By the time I pull into the driveway of our three-bedroom rancher, I’ve managed to banish Joe back to the “never going to happen” realm of my brain.

Instead, I’m mentally ticking the boxes of what I need to do tonight: I’ve got a lab report to finish, a scholarship essay to write, and a list of bookmobile drivers to call. Not to mention that I may or may not be cooking dinner for my little brother, Mac. I can’t remember if tonight is a date night or not.

But then again, most nights are when it comes to my mom.

My mother is in love with love. She desperately wants the lead role in a real-life romantic comedy. Granted, her life hasn’t been all flowers and chocolates. She had me at seventeen but still managed to graduate high school and get her dental hygienist license from the local community college. I was seven when she met Mac’s father, eight when they married, nine when Mac was born, and ten when his father left. Four years is the longest any guy has stuck around. Let’s be honest—with two kids, Mom’s pickings have started getting slim.

But really, another father figure is the last thing our family needs. Not that it matters. When it comes to love, Mom doesn’t seem to have a head on her shoulders. She’s all heart.

And that means it gets broken. A lot.

I come in through the garage and hang my jacket in the mud room, then pick up Mac’s dirty cleats and toss them out the door.

“I told him to do that an hour ago,” Mom calls from the kitchen. I peek around the corner and see her at the stove. She smiles and waves an oven mitt as I drop my books on the kitchen table.

“You’re home tonight?” I ask, surprised. She shakes her head.

“Not for long. I just wanted to get some pasta boiling for you and Mac.”

Then I realize that she’s in full date makeup—fake eyelashes and all—and that her hair is in rollers. I take the wooden spoon from her hand and wave her away from the stove.

“I’ll do this. Go finish getting”—I look at her short skirt and tight tank top—“ready.”

“Thanks, babe.” She kisses my cheek, and I smell the cotton candy lip gloss that makes me gag. I don’t know why she insists on wearing something marketed specifically for twelve-year-old girls.

“Who is it this time?” I ask as she heads for the door.

“Jim.”

“Oh, right. Jim.” I have no idea who Jim is.

“You remember.” Mom is looking at me, a little impatient. “The contractor? The one who was remodeling Dr. Benson’s kitchen?”

“Oh, that Jim,” I say sarcastically. “Sure, Mom. I totally remember him.”

Dr. Benson is Mom’s boss. His house is both his office, in the front, and his residence, in the back. I bet it’s nice to roll out of bed and walk into work, but I’m sure it gets old sharing your house with patients, employees, and, apparently, a contractor named Jim.

“Yeah, so,” Mom is saying, her voice a little breathy with excitement, “I think he’s taking me to Skinners to see some band, so that should be fun.”

I just nod. I don’t know what Skinners is. I don’t want to know what Skinners is. I mean, I know what Skinners sounds like and that alone makes me want to hurl.

“But I shouldn’t be home too late,” she adds as she walks out the door.

“Famous last words,” I snort.

When kind-of-bald-and-sort-of-chubby Jim picks up my mom, he makes a good show of shaking my hand and kneeling down to Mac’s level. He asks me about school and then promptly ignores my answer, while watching my mom adjust her cleavage in the hall mirror. He ruffles Mac’s hair as they leave. When the door shuts, Mac just looks at me.

“Does he think I’m the family dog?”

I shrug. “Maybe.” Then I sling an arm around his shoulder. “Mom made some pasta, but I’m thinking pizza. What do you say?”

“I say yes!”

Thirty minutes later, Mac and I are pigging out on pepperoni thin crust and watching repeats of Ice Road Truckers until he gets distracted by the lure of his Nintendo DS. I pull my scholarship essay up on the family laptop, but as I stare at the screen, the little blinking cursor taunts me.

Write something brilliant, it says. There are a million girls just like you—great grades, long résumés—and they have actual activities on their list of accolades. You know, like student athletes. Prom queens. Class presidents. Girls who are a part of life, not just living on the edge of it.

Clearly I have a very judgmental cursor.

I start typing my answer to “Describe how your high school experience has impacted your desire to pursue higher education,” but all my answers are coming out monosyllabic and shallow.

My high school life was good.

It taught me things.

I like things.

Things are good.

I close the laptop.

Resigned, I grab the remote and flop back on the couch, flipping through the first few hundred channels. The next time I glance at the clock, it’s a little before ten and I remember Mom’s promise of coming home at a reasonable time. If she actually meant it, I’ve still got a few good hours before she’ll pour herself into bed.

“Mac,” I yell, then listen for my brother’s voice. In the distance, I can hear some electronic combat sounds. It’s like a cat with a bell, except the bell has automatic weapons and lots of ammunition.

“Mac!” I try again.

“Yeah?”

“Bed soon, buddy.”

He hesitates. “Just another ten minutes. I linked the DS with Nathan and Geoff. We’re trying to kill off the world-dominating aliens.”

“Oh, well, carry on then. Thanks for preserving our freedom.”

Sometimes I’m jealous that Mac has good friends, but most of the time I’m glad. I never really managed to make the connection with anyone the way he has. Of course, we moved around a lot more when I was his age. By the time we settled here, it was as though I’d missed out on picking teams. The friends and groups were already decided, so I just kind of wove around the cliques, hoping I’d absorb like in cell osmosis. I didn’t. Like all inhospitable hosts, they rejected the unfamiliar. I have people I’m friendly with but not actual friends—not the way other people do, at least.

I flip through a few more channels until Pitch Perfect pops up on HBO. It’s about an hour in, but I’ve seen it a million times, so it doesn’t really matter. I love everything about this movie—the singing, the characters, and especially how slightly dorky Jesse falls for sarcastic Beca. Watching him pursue her, even when Beca shoots him down, makes me wonder what that would feel like to have someone really fight for you. And not in a scary, controlling way, but in a way that makes you believe that there is actually someone out there for everyone.

The Barden Bellas are about to perform their final number when the sound of keys jangling distracts me from the movie. I mute the TV and sit up a little, listening to the front door jerk open. There’s a giggle and a deeper-sounding chuckle.

Great.

Mom’s home and she’s not alone. Again.

“Well, I had a really great time, Jim.” Mom’s voice is pitchy and lilting, like she’s half-singing her words. My lip curls up in disgust.

“So did I, Claudia. So did I.”

There’s a distinct lack of talking, which translates to busy mouths of another kind. Gross. That’s my cue to pull my mother back down to earth.

“Hey Mom,” I call, not yet daring to move. The last thing I want is to see my mom sucking face with Contractor Jim.

“Hey baby,” she yells back, clearly startled. Did she really think I’d be asleep already? What does she think I am, eighty years old?

I hear a series of sharp, staccato whispers, and Mom pokes her head into the living room. “You’re still up?”

I nod, then raise my eyebrows.

“Back so soon?” I ask sweetly.

She sort of waves a hand. “Yeah, I got, you know, tired and all. I’m—I’m just going to say good night to Jim.”

“Uh-huh.” I roll my eyes. There’s that guilty look on her face, the one that shows what she was really thinking about doing until she heard my voice. Maybe she thought it was late enough to bring Jim back here, that she could have snuck him upstairs and back down before breakfast, never letting on that she’d had an overnight guest.

I know this was her plan. She knows this was her plan. I would imagine that Jim, now heading out the door, knows that was her plan too. But I don’t ever want Mac to know. He doesn’t need to know that sometimes I hear whispers in the hall, or see her door closed and the light on when I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I don’t want to deny my mom the right to go out, to have fun, to try and meet the man of her dreams. I guess I just don’t want her to forget about us in the process.

“I’m going to bed, sweetie,” Mom says from the doorway. I notice her hair is slightly mussed from what must have been an overly enthusiastic farewell to Jim, and once again I feel like we’ve switched roles.

Then, almost immediately, we switch right back.

“Is Mac in bed?”

I shrug. “I think. He was playing the DS.”

She shakes her head. “I’m going to have to start imposing time limits on that thing.”

I don’t say anything to that. Instead, I lean back against the throw pillows and watch as Jesse and Beca finally exchange a passionate kiss after the Bellas nail their performance. Mom glances at the TV for a minute, then sighs.

“Now why can’t a man kiss me like that?”

I keep staring at the screen. “Because it’s a movie, Mom.”

“Well, I’ve been chasing a kiss like that my whole life.” She sighs.

“That explains a lot,” I can’t help but mutter. I’d never admit what I’m really thinking—that the kind of chemistry in this movie is the kind I’d love to feel in real life too. With a happy ending. Maybe even with a “happily ever after.”

But I’d never, ever own up to it.

Trust me, the last thing I need is to start taking after my mom in the romance department.