curfew.
“Three?” Nana asked him. “Is this true?”
Sam slowly lowered himself into his chair, looking around the table in confusion. “Three what?”
It was so unbelievably awkward.
Nana pinned him with her deeply intimidating brown eyes. “You were out with my granddaughter until three in the morning?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, “but we were asleep for a lot of it.” He did a double take at her deepening horror. “On the lawn. Just—sleeping.”
Nana’s face had slowly gone from ashen to pink to red, and Sam winced over to me, stage-whispering, “I’m not helping, am I?”
“Nope.” My voice echoed from where I was trying to crawl into my cup of tea.
“Tate,” Nana hissed, “you are not allowed to stay out with strangers in the garden of a hotel until three o’clock in the morning!”
I was having flashbacks to the time Nana walked in on me and Jesse tangled on my bed, shirtless, and chased him out of the house with a spatula.
And the time she found us making out in his car and wrote down his license plate and called Ed Schulpe down at the police station, who came and rapped his heavy police flashlight against the window, scaring the crap out of us.
Even the time she found us lying innocently on the couch watching television—barely touching—and reminded me that high school relationships end when high school does because there’s a whole big world out there.
“I know, Nana.”
“Do you?”
Luther and Sam both fixed their attention to the tablecloth.
My jaw clenched. “Yes.”
“Are you having fun, muffin?” Mom asked, and although I’d spoken to her on the phone thousands of times, knowing how far away she was made her sound really far away, and I got a mild pang of homesickness.
“So far, yeah.” I peeked at the closed bathroom door, lowering my voice. “Just one day in, and Nana is still calibrating.”
“Meaning,” Mom guessed, “that Nana is being uptight and miserable?”
I laughed and sat up straighter when I heard the toilet flush. “She’s okay. We’re headed to a museum today, I think. And lunch at Harrods. Then Les Miz!”
“I know you’re dying for the theater, but oh my God: Harrods!” She paused before quietly adding, “Tater Tot, Harrods is really nice. Try to have a good attitude.”
“I do have a good attitude!”
“Good.” Mom sounded unconvinced. “And make Nana buy herself something fancy.” Something clattered in the background—a pan against the stove, maybe—and even though I wasn’t hungry, my mouth watered for home cooking. I did the brief math—it was midnight there. I wondered whether she was getting a snack before bed, wearing her favorite flowery turquoise silk pajama pants and I’m A Proud Artist T-shirt.
“You tell her to buy herself something fancy,” I told her. “I’m not saying that. I’m already highly aware of how much this trip is costing.”
She laughed. “Don’t sweat the money.”
“I’ll try, somewhere between handling Nana’s controlling questions and having a good attitude.”
Mom, as ever, was unwilling to engage in bickering. “Well, before you go, tell me something good.”
“I met a boy last night,” I said, and amended, “Well, maybe more guy? Man?”
“Man?”
“Guy-man. He just turned twenty-one.”
My mother, ever the romantic, became dramatically—comically—interested. “Is he cute?”
A twisting ache worked its way through me. I missed Mom. I missed her easy encouragement that I find adventure in safe, tiny bites. I missed the way she balanced Nana’s overprotective tendencies without undermining her. I missed the way she understood crushes, and boys, and being a teenager. I didn’t actually think she would be angry with me for telling Sam about her and Dad—not anymore, now that I was officially an adult—but on the phone, across an ocean, was not the time or place to open that can of worms.
I’d tell her everything when I get home.
“He’s really cute. He’s like eight feet tall.” As expected, Mom oooh’d appreciatively. Just then, Nana turned the water off in the bathroom, making me rush to get through it. “Just wanted to tell you.”
Mom’s voice was gentle. “I’m glad you told me. I miss you, muffin. Be safe.”
“I miss you too.”
“Don’t let Nana make you paranoid,” she added just before we hung up. “No one is going to chase you down in London.”
Sam and I met on the lawn again that night.
We didn’t plan it. We didn’t even see each other after breakfast. But after Nana and I returned from the show, I snuck out into the garden beneath the sky full of stars, and Sam’s long body was once again stretched out on the grass, feet crossed at