DARREN HAD NEVER THOUGHT MUCH of Juice. It was a smoothie bar, not the type of place he'd hang out, and he only knew about it because Dakota worked there. That fact was the only thing that gave him a good feeling about today. Aside from that, his thoughts were plagued by one question: why did Dakota want him to come here on a Monday?

And yet, when Dakota asked him to do something, he did it, no matter what he thought of it. He hadn't the least clue about what to expect; if Dakota wanted to tell him something, why hadn't she just done so yesterday evening? But if it wasn't to tell him something, why did she ask him to come here? While Juice was a lovely place, full of bright colors, a fruity smell and an overall trendy vibe, there wasn't anything to come here for besides smoothies.

So, based only on the instructions to be at Juice at noon, Darren walked into the little bar. At this time of day, there weren't many people; the only guests were a blonde woman in the back and a couple in the center. Behind the bar were two employees, and despite their identical uniforms, he could spot Dakota easily. While her hair was timidly bound up into a ponytail, her simplicity made her stand out.

He walked up to the bar. "Hey, Dakota," he said. His voice was unconfident, the insecurity about today having seeped into his tone.

She had been chopping up fruit, but when she heard Darren, she turned around. "Hi." Her face lit up.

Her unexpected happiness caused a smile to grow on his lips. She seemed happy to see him, and that hadn't been the case in months. "I came."

She grinned. "I see."

He shrugged and approached her. "So...?" The question he wanted to ask was readable in his facial features, but she pretended not to notice. "Why did you ask me to come here?"

Dakota's grin grew even wider. "I think it's better if I show you," she said playfully. She tapped her coworker on the shoulder. "José, I'll be taking a break."

"You've just taken–"

A wave of her hand and her turning her back towards him was enough to get him to stop talking. This must not have been the first time she did this, and it was the least surprising thing she'd done today. She walked around the bar to enter the area for the guests and led Darren towards the back of the space.

"Am I allowed to go back there?"

"You're not going back there," Dakota said, and at the same time, she halted at the table where one of the guests of Juice was sitting at. Darren blushed, feeling guilty for disturbing the woman who was sitting by herself, seeming to enjoy her me-time.

Dakota sat down at the table opposite the woman before Darren could even protest. "Hey mom, what's up?"

The blonde woman looked up from her phone at the commotion, and she seemed to know Dakota, because she put her phone facedown on the table and set up a little straighter.

Darren still stood frozen next to the table, but the woman looking up and giving him a glance of her face made his brain put some pieces together. He'd seen this face before – one-dimensional and pixelated, but he recognized it nonetheless.

He was standing next to Rebecca Kingsley.

The profile picture on Facebook had been small, and other pictures were taken from a distance, so it was strange to see her close-up, but there was no doubt about it. This woman had given birth to Dakota, eighteen years ago. Her sitting opposite of Dakota enabled him to see the similarities between them. When he'd walked into Juice, he hadn't cared to look at the woman twice, but now he couldn't believe he hadn't recognized her.

"Sorry I had to make you wait," Dakota continued.

"Don't be, I came early." Rebecca waved the comment away and instead focused on the boy standing on her left, who hadn't said anything since he'd arrived at the table. "And who is this?"

Dakota looked up at him with a smile, her expression similar to that of a mother proud of her son. "This is Darren."

No further introduction was necessary: Rebecca's face cleared up at the mention of that name. "Darren? The one and only?"

"I–I guess..." Darren stammered, looking from Rebecca to Dakota and back.

"He's got a lovely accent," Rebecca said to Dakota.

"I know." Dakota's eyes sparkled.

Darren shook his head, as if that was going to clear his mind or make this situation any less confusing. "Wait..." he said. He had his mouth half-open, about to continue, but he didn't know how to make sense of the thoughts in his mind. "What happened?"

The question was directed at Dakota. "She just complimented you on your accent. Didn't your mom raise you to say 'thank you' if someone compliments you?"

He noticed the sarcasm, but didn't go into it. "I–I... No, I mean..." He took a deep breath in. "What is this? What's going on?"

"Sit down," Rebecca said, and Dakota scooched up to make room. "Dakota kinda explained to me what was going on between you two, so I guess this must be overwhelming." She looked at him with motherly eyes and a kind expression, one that told him he didn't have to be afraid. The problem wasn't so much that he was afraid, however; he was just very confused.

Still, he sat down as they told him to.

"I'm Rebecca," the blonde woman said, stretching out her hand. "You must be the one who told me about Dakota."

"I–I am," Darren said. Him reaching out to Rebecca was something he wouldn't be able to forget easily; it had been what started the troubles between him and Dakota. How he'd ended up here was unclear to him.

"Well, thank you," Rebecca said. Her voice sounded genuine, just how Darren had expected the woman to be. "I can't tell you how thrilled your message – and actually getting to meet Dakota – made me."

Darren turned to Dakota, his narrowed eyes and frowning eyebrows asking the questions his mouth couldn't pronounce.

"A lot's happened since you left," was all Dakota said.

"What– What's happening here?" Darren stammered.

"Do you want to tell him?" Rebecca offered.

Dakota shook her head. "It's better if you do. You know more of the story than I do."

Rebecca seemed to agree and didn't wait any longer to kick off. "So, I guess you know the beginning of the story already. It starts when you reached out to me through Facebook – and again, I can't tell you how thrilled I was to receive that message."

Even if she didn't tell him, he could see it in her eyes as she talked or the look on her face when she admired her daughter. Darren got a pleasant feeling in his stomach as he watched Rebecca talk, realizing that his plan had actually worked. Dakota and Rebecca sat in the same room, voluntary, just like he'd dreamed this mother-daughter reunion would be.

"Then, you sent me that second message, saying you couldn't set up a meeting because of –" Rebecca's finger switched between him and Dakota. "Well, you know. That wasn't the only thing you wrote, however. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you gave me Dakota's full name and her Instagram handle."

"You asked for that information," Darren said.

Rebecca tilted her head, thinking. "Well, I suppose I did. It wasn't with the intention of reaching out to Dakota, though – I just wanted to see her face. Maybe I was slightly suspicious about you writing to me, and looking Dakota up and seeing if she looked anything like me would be my insurance that this was really happening." She put her elbows down on the table and braided her fingers together. "But when I read your second message, first telling me I couldn't meet my daughter and then giving me the information I needed to find her myself, it was like you wanted me to find her myself."

Darren turned to Dakota and rushed to defend himself. "That wasn't my intention at all." If she thought it was, that would make her mad, he thought; she didn't want to get into contact with her mother, after all. Although, he supposed that had changed now too.

"Whatever the intention, I did it anyway," Rebecca said. "I made an Instagram account and DM'ed her."

"That's the day I approached you in the cafeteria," Dakota said, referring to the last time she and Darren had spoken. Or, well, she had spoken and he had had to listen. "I'd just gotten her message and was furious."

"I–I know." It would be hard to remember.

"Didn't you ask me to tell the story?" Rebecca asked, but she laughed and Dakota joined in too. The sound was surprising, something Darren hadn't expected to hear, and it gave him a light, strange feeling that reminded him of what he felt when he was with his own family. How long had these women had the time to get to know each other? They seemed to have a natural chemistry, as if the mother-daughter bond had always been there despite the miles separating them.

"Anyway, I reached out, and for days, I didn't get a reply," Rebecca said.

"That's because I was mad," Dakota added.

Rebecca gave her another warning look, but both Dakota and Darren saw she wasn't being serious. "I think it was in December... Yes, midway December, that I got a reply. And I don't check Instagram every day – I only had an account because of Dakota, so it took me another few days to notice she'd replied to me." A smirk appeared on her lips. "And I remember exactly what she wrote to me.

Dakota now grinned too. "'Hi. Thank you for your egg cell and the nine months I got to spend in your womb, but no, I'm not interested in meeting you.'"

Darren laughed.

"How do you reply to such a message!" Rebbeca laughed. "I was dumbfounded. I had to get over the shock my daughter had written to me, that my daughter was smarter than me, and that she'd managed to quash my invitation so politely and bluntly." She chuckled and thought back to that day. "I was at work when I read it, and the message kept repeating itself in my mind all remaining hours of my workday. I even wrote an email to a colleague and started it with 'Thank you for your egg cell' before I realized what I was doing. Only when the workday was over had I gathered the courage to reply."

"She was nice," Dakota said somewhat shyly. "I hadn't expected to hear anything, especially because I had kinda told her not to, but she wrote me the kindest reply."

"I just told her my story – a story that, if I had had the chance to raise her myself, I would've told her a long time ago. Even if she didn't want to get to know me, I figured she at least deserved to know where she came from."

Rebecca and Dakota didn't seem to notice that they were displaying a nearly perfect mother-daughter dynamic in the way they told this story together, but Darren smiled when he did. It was good to see them together like this, reunited after many years.

"She told me my birth story." The expression on Dakota's face made Darren burst out laughing. "In so much detail! Like, I just wanted to reply, 'TMI' and never write to her again, but there was something about it..." Dakota turned to Rebecca, her voice softening. "It was kinda nice to hear too. There was this part of me that I didn't know about, a story about myself I didn't remember. Darren, I didn't understand what you meant that it would make a difference to understand where I came from, but in that moment, I did."

Rebecca smiled. "So, she replied – and her message didn't just say 'TMI'." There was a pause, and they both reminisced, until Rebecca picked up the story again and fast-paced through it. "We got to talking and quickly decided to meet up."

"The first time we met was between Christmas and New Year's Eve," Dakota added. "We spent an entire day together. She took me to the Jacksonville Zoo –"

"Can you believe she'd never been there?" Rebecca asked Darren. "When I was a teenager, I used to hang out there all the time after school."

"I'm just not an animal person, I guess." Dakota shrugged. "It was better than I expected it to be, though. As we made our way through the park, we talked a lot, and she told me so many stories of her life, and I caught her up on my life. At night, we went to the Florida Theatre and saw a show."

When Rebecca noticed Darren was listening with amazement, surprised at how many things they'd done and how quickly they'd bonded, she said, "I had to catch up on lost time. Eighteen years, actually."

"Apparently, that day alone wasn't enough catching up," Dakota said. "After that, she's driven down from Seaside, Florida a couple more times to spend the day together." She raised her hands. "And now we're here."

Darren raised his eyebrows, but remained quiet. What was there to say to that? In the couple of weeks he'd been in Scotland, he'd missed out on so much. As he was trying to process everything they'd just told him, he was overwhelmed by happiness for these women.

"The drive is just a small thing to do for my daughter," Rebecca said. "I'm just excited I get to see her." She put her hand over Darren's. "And that's all thanks to you."

Darren blushed. "You– you're welcome, I guess."