It happened on a Thursday evening with no ceremony and no plan.
She had texted him about a catering question — whether the Saints would want her for a private event they were hosting in December, purely professional, she was building her winter book. He had called instead of texting back, and the catering question was answered in forty seconds, and then neither of them hung up.
They talked for two hours. About nothing that mattered and everything that did — his failed attempt to grow tomatoes behind the garage, her complicated relationship with her mother's new husband who was perfectly nice and that was almost the problem, a road trip he'd taken alone at nineteen before the club became his life, the one recipe she'd never been able to get right no matter how many times she tried.
"Choc
