Chapter 1

“I’ve met someone.”

I looked at my mother across the kitchen table. She’d called me at work earlier and invited me over for dinner one cold February evening claiming she had “big news” to share.

“Really?” I asked.

She nodded. “His name is Paul Everett, Dr.Paul Everett. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia and he’s an English professor at Glassboro Community College. We met at that teaching conference I went to in New Jersey a few months ago. He’s great.”

I tuned out as my mother went on and on about her new boyfriend. We’d been down this road before. She’d meet a “great” guy, they’d go out for a few months, then she’d discover he wasn’t so great, and they’d break up. I suspected Mr. Everett would eventually just be one more loser added to the growing list.

Two years ago when my mother turned fifty, she decided she was tired of being alone and made it her mission to try and find herself a mate. She signed up for online dating, went to speed dating events, took cooking classes, whatever she could find to meet men. Unfortunately, she still hadn’t found Mr. Right.

Dating at any age can be a challenge, but dating as a middle-aged woman has particular difficulties. Men often want women much younger, leaving women my mother’s age to feel that they’re just not attractive or desired. Even in her early fifties, my mother was still a beautiful woman. Her shoulder-length, brownish-blonde hair (that had recently been colored to give it a more strawberry hue) was always perfectly styled, she kept her body in shape by working out, and she didn’t dress like some frumpy church lady. She was also smart. She held a doctorate from Temple and she’d been chair of the English Department at Philadelphia County Community College for the past eight years.

My parents divorced when I was fifteen after nearly twenty years together and my mother and I moved from Bucks County to a nice house in Bala Cynwyd where she still lived. (After college, I moved out and into a small apartment in Center City.) My father remained in the huge Bucks County house with Dax, our golden lab, to keep him company. After the divorce, I spent weekends with Dad and Dax because that’s what the divorce agreement stated, but also because I felt bad about my father being left alone in that huge house. But as I got older, those visits slacked off, and by the time I was a senior in high school, they’d stopped entirely.

“Jason Townsend,” my mother said, tapping my arm. “Are you listening to me?”

“Sorry, Jill Townsend. What did you say?”

“What are you doing Friday night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I want you to have dinner with me and Paul.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little soon to be having a family dinner with this guy? I mean, you just met him.”

“I didn’t just meet him. We’ve been going out for almost three months now.”

That surprised me. My mother had been dating a guy for nearly three months and I was just now hearing about it?

“So you’ve been keeping him a secret?”

“Well, sort of. I guess I didn’t want to jinx it. You know I haven’t had much luck in finding someone. But Paul’s different. He may be the one, Jason. I have a good feeling about him.”

It surprised me to see my mother so optimistic. Maybe this Paul really was “the one”, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

“So you’ll have dinner with us?”

“Sure. Just tell me where and when.”

My mother told me she’d made reservations for us Friday at seven at a Cuban restaurant in Old City, not far from my apartment. I was glad she’d made reservations in the city and not somewhere out on the Main Line where she lived. At least I’d have a short walk home Friday if the evening went poorly. I told her I’d be there and that I couldn’t wait to meet Paul.

“I just know you two will hit it off,” she said as I got up to leave.

“Yeah,” I said with a smile. I wondered how long this one would last before I was invited for dinner with the next “Paul” or whatever his name turned out to be.

My cell phone started to ring as I was backing my Volkswagen Golf out of the driveway of my mother’s house. I didn’t even bother looking to see who was calling because I already knew. My soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend Jared Theuer was trying to reach me. I should have dumped him months ago, but I just couldn’t seem to pull the trigger and do it. I kept telling myself that having him around was better than having no one, but having no one was looking better and better every day.