First Time, Forever

Or men who looked like calendar boys.
Make that colander boy, she said to herself, watching him wrestle the sideboard into the window well. Mr. November.

Still, there was no harm in looking. Being on a diet didn’t mean you couldn’t look at double chocolate brownies with hot fudge icing.

He found the colander. “Defective,” he told her. “It’s missing November.”

all the police?” he asked. “On Sookie?” Come to think of it, it might be kind of fun.

A man could not be jealous of his three-year-old son. It was not permissible. Especially when he was not here about romance, heaven forbid. Simply being neighborly. Or a knight, however one wanted to look at it. Still, a man would probably go a long way to have a woman look at him with that kind of bone-melting sweetness

He suddenly felt achingly lonely and overwhelmed.
“Don’t you dare turn the truck around,” he said to himself. “You can’t just show up at a woman’s house at dinnertime, hoping she’ll feed you.”
In exchange for unloading her U-haul, the other voice said indignantly.
The kind of thing a white knight might do, except a real knight wouldn’t expect dinner.
Sighing, recognizing all life turned on a hair, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it, Evan Atkins slowed, stopped and turned his truck around.
He told himself that she looked like the kind of woman who might know a thing or two about potty-training.

Did you really pay two hundred dollars for those shoes?”
“Not quite,” she said, “but close.”
He shook his head incredulously. “Why?”
“They’re magic shoes,” she said with a sigh. “They were supposed to make him happy.”

didn’t mean to cause you worry. I guess I should have called.” He smiled, shook his head and said, “I feel like I’ve said those words a few times before in my life.”
She just bet he had. Those charming dimples had

and then shut herself in the bathroom and cry.

He decided not to correct her pronunciation