27- Lincoln

I had a girlfriend. Okay, a fake girlfriend. It was still a pretty novel concept for a guy who’d been on his own for a very long time.

By choice, of course.

I went to bed that night struggling with the concept. In one corner of my mind was Hannah’s encouraging smile, the warm one she’d given me as I’d finally escaped Paint It, Pal this afternoon. That smile lit up something dark and deep inside me, but I really didn’t want to think too much about that. It made me uncomfortable, and stirred up some dusty memories.

In the other corner of my sleepy mind was my mother, her shining eager eyes as she pursued her relentless quest for matching up each of her boys. I could only imagine how thrilled she would be when I introduced her to Hannah, though my memory of Hannah’s poor acting skills had me a little worried. And I didn’t want to hurt Mom by having her find out I’d tried to pull one over on her.

So it would take some finesse—not something I excelled at.

I woke up to the persistent vib