Estell turned, arms folded, clearly prepared to participate in the roast. “And what happened to that cute one you brought to Thanksgiving?”

  “Tragic microwave accident,” I said. “He never recovered.”

  Typical. They’d remember every detail about every guy I dated but couldn’t for the life of them remember their own kids’ phone numbers.

  We spilled out into the lobby in a flurry of orthopedic shoes, mothball perfume, and barely contained anticipation. Outside, my crisply ironed jeans and tastefully wrinkled polo shirt definitely set me apart from my crew, who believed in floral prints and accessorizing like it was going out of style. Which, to be fair, it had…in 1972.

  * * * *

  Bingo was held in the bowels of the VFW hall. Step inside, and the world instantly aged twenty-five years. There were crocheted tablecloths, stacks of battered folding chairs, a faint promise of disinfectant, and the ever-present electric whine of fluorescent lighting slowly erasing your will to live.

  We had a regular table. Fifth row from the front, near the industrial-sized air vent, which meant if you weren’t careful, the wind could take your bingo cards straight to Oz. I was still convinced that random numbers were drifting through the ductwork, haunting us in the afterlife.

  Mabel claimed her seat with a grunt and started unloading supplies: lucky troll doll, four daubers—neon pink, highlighter yellow, radioactive green, blue glitter—a battered rabbit’s foot, and a brown lunch sack that was probably filled with hard candy or blessed bingo tokens. She was nothing if not prepared for spiritual warfare.

  Estell produced a travel mug that proudly declared “Liquid Courage” in peeling gold letters. Judging by the way she giggled every time she took a sip, there was definitely more than coffee inside.

  Sophia had her own method. She lined up her daubers with military precision and ritualistically wiped down her area with hospital-grade Lysol wipes. “Never can be too careful,” she said, sniffing. “People are filthy.”

  I set out my phone, two bingo sheets, and my trusty black dauber. That was it. My entire arsenal. I never won, but I’d convinced myself that keeping things minimal was the mark of a sophisticated gambler, not a loser with poor luck and a worse attention span.

  Noise swirled around us—the dry coughs, the crinkling of wrappers, chairs screeching, balls rattling in their little plastic cage up front. The air tingled with anticipation, though that might’ve just been the high-voltage hum of the ancient lighting.

  People started settling, some in sweatpants, some in full makeup and sequined tops, all clutching their own weird superstitions. At precisely seven, the mic screeched, and Mrs. Della, part-time goddess, full-time opinion-haver, clambered up to the podium.

  “Bingo fans,” she bellowed, adjusting her pearls, “I have an announcement. Fred…” She paused dramatically, letting the tension build like this was the Oscars and not a room full of retirees and me, the local disappointment. “Fred is home with the flu. So tonight, his grandson will be rolling the balls.”

  A groan rolled through the room.

  Mabel leaned over. “It’s gonna be some snot-nosed kid in a Fortnite shirt, isn’t it?” She tapped the table, probably for emphasis, or in case some spirit was listening. “Kids today wouldn’t know a bingo from their own backside.”

  Sophia cackled and propped her chin on her palm. “He’ll probably use emojis to call the numbers. I can’t wait.”

  Estell slurped from her mug. “Hope the little bugger knows how to count past sixty-nine.”

  I smirked. “Pretty sure most of the guys you flirt with can’t.”

  Mabel smacked my hand. “Heard that.” But she was grinning, eyes alive and scheming. Out of all of them, she was the most dangerous. If someone ever figured out how to distill her sarcasm into a beverage, it would kill you in two gulps.

  At the front of the room, the new guy walked out.

  I nearly swallowed my tongue.

  Not a Fortnite shirt anywhere in sight. Instead, dark hair cut close at the sides, broad shoulders filling out a heather-gray V-neck, and biceps that had definitely seen the inside of a gym. He moved with that easy, athlete confidence you only see on dumb commercials for shaving cream. Hazel eyes, sharp but friendly. Dimples when he smiled, which should’ve been illegal.

  A hush fell over the crowd. You could’ve heard a Werther’s Original drop.

  “Hello, everyone. My name’s Kane. I’ll be your number caller tonight," he said, his voice smooth enough to carve a path through the rows of plastic chairs.

  Three tables burst into applause.

  I didn’t trust my vocal cords, so I just blinked. Hard.

  Mabel faked an asthma attack. “Sweet holy Moses,” she whispered, too loud for comfort. “If that man called my number, I’d let him yell BINGO in my ear anytime.”

  Estell leaned back and gave Kane a once-over so blatant I was embarrassed for both of them. “I’d like to climb that tree and see the view,” she breathed, fanning herself with her scorecard.

  Sophia practically fluttered, her hand pressed to her chest. “Lord, have mercy. If I drop dead in here, sprinkle my ashes on that boy.”

  “Sprinkle?” Estell cackled. “I’d grind you myself.”

  All three of them turned to me, expecting… what, exactly? Approval? A signed permission slip? Heat crawled up my neck, which was impressive considering I hadn’t flirted with anyone in months. Those three old ladies had more game than me.

  “I don’t think you remember what to do with a man like that,” I deadpanned. “But if you want, I can Google it for you.”

  That got an undignified snort out of Estell. She reached over and squeezed my bicep, which, granted, wasn’t in the same league as Kane’s, but I tried not to take it personally.

  Back at the front, Kane started loading the bingo machine, arm flexing as he spun the metal basket. Balls rattled. A couple of ladies in the front row stared so hard I thought their glasses might fog.

  For a moment I got lost in the absurdity of the situation. Most Friday nights, I was trying to dodge my own pitiful reflection in the bathroom mirror, and now I was sitting steps away from a minor league heartthrob calling out numbers for a bunch of sassy seniors and one hopeless homosexual with abysmal dating prospects.

  Kane cleared his throat. “O-sixty-nine.”

  The room erupted in giggles.

  Mabel slapped the table. “Well, that’s a good omen.” She glanced at me, arching her eyebrows. “You ever had a sixty-nine, Elijah?”

  My mouth opened. Shut. Opened again. “I’m not answering that in public. There are children present.”

  Sophia’s laugh echoed across the table, earning dirty looks from three blue-haired grannies desperate for silence. “He’s got decent hands. Look at him manhandle those balls.”

  I almost choked on my water. Then prayed for a merciful heart attack to get me out of this.

  Numbers kept coming. Kane’s voice was warm, the sort of voice you wanted narrating your existential crisis or at least reading you the grocery list when you were hungover. My phone buzzed once against my thigh, but I ignored it. The only thing more humiliating than being the youngest person at bingo was getting a spam text from a dating app during the letter O’s.

  Each time he called, Kane scanned the crowd, eyes pausing at our table. Correction… my face. I tried to play it cool, but every time our eyes met across the battlefield of senior citizen carnage, my heart thudded so loud I was afraid someone would ask me to turn it down.

  Sophia must have noticed. She leaned in conspiratorially, breath tinged with cinnamon Tic Tacs and vodka. “Someone’s got the hots for you.”

  I rolled my eyes, but the tips of my ears blazed. “Not a chance. Guys that pretty don’t look twice at me unless they need their shirt steamed.”

  “Maybe you should offer,” she whispered, waggling her eyebrows.

  Mabel snorted. “Don’t let this one fool you,” she said, waving a liver-spotted hand in my direction. “He’s got all the makings of a heartbreaker. If only he didn’t get nervous around people with working organs.”

  Estell cackled. “Maybe this time he’ll get lucky. Or at least get a phone number. You still have that phone, right? Or did you drop it in the toilet again?”

  “Once,” I said. “And it still worked.” Kind of.

  The balls clacked and spun, numbers called in neat, even tones. Between rounds, Kane sometimes glanced over, lips moving in a private smile, like we shared some secret language. I considered sending up a smoke signal or blinking in Morse code, but given my luck, I’d probably just summon the fire department.

  Bingo was an exercise in stubborn hopefulness. The first three rounds were always the hardest. You tricked yourself into believing your luck had finally shifted, only to lose to Dolores from 4B, who didn’t even bother to use her lucky cat figurine.

  Cards filled slowly. My dauber routine was more therapy than strategy. My dots lined up with the precision of a toddler, and every time I tried to go for a blackout, I ended up with a neat border and nothing in the center. Story of my life.

  Midway through round two, Mabel yelped and slapped her card. “Bingo! Hot damn, I knew that rabbit’s foot was worth something.”

  Estell rolled her eyes. “She cheats.”

  “Just better at the game than you,” Mabel shot back, all teeth. She didn’t get up to claim her prize. Instead, she brandished her card in a victory wave, daring anyone to challenge her claim.

  Sophia barely looked up. “Wake me when the cute one comes over.”

  Cute one wasn’t wasting time. Kane came striding down the aisle, bending over Mabel’s shoulder with a smile that should’ve been weaponized. He checked her card, signature flicker in his gaze as he glanced at me, then leaned in closer to Mabel. “Looks legit. Congratulations.”

  Mabel fluttered her lashes. “Thank you, dear. You ever need a date to a family reunion, you just let me know.”

  He grinned, teeth white and perfect, then shot me a look that melted the inside of my kneecaps. “I’ll remember that,” he said.

  I needed a drink.

  Kane glanced at me again. This time, he winked at me then walked back to the front.

  My heart did something that would have required medical attention if I were anyone else.

  “Don’t faint,” Estell teased.

  “Didn’t bring my smelling salts,” I shot back.

  * * * *

  Estell had handed out the aprons first thing, lining us up in her kitchen like we were on a reality show that nobody wanted to watch. Mabel’s said, “Bite Me.” Sophia’s made me think of gangsters. “This Is How I Roll,” with a little cartoon rolling pin. Mine was sugar-pink and scattered with gingerbread men, plus the whole “Taste My Cookie” situation, which I really hoped didn’t count as an invitation.

  Last night’s Froot Loops binge had been enough sugar to last me a week.

  Estell had her radio tuned to the all-Christmas-all-the-time station, which meant Mariah Carey was out for blood before nine a.m.

  The scents of cinnamon, vanilla, and cheap coffee practically smacked me in the face. If you looked up grandparent in the dictionary, the accompanying photo would be this kitchen—pastel Tupperware towers on every flat surface, a tartan rug hiding every potential trip hazard, and about a hundred reproduction ceramic angels staring down their tiny noses at you from above the cabinets.

  Outside the window, fake snowflakes clung to the glass. Sophia had insisted we tape them up before starting.

  The three of them had spent most of the morning wedging battery-powered candles into every available nook, so now the place looked like Santa’s private chapel if Santa couldn’t see well in the dark.

  The smells were dizzying. Brown sugar. Orange zest. A weird note of black licorice from Mabel’s “ancient family recipe.” I’d tried to help, but mostly failed at, separating eggs. Watching the three of them go at it was like something out of a National Geographic special—predator instincts, territorial posturing, and a lot of swearing about who had the best method for creaming butter.

  “Step back,” Mabel barked, elbowing Sophia aside. “You’ll bruise the dough.”

  Sophia made a huffing sound and reached for her Lysol wipes, smothering the counter in chemical citrus. “Don’t touch my pizzelles,” she warned. “You have no idea the work that went into these.”

  Estell had flour down her front and a glint of holiday murder in her eye. “You call those pizzelles? They look like broken coasters from a nursing home.”

  “Ladies, please,” I said, but mostly to myself, because even NASA couldn’t have stopped this launch. My job was to scrape the sticky stuff out of bowls, wrangle the mixer when it threatened to leap off the counter, and risk my life taste-testing suspicious doughs.

  You’d think, with four grown adults, we would only need one batch of cookies per person. I think we were up to thirteen. The table groaned under trays of snickerdoodles, crinkly chocolate things, jam thumbprints with the jam leaking out like arteries, and something that looked like Christmas threw up on vanilla bark.

  Estell shoved a tray under my nose. “Spritz cookies. Try one. Tell me if my star shapes came out even.”

  I ate one. Butter exploded in my mouth. “Uh, yeah. They’re stars. For sure. Tastes like victory.” I wiped crumbs off my lips, which tasted like seven sticks of butter, but I was not complaining.

  Mabel wasn’t going to be left out. “Bite into this. Chocolate ginger. Be honest.”

  I did. The ginger hit like a slap to the face, but then came the chocolate. “If this was any better, I’d need a safe word.”

  She patted my shoulder. “That’s how you know you did it right.”

  I popped the rest of it in my mouth, already feeling the cookie bloat creeping up my ribcage. My stomach was going to mutiny before lunch, no question. “Are we sure we need to bake more?” I gestured at the oven racks. “If we keep this up, there’s going to be an incident.”

  Sophia cackled, sliding a tray out and setting down her pizzelles. “Suck it up, buttercup. Some of us only get a thrill out of Christmas once a year.”

  Mabel grumbled about store-bought jam. Estell said something rude about Sophia’s hand strength.

  They’d had me up at the crack of dawn to help haul decorations out of the storage closet downstairs. Now every inch of Estell’s living room looked like one of those home make-over shows got inside a snow globe and never escaped. There was garland around every shelf and curtain rod, glittered deer on the table, and a tree that leaned ever so slightly left, mostly because Estell liked it that way.

  I flopped onto a chair, a little powdered sugar trailing down my sleeve.

  All at once, the arguing faded into background noise, replaced by music and the scent of Christmas and the clack of Mabel’s ancient measuring cups.

  Funny, how much I liked this. I never had this growing up. My grandmother died when I was five, and my parents liked schedules and polite phone calls. I had the chaos of three women putting their souls into baked goods and wrangling me into the middle of everything.

  Warmth crept up behind my ribs.

  Maybe the day would rot my teeth and add two new inches to my waistline, but I didn’t hate it.

  Estell appeared with a cooling rack. “Judge these. Now.”

  Oh hell no. An idiot I was not. If I told one of them their cookies were the best, I would get strung up by my balls by the other two. “I can’t. You’ll murder me if I pick wrong,” I said, clinging to my dignity with one blue-tinted fingernail.

  Mabel’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be a coward. Eat it.”

  Sophia grinned. “Sweetheart, you’re about to get diabetes, but you’ll die giving us the truth.”

  They’re about to murder me by sugar overload just so they’ll have bragging rights.

  Their cookies were in three neat piles. I was pretty sure I’d lose the last shreds of my taste buds. So, I decided to turn it into a judgy thing and picking a winner, but not.

  Taking a bite of Sophia’s pizzelle. Anise, vanilla, and powdered sugar. “Crisp. Subtle. Old-fashioned. I can practically hear Frank Sinatra.”

  Sophia beamed and did a little victory shimmy.

  Next, Estell’s spritz. I’d already had one, but this one was dipped in chocolate. Still so much butter, but the chocolate was dark, almost bitter, and the sprinkles crunched on my teeth. “Okay, that’s…holiday energy. If you bottled that, you’d keep kids up until New Year’s.”

  Estell grinned and nudged me with her hip.

  Then Mabel’s ginger cookie. The candied ginger on top hit hard then mellowed under cocoa. “If you set fire to Christmas in a good way, this would be it.”

  All three stared at me. The kitchen held its breath.

  I put cookie fragments in my mouth and chewed slowly to buy time. “This is cruel and unusual punishment,” I said. “But… Sophia, your pizzelles are the prettiest. Mabel, your cookies could be a controlled substance. And Estell, you definitely win for best hat.” She wore a Santa headband with bells that jingled when she blinked too fast.

  Estell spluttered. “That wasn’t the contest!”

  I shrugged, popping a crumb in my mouth. “I refuse to pick favorites. You’ll take away my spritz privileges.”

  Mabel cackled. “Smart boy. Knows not to bite the hand that bakes.”

  Someone knocked.

  “I’ll get it!” I rocketed out of my chair so fast half a star cookie hit the floor. My attempt at nonchalance probably failed, but I needed to escape this bloodbath or, you know, get a head start on the insulin.

  Wiping my hands on my apron, I padded to the door and yanked it open. I’d expected maybe Ed from upstairs or a delivery guy.

  Not…this.

  Standing in the hallway was Kane.

  I lost all higher brain function.

  His hand hovered near the doorframe, knuckles poised to knock again. Not a hair out of place and, somehow, he made jeans and a thermal pullover look like a runway show.