Billy Collins rang his mother's doorbell as though he hadn't bought the house. I had to laugh at the irony. I opened the door to him, filling the doorway with a bouquet of blue orchids and a box of Whoppers.

"Hello, Lily," his tongue stuck to the L's of my name in an alluring manner as he bit back his whole smile.

"Hello, Billy."

We stood there, gazing at each other for a long moment, until Mary broke the silence. "I'll put these in water," she announced as she took the orchids from him.

"Thanks, Mom."

He entered and wiped his feet on the mat more than necessary before closing the door behind him.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah, let me just get my coat." I shifted through the coats on the rack longer than needed to buy some time to soothe my nerves.

"Let me help." Billy took my coat from me and held it up so I could easily slip my arms into the sleeves.

"Such a gentleman," Mary cooed.

"Mom," Billy managed a tone startlingly similar to Viv's.

"Apparently, you forgot to have the 'be cool' conversation with your mom," I teased.

"Clearly." He smiled back at me. "We won't be out late," Billy shot over my head to his mom.

"You two are well past the ages of curfews," Mary called back.

"Shall we?" He held the door for me.

"We shall." I took his arm as we walked to his car. "Is this a Tesla?"

"It is," he said as the door opened before me.

"How did I not know that you had a Tesla?"

"I'm not sure how to answer that. I didn't intend it to be a secret."

I slid in and watched Billy pace around the front of the car to join me.

"Is this your dad's jacket?" I let my hand float over the arm of the familiar leather jacket.

"Of course; why?"

"Honestly, I'm a little surprised it doesn't still smell like cigarettes."

"Lil, I haven't smoked in almost twenty years."

"I know, but this thing was saturated." I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder, but all I could smell was Billy's familiar musk. "Where are we going?"

"Dinner. You haven't eaten yet, right?"

"Nope, I'm starved."

"Good." He reached out and let his hand squeeze my knee.

We rode in comfortable silence as Lake Superior whirled by the car windows. Billy rested his elbow on the center console as he and his fingers with mine. He drew my attention to him as he absently lifted our hands and kissed the back of mine before letting it fall back onto the console. He never adjusted his eyes from the road. My eyes studied him for a moment. His pale skin still had an alluring glow from the lights of the car dash. Whatever thought ran through his head caused him to purse his lips to a thin line. His cheeks sunk into an unfamiliar hollow. He had finally outgrown the baby fat on his face. I dipped my eyes back to the lake, regretting my inspection.

"Are we staying close to the lake?" I asked to shatter the funk fogging my mind.

"Mmhmm, an Italian place. I hear they have great gnocchi. You still like that, right?"

"Yep." I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, which resulted in a smile tipping his lips and a glance at his dimples.

It was only a ten-minute drive to the restaurant. Billy quickly paced to my side of the car to offer his hand. He pulled me close to him in a seamless movement.

"How are we doing? Good?" He scanned my face for my initial reaction.

"Good," I smiled.

"I'm nervous." There was a bubble of his throaty laugh, but it dropped when he saw confusion crossing my face. "You're making me nervous," he clarified.

"I'm sorry." My eyes widened at his admission.

"Not all nerves are bad, Lil." He smiled.

"I'm nervous too."

He tightly gripped my hand as we made our way to the host podium.

"Two under Collins," he murmured to the young woman.

It was so normal. I had expected wide eyes of surprise at a celebrity standing before her, but she just nodded to herself and ticked off a table on her chart.

"Is the solarium okay?" She asked as she plucked up two menus.

"Sure," Billy shrugged.

He never dropped my hand as we moved through the restaurant. I expected whispers, pointed glances, something, but the packed tables just carried on as though nothing were amiss. Maybe the flashes of bulbs and tormented celebrities splashed across magazines were myths or geographically centric to LA and New York. I just as easily could be dining with Billy, the Duluth mechanic, as much as Billy, the musician.

We arrived at a table next to floor-to-ceiling window views of the lake. It was breathtaking. Billy's hand drew me to the moment as it landed gently on my back to help me shirk out of my coat before pulling my chair out for me. He settled across from me and again scanned my expression.

"It's beautiful here," I offered. "Have you been here before?"

"Mmhmm, they have a private room that we've used for some events in the past. Even Mom likes the food, and that critique of an Italian restaurant is pretty weighty." He dropped his face to focus on his menu, so I only got a brief glimpse of his dimples.

I let my eyes float over the lake outside the windows; it felt like Portland. Did he know that when he picked it? Did he know that even though I dreaded returning to Portland, subtle homesickness crept into me? I was just now realizing it, but Billy, with his focus, would have seen it coming. The endless water pulling my mind to salt-stained Portland caused an audible sigh from me. Billy's hand grasped mine.

"It reminds me of Portland," I whispered as an explanation.

"Do you miss home?"

"I miss Portland," I corrected. "I came here looking for a home again. Portland felt..." my words dropped out as I felt the pang of mourning for my father again. "I know I have to go home for Christmas, but if I'm honest, I don't want to go."

Billy gave my hand another gentle squeeze. In one soft, reassuring pulse, I clicked back. I met his eyes and felt for the first time in a long time that I was in the right place, at the right moment.

"I love you," fell urgently from my lips. I needed him to know. "It's always been you."

He didn't react; he surveyed me for a long moment, entirely masking any emotion that spun through his head.

Then he settled on, "tell me this, Lily Turncott, what the fuck is a solarium?"

"A sunroom, er, moon room at this juncture." I shrugged.

"I love you too," he whispered.

"How are we doing here? Ready to order?" The server appeared out of nowhere, shattering our solitude.

"Uh," Billy looked at me as he blinked the moment out of his eyes.

"I'm; are you ready?" I prodded. Billy gave a nod as I started my order. "May I have the gnocchi and a seltzer?"

"Of course, and for you, sir?"

"Bolognese and a Castle Cream Ale." Billy took my menu as he spoke and handed both to the server.

"I've loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you," he finally mused once the server was gone. "I saw you before we were outside. People always think that when you're on stage, you don't see the faces, that it's just a sea of one crowd, but I remember faces."

"You do?"

"I do."

"Tell me about some of them."

"Did I ever tell you about my first show?" He dropped my hand and sat back in his chair with a smile toying with his lips.

"No, I don't think so. We've never really talked about your work."

"I was seventeen, and my boss at the shop..." he paused at my expression. "I worked in an auto shop in high school, remember?"

"Right, a mechanic from Duluth."

"Mmhmm. So, he had a band, but his drummer slipped on the ice and broke his arm, so he asked if I'd fill in for him. I was so nervous but had to play it cool." His head slightly nodded at how youthful the idea of playing it cool was. "I was just a kid, and it was at a dive bar, so they made me wait in the alley until it was time to play. Of course, we didn't hit the stage until well after midnight. By the time I was sitting at this shitty stage kit, my fingers were numb from the cold."

"Oh, no!" I laughed.

"Oh, yeah; there's only so much you can do in two minutes to warm up from a Minnesota February. But I played, and I was hooked, man. I mean, I already loved music, but live, it's a different animal. The right crowd is an instrument all of its own. There were probably twenty people there. But the face I remember was the bartender. I think of him as old, but he was probably younger than I am now." Billy let out a laugh at the perspective. "Still, we started, and he couldn't have cared less about us. He was just there doing his job, but then he stopped and listened for a bit. That look when he stopped and listened; we did that. I was done, man. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life."

"Yeah?"

"It was out of my hands. I couldn't have stopped it if I wanted to, and, as you may recall, sometimes I wanted to stop." He dipped his face to hide his smile again.

"Why are you hiding from me?"

He lifted his eyes to mine again; they were filled with bewilderment.

"You have been dropping your face for the smiles," I added.

"You're still making me nervous." Innocent energy coursed through him, causing him to shift at his place setting. A crooked smile slipped across his face as he began again. "One difference between Tim and I; I fucking hate doing festivals. He loves them, but they're just a lot of downtime, and I feel cooped up. But I remember this one festival; I had gotten lost."

"Lost?"

"Sorry," Billy sheepishly added. "Sometimes, when I'm playing, everything else slips away, and I'm just there with my friends jamming. I had completely forgotten that this massive crowd was there, and I came off this riff. There was a kid, a boy, maybe ten years old, perched on his dad's shoulders, and he just gave me a thumbs up. It blew my mind. I didn't know I needed it, but I think of that kid with the thumbs-up all the time. When I have a shitty crowd, I just think of the kid with the thumbs up and keep going."

"Do you get shitty crowds? I mean, aren't people there to see you?"

"Loads of shitty crowds. People have all these expectations now. You know, they want to hear what I sounded like when I was twenty-five or thirty or thirty-five. They turn on me if I show up and I'm into something new. It's fucking brutal."

"You have this entire world I've never been a part of." I regretted my reluctance to understand Billy's music.

"Not never," Billy corrected. "You were always a part of it. You were the girl."

"The girl?"

"Really? Come on, Lil. I've always said you were my girl. I think every musician has one, and most probably have many. From the stage, you can scope out all the girls or guys, as the case may be. You get to see which one catches the eye, stands out from the rest. Maybe it was the night, maybe my mood, but I remember you in the crowd. You weren't moving to the music like everyone else, so you caused a part in the crowd. And I'll be damned if you heard one note that night. It was infuriating. I just kept trying. I was throwing every trick in the book out there, and then the guy you were with left. I realized I watched you two break up. You were in the middle of a breakup, and I was trying to get your attention. I felt like such an ass."

"You saw me?"

"Blue jeans, white V-neck t-shirt, red and white flannel tied around your waist, and the highest ponytail I've ever seen in my life," he recounted, as if it had been yesterday. "You know, even when you're an unknown band, you usually smoke in the back."

"You were waiting for me?"

"I was. I just wanted to see you one more time. I hadn't intended to talk to you. But then you were there; you were so close. I needed you to see me."

"I see you."

"Drinks," the server appeared, setting our drinks on the table before disappearing again.

"Is it weird that no one has recognized you? Even the server seems to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. Usually, they're all chatty."

Billy just shrugged. "Lucky night, I guess."

"I've never heard of Castle beer." It felt almost too regular of a comment for the night.

"Portland isn't the only city with craft breweries. You want to try it?"

"No, I don't like beer, which, yes, I know, is a crime against my city."

"Still just like the sparklers?" He teased with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Mmhmm," I smiled back.

"But not tonight?"

"No, I don't need the bubbles tonight; I have you."

"You're dangerous." Billy let out his throaty laugh as he tossed back his head.

"Tell me more about Jackson," I prodded. I needed to hear more about Billy, everything about Billy.

"He's a good kid, kind." Billy's voice went distant as his mind wandered through his thoughts and fears for Jackson. "He feels everyone's pain. I don't know how to protect him from that."

"He's special," I agreed. "And Viv..."

"Whew, I worry about the world, not her." He let out a laugh. "She plays baseball." There was a twinkle in his eye as he spoke. "Do you remember?"

"Oh, I remember." I let out a laugh. "I thought I'd be around, edge her there a bit, but I wasn't even needed."

"You were there, Lil. You've always been there."

"Does she remember me?"

"No, she doesn't specifically remember you, but she remembers the feelings from that time. You got mixed up in her mother and me busting up. She also has absorbed you from bits. Half stories or random updates from my mom...."

"Snide comments from Sarah," I added.

Billy let out a laugh. "In her defense, you stole her man." He gave me a cheeky wink.

"She stole my man first," I defended.

"She stole nothing; she couldn't. She distracted at best. It wasn't fair to her, Lil." There was a gravity to his words. Our mistakes created this life: the good, the bad, the hurt, and the beautiful.

"It'll be hard with Viv," I murmured.

"It'll be slow." He plucked up my hand and kissed my knuckles. "And then it'll be all at once."

"Story of us," I mumbled as our food arrived.

A silence fell over us as we dug into our plates. My mind compiled all my questions for him, us, and me.

"How is it?" His voice was low; I couldn't believe it made it to my ears.

"Good, really good. Yours?"

"Good," he smiled, eying my plate.

"You want to trade?"

"Are we those people that swap plates halfway through a meal?"

"It could be worse; you could just eat my food from my plate, Timmy-style."

Billy let out a laugh. "Okay, give me that."

I tried his and immediately, "yours is so much better than mine" fell from my lips.

"Funny, I was just about to say the same about yours." His gruff laugh filled my ears.

"I guess we're a plate-swapping couple," I confirmed.

I sighed as I pushed around a few pieces of pasta. The meal was winding down, which meant the date was winding down, and I never wanted it to end.

"What's wrong?" Billy's brow furrowed at my sigh.

"I just want to stay in this longer," I admitted.

"Viv informed me that dinner alone is not a date." There was a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.

"Do you take all your advice from your daughter?" I joked.

"Yes, all the best advice comes from the kids."

"So, there's a part two?"

"Yes, there's a second act this evening, assuming you're having a good time." He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Yes, where to next?"

"You know how you hate surprises?"

"Yes, I'm aware of my aversion to shocks."

"It makes surprising you so much fun."

"It's all fun and games until I pout," I threatened.

"And then it's just fun," he finished for me.