Kassie stood in front of her bedroom mirror, changing her shirt for the third time. Ben was picking her up in an hour for what would officially be their first real date—dinner at a small Italian restaurant he’d discovered during his delivery routes—and she felt like a teenager getting ready for prom.
“It’s just dinner,” she told her reflection, smoothing down a navy blue blouse that was nice but not trying-too-hard. “You’ve had dinner with him before.”
But this felt different. After weeks of coffee dates and increasingly flirtatious text exchanges, Ben had finally asked her out properly. “Let me take you somewhere we can actually hear each other talk,” he’d said, “and where I don’t have to share your attention with caffeine addiction.”
Kassie’s phone buzzed with a text from Sarah: *How
