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Briana nodded. “Yup.”

“That is so romantic,” Jane said.

“Jacob has beautiful handwriting,” Mom said, stirring the pesto. “I’ve always thought so.”

“Why a letter?” Dad asked.

Everyone looked at me.

I thought carefully about the answer. Then I decided again that truth was best. “I wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t know how.”

Briana smiled. “So I wrote him back. Then he wrote me back. And then all I could think about was when was the next letter…Then I stalked him on Instagram and DM’d him for his number. He was up at the cabin. I called him and we spent half the day on the phone.”

Jill looked confused. “He talked to you while he was at the cabin?” She turned to me. “You don’t get cell service up there.”

I cleared my throat. “I was sitting at the restaurant down the street.”

Now Briana looked confused. “You were at a restaurant? But…we talked for like three hours.”

I cleared my throat again. “I know.” I paused. “I wanted to talk to you.”

She held my gaze for a long moment. Then she seemed to decide to drop it and continue the story.

“So he never asked me out,” she said, still giving me a searching look. I had to turn away from her. “So finally I just asked him to lunch, and the rest is history.”

All the women smiled at me and sighed.

Well, so far so good.

Everyone chatted casually for the next half an hour. The water boiled, I started the pasta, the sides were placed on the table, and then we took a seat for dinner.

Grandpa sat next to Mom as usual, but this meant he was right across from us and used this position to glare at Briana. To her credit, she didn’t seem bothered.

“So, what do you do?” Mom asked Briana, passing her a plate of garlic bread.

“ER physician, like Jacob,” she said, taking two slices and passing it to me.

“You know, he didn’t always want to be a doctor,” Mom said. “He wanted to be a veterinarian.”

Briana looked at me. “I could see that. Why didn’t you?”

I passed the garlic bread to Jane. “I couldn’t deal with seeing abused or neglected animals.”

Briana laughed. “We just deal with abused and neglected humans instead.”

“There’s a little more recourse for it when they’re humans.”

She bobbed her head. “True.”

“And what do your parents do?” Dad asked her.

“Well, my dad left when I was eight. But my mom is a nurse. She’s retired. She immigrated here from El Salvador when she was eighteen.”

“Oh! Do you speak Spanish?” Dad asked.

It occurred to me that I didn’t know the answer. Briana was right. We hadn’t been ready.

Briana nodded. “Yeah. It was my first language.”