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“You can call me Liza now, you’re an adult, you know!”

Why did old teachers always say this? She would never be grown-up enough to call Ms. Cunningham by her first name.

“How are you?” her teacher asked. And then she laughed again. “Though I don’t even have to ask, your mom tells me all about how you’re doing.” Her mom was a teacher at her former high school. “She always talks about you; you’re the same as you’ve been since you were a teenager. You were always so well-behaved and reliable, and now you’re such an upstanding member of our community. We’re so proud of you, Avery.”

Avery smiled automatically.

“Thank you so much, Ms. Cunningham. I try.”

“Liza! And how’s that boyfriend of yours? Things going well there?”

Yes, right, her mom still didn’t know about her breakup, because she’d been too stressed out at the time to have that conversation, and just…kept procrastinating it.

“Um, oh, he’s—”

“Oh, there’s my husband waving at me. We have to head to a wedding, but we wanted to stop in to Noble before we left, and I keep running into people I know, he’s going to kill me if I delay us any more. Great to see you, Avery!”

“Great to see you, too,” Avery said.

As soon as Ms. Cunningham walked away, Avery fled to the taco stand. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Ms. Cunningham, she did, she always had. But “well behaved”? “Reliable”? Yes, fine, it was true, it was all true, but Ms. Cunningham may as well have said,Avery, you were always such a boring teenager, and now you’re a boring adult! Congratulations!

And that was true, too. She was steady, focused, dependable, and boring as hell. What a fucking legacy. She’d stayed in a bad relationship for far too long because she was so reliable that she’d assumed that by sheer force of will, she could make it become a good one. That, or because she was so boring that she’d assumed no one else would ever want to date her—one or the other.

Wasn’t she too young to be this boring? No, probably not, boring had no age level, and that made it even worse. It wasn’t that she wanted her life to just be organizing her new apartment and working and very little in between, but everything else that she could do—everything else that she wanted to do—felt uncertain, risky, scary.

She grabbed a plate of tacos and wandered over to the wine table. Her glass had been empty from the moment Ms. Cunningham had called her an upstanding member of the community.

Taylor was still there, still pouring wine. And, right at that second, she was opening another bottle. She bit her bottom lip as she concentrated on it, and Avery couldn’t stop herself from staring at that lip. Good Lord, why was she so focused on Taylor today?

“It’s Avery, right?”

Avery looked up to find Taylor looking straight at her. Great, on top of everything else, Taylor would think she was a creep. Oh wait, thank goodness, she had sunglasses on; maybe Taylor hadn’t realized she’d been staring at her.

“Yeah, I’m Avery. Hi.” She was glad her voice seemed normal. “And you’re Taylor? Luke forgot to introduce us earlier. I think we’ve met at other events, but he’s also told me a lot about you.”

Taylor grinned, and her eyes lingered on Avery.

That was why people fell for her. It was the way she looked at you, like the two of you had a little secret from everyone else.

“He’s told me a lot about you, too.” Taylor held up a bottle of rosé. “Need more of this?”

Avery held out her glass.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“How are the tacos?” she asked, with a glance at Avery’s plate. “I haven’t gotten a chance to try them yet. I’ve been glued to this table since they started serving.”

“And no one has brought you one?” Avery asked. “That seems cruel. They’re great.”

Taylor grinned at her again.

“I agree, that is cruel.”

The crowd around the wine table had thinned, so Avery didn’t feel bad monopolizing Taylor’s time.

“Well, we can’t have that.” Avery held out her plate. “Here, have this one.”

What in the world was she doing? Why was she giving this woman—whom she barely knew—her last taco?