Page 58 of Accidental Blind Date

“The BEST mac and cheese,” Poppy corrects her.

I shove my hands in my back pockets for a moment, strangely struggling to understand how conversation works all of a sudden. “It’s literally just pasta, butter, flour, milk, cream, and acouple types of cheeses. Oh and breadcrumbs for a little crunch,” I say.

“I love a little crunch,” she smiles, crinkling her nose at the girls as she does.

Somehow she has managed to make even the wordcrunchsexy. And that’s when I realize– I’m going to need a drink.

I move to one of the chairs and pull it out. “Sit, please.”

“Thank you,” she says and just like that, there’s static in the air.

After that, for the sake of proximity, I move to the kitchen. “Would you like some wine?” I ask.

“Wine and mac and cheese?” Poppy asks. “Weird.”

But Libby only laughs. “I’d love some.”

“We also have rolls and salad,” Delilah shows Libby.

“It all looks so good. I love this.”

“Do you really?” Poppy asks and I look away from my wine pouring for a moment. “A lot of grownups would probably think that mac and cheese is a silly meal.”

“Well, I think that’s simply ridiculous,” she states. Both the girls giggle and I smile, topping the second glass with chardonnay. Does white wine go with mac and cheese? Should it be red? Does wine even go with mac and cheese? I do know one thing it goes with. My nerves. “There is nothing silly about homemade mac and cheese.”

I smile again, my nerves mellowing a little just from her words and I have to admit– Libby has an odd way of doing that. When she’s not showing teeth at work as a retaliation to our…business differences– her personality is actually quite infectious. I noticed it on our first date and it’s very prominent right now as she sits at my dining room table with my daughters, spooning fresh baked mac and cheese onto plates.

After that, the conversation is easy. The girls talk about what they’re doing at school (mostly the art and lunch and recess bitsbecause obviously those are the most important) and how they think she should be a teacher there.

“I don’t know if I would make a very good teacher,” she says and even I stop chewing.

“What are you talking about?” Delilah bursts out. “You’d be, like, the best teacher.”

“I second that,” Poppy says.

“And I third it,” I say, popping another bite in my mouth.

“Really?” she asks, taking another bite too.

“Yes, it’s an anonymous vote,” Poppy says.

“Unanimousvote,” Delilah corrects her.

“And why is it unanimous?” she asks.

“Because you love kids and books and you're nice and you have great clothes,” Poppy states before taking a giant bite of a buttered roll.

“There you go,” I half shrug with a smirk.

“Okay but here’s the thing,” she smiles too, setting her fork down and clasping her hands together. “I love kids. I do. And I think your school is wonderful. And I have thought about being a teacher before. But I love my shop. I love that all the kids I get to be around are kids that also love books. Because as crazy as this may sound, a lot of kids don’t care about books.”

“Like Dennis,” Poppy says.

“Who is Dennis?” Delilah asks, stabbing a noodle with her fork.

“He’s in my class. He uses pages of books as tissues…without ripping them out.”

Delilah stops. “He just blows his nose in the books?”