café business.”

“Whatever, you read them to me all the time.”

She sighed. “Fine, but let me open it.”

I stepped back and lifted my hands in surrender. She opened the lid, revealing the one and only folded piece of paper inside at the moment. She took it out and dramatically unfolded it, then read, “Have it your way.”

“Have it your way?” I asked. “That’s what Asher wrote?”

She flipped the paper over, looked at the back, which was obviously blank, then held it up for me to see.

“ ‘Have it your way,’ ” I read out loud. “What does that mean?”

She crumpled up the paper and dropped it in the trash can by the counter. “Who knows? At least it wasn’t a complaint.”

By the time Kamala got off work and we watched a very unromantic sunset (not a single cloud to paint the sky) it was almost eight o’clock. My dad’s car was in the driveway as I pulled up to my house. He would have gotten home about thirty minutes ago. He’d have come inside, hung his car keys on the hook to the right of the door, sat on the bench to the left of the door and unlaced his shoes. He would have put them carefully underneath the bench. Then he had gone to the sink, washed his hands (which he’d already washed before leaving work but that he somehow thought he could getcleaner). They wouldn’t get cleaner; he was a mechanic, they were permanently lined black. Next he’d watch about thirty minutes of television and finally, he’d go take a shower.

I may have liked a well-planned day, but Dad had fallen into a rut of predictability. It wasn’t a plan, it was just his habits, repeated over and over again. I wasn’t even sure if he realized how predictable he was.

I let myself in the front door. My dad was sitting on the couch watching some nature show.

“Hi,” I said, adding my keys to the hook next to my dad’s.

“Hey, Bird. How was your day?” He was sitting on the edge of the couch, like he did before his shower, worried his coveralls were going to dirty the cushions. The couch was too big for the cramped living room, but it was in good shape, so he would not buy a new one anytime soon.

“Eh, kind of boring. But I did watch a very unromantic sunset.”

“You had a date?” he asked.

“With Kamala.”

He smiled. “How is Kamala?”

I leaned against the back of the couch and watched a tiger on the television stalk a deer. “She’s still way nicer than me.”

“I doubt that,” he said, like dads are required to.

“How wasyourday?” I asked. Dad worked for a guy named Niles who I hated more than I hated almost anyone. He overworked my dad but didn’t pay him like he overworked him. For years Dad had talked about opening his own small mechanic shop, but he never had the time or money to fulfill that dream andeventually he stopped talking about it. And that was the main reason I hated Niles. He was a dream killer.

“Same old, same old.”

“You should tell Niles that you have a life outside of work,” Isaid.

“Do I? Have a life?”

I gasped in fake offense. “You live and die for me, Dad.”

“Do I do both at the same time?”

I crinkled my nose. “That’s not the saying, is it? You live and breathe for me?”

“I definitely do that.” He clicked off the television. “I’m goingto—”