"Wait—you don't happen to be allergic to cats, do you?"

"No," Amelia confirmed. "Do you parents have one?"

Henry nodded. It was a rather good thing she wasn't allergic then, considering that they were on their way to his parents' house right now.

"I feel like I should have thought to ask that before now," he admitted sheepishly, his fingers fidgeting with the steering wheel as they waited at a red light.

"Still better now than once we showed up there," she pointed out, a small grin forming on her lips. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"I don't think so."

Tentatively, Amelia asked, "How are they doing with...everything? I mean, I'm not going to mention her regardless, but..."

When she watched the corners of his lips start to tilt downward, she regretted bringing it up. "Nevermind, you don't have to answer–"

"No, it's a fair question," he replied quietly. "I just don't know how to describe...they're sensitive, my parents. But they're tough, too. I'm sure it's affecting them more than they'll ever let on to me. They're pretty good at taking a deep breath and pushing on through the unthinkable."

"Kind of like you?"

Surprisingly, he seemed surprised. "Is that how I come across?"

"Well, yeah. At least when you're around me. You always seem capable of setting your stuff aside for a minute to help me with my own problems—I don't know how you do it."

Henry was silent for a long moment, not in the sense that he was uncomfortable but rather that he was absorbing whatever insight into his own psyche she'd just offered him. "I guess I am a little bit like them, yeah. I don't feel like I'm coping particularly well, though. It's just hard to know when you're supposed to let it all out versus when you need to bottle it all up because you still have to get up and go to work and keep functioning like an adult."

"Yeah," Amelia said softly, reaching over to stroke a thumb along his shoulder since his hands were on the wheel. "I know that feeling, believe me. But if you ever need to have a let it all out kind of day, I'll be here for you then, too."

"I know," he murmured. "Thank you. And on that cheery note, we're almost there."

They hadn't been in the car for all that long; his parents only lived twenty minutes or so from her apartment, where he'd picked her up. She stared out the window as they turned into a neighborhood and slowed when they approached a speed bump in the road. All of the houses that lined the street were modest in size but had fairly large yards, an indicator that they'd been around for a while since nowadays all that builders seemed to care about was exactly the opposite—fitting the biggest house in the smallest amount of space possible. Amelia found the abundance of green grass and shade trees to be charming, abundantly more so than the newer, flashier neighborhoods she used to drive by on her way to Colton's.

"Is this where you grew up?" she asked.

"More or less—we moved into this house when I was seven."

The car came to a stop in front of a single-story house. A short cobblestone path led up from the driveway to the front porch; the door was painted a very pleasant shade of blue. Henry came around to open Amelia's door for her and took her hand in his once she was out of the car.

His parents had apparently left the door unlocked for him and he had apparently been informed of this in advance, so rather than knocking, Henry simply cracked the door and announced their presence with a "Knock, knock," as they stepped inside.

As was only natural, she couldn't help but start glancing around. Straight ahead was the dining area, where Henry's dad was seated at the table with a giant stack of papers, which she assumed based on the fact that he was writing on them in red pen must have been his students' homework. The living room wall prevented her from seeing the kitchen yet, but she could already smell the kitchen—Mrs. Caruso must have been baking something sweet. Whatever it was, it smelled incredible, wrapping Amelia up in a cozy scent that transported her back to her childhood, to the days of baking cookies after school.

But the resident that she was most drawn to at the immediate moment was the lone occupant of the living room: an ancient, scraggly-looking orange tabby who hopped down from his perch on a recliner to come sniff them. Amelia's heart melted as he rubbed his cheeks against her leg; she knelt down to scratch behind his ears.

"Hey, little guy. What's your name?" she cooed.

"Pooh Bear," Henry smiled, joining her on the floor to give the cat some much-wanted attention. "We let Lily name him, but she was still pretty young at the time—maybe nine or ten?—so I don't think she really processed that we weren't going to want to call our cat Poo."

"Between you and me..." his dad spoke up from his spot at the table, keeping his head ducked down towards his papers to hide his grin. "Henry liked to call him Beary."

Amelia giggled. "I think Beary is a great name. How old is he, then?"

"Really freaking old," Henry said.

"I think he might secretly be immortal and not be telling us," his dad offered up.

Amelia made a small hmm noise as she scratched under the cat's chin. "Seems a little rude of him not to divulge such an important piece of information, but he's terribly adorable."

She climbed back to her feet (her knees aching in protest—she swore she had the joints of a grandma) so that they could go sit at the table and chat with both of Henry's parents while his mom finished up her baking. She was standing at the stove, quietly humming to herself as she cracked open the oven door to give a quick glance to what Amelia could now see were cookies.

Jen's hair was pulled back into a ponytail; she swiped a couple of strands that had fallen loose while she was baking back behind her ears as she turned around to greet them.

"My college kids are on fall break right now," she explained, looking not at all envious as she eyed the bricklike stack of papers that her husband needed to grade. "So I've kind of let myself off the hook with work. Amelia, I'm sure Henry could tell you that I bake a lot when I'm bored. Both of you please feel free to any of the food in the house because we always end up with way more than we actually need."

"So that's where Henry gets it from," Amelia smiled as they took seats next to each other at the table. The wooden chairs were surprisingly comfortable.

"Oh, well his father is definitely the better cook," she explained. "But between the two of us, I like to think we have all our bases covered."

Henry didn't even try to hide the snorting noise he made in the back of his throat, to which his mother let out an exasperated, "Henry James–"

"Sorry," he told her while still very conspicuously trying to keep a straight face. Jen glanced towards her husband for backup.

He hesitated. "...I'm sorry, love, but it was a little bit funny."

The flattery didn't get him very far with his wife.

"Men," Jen sighed, then glanced towards Amelia with a warm expression. "It's nice to have another woman around to keep all this testosterone in check."

Amelia grinned just as the oven timer started beeping and Jen had to turn back around to pull the tray of cookies out. But once she set them on the counter to cool off, she returned her attention to the three of them.

"So, I had an idea," she told them. "You'll have to tell me if it's a bad one. We've had a bag of marshmallows sitting in the pantry that we need to use soon, so I wondered if anyone was up for a campfire tonight. I know it's a bit cold outside and I'm afraid we don't have any graham crackers, but we could always stick the marshmallows on the cookies."

Amelia was eager to jump in. "I'll never say no to s'mores."

"S'mores sound good," Henry agreed.

It was probably already late enough in the evening that they could start setting up a fire—even in the short time Amelia and Henry had been here, she'd noticed each time she glanced out the windows that the sky was gradually darkening.

Jen was looking at her husband. "Do these papers need to get finished right now or are you able to start up a fire for us?"

Robert clicked his pen shut. "Of course I can—S'mores are more important than homework."

"Amen," Henry said under his breath; he probably had some graduate school homework of his own that he was ignoring.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Amelia asked.

Jen smiled. "You can stop my son from eating all of the marshmallows before the fire's ready," she suggested, affectionately ruffling his hair with one hand as she walked past. "He used to have a habit of that as a kid."

"I never ate all of them–"

"But other than that, no," she finished answering Amelia's question. "It's really not a lot of trouble since the cookies are already made, so I think we've got it covered—you can stay in here and enjoy the warmth until the fire's ready. I don't want either of you getting too cold."

Henry's eyes drifted over to Amelia as his mother made the comment about them getting cold; she'd had enough sense to wear long sleeves, but the fabric of her shirt was on the thinner side. She hadn't really considered that there might be anything to do outside.

"I can find you a sweatshirt if you want," he offered as his parents were exiting through the sliding door to the backyard.

"You don't have to go to the trouble—I'm sure I'll be fine," she told him, reaching under the table to hold his hand. "But thanks."

"It's not too much trouble. I'm pretty sure I have one in my car."

"Okay," she nodded. "If it's easy to find then sure, but don't feel like you have to dig through everything in your car if you don't see it."

"Deal." He leaned over and pressed a kiss on her cheek. "I'll be right back."

Henry got up and left her blushing in his wake. It felt somewhat different for him to be kissing her—or showing her romantic affection in any regard, really—where his parents could potentially look through the window and see them versus in private. This felt more....tangible. More serious, like they were proving that they were two adults in a committed relationship and not just a couple of kids going on a couple of dates and seeing where they landed.

She liked this feeling. She wasn't sure if she grasped the full implications, the effect it was having on her, but she liked it.

She was less fond, however, of just sitting there at the table while everyone else made themselves useful. Amelia stood up and wandered back towards the living room, figuring she might as well give Beary some more cuddles. But she stopped as she passed the hallway that she presumed led off to the bedrooms. There were some family pictures hanging on the wall and her curiosity got to her, so she lingered there to look at them, her footsteps slow and silent on the carpet as they carried her further down the hall.

The first was of a young Jen and Robert at their wedding, and it was impossible for Amelia not to stand there and admire them—her looking absolutely stunning in her dress and him looking so, so much like his son did now. The next one was equally adorable, if not even more so; it was of them in the hospital with the teeniest, tiniest swaddled up baby that must have been a newborn Henry. He was just a few years older in the next photo, sitting next to an even younger girl who must have been Lily–

Having gotten wholly absorbed in the world of the pictures, Amelia nearly jumped when she suddenly felt Henry's hand on her arm.

"There you are," he smiled—was she imagining it, or did it look ever-so-slightly nervous? Draped over his arm was a sweatshirt, which he held out to her. "It's not exactly a fashion statement, but it should be warm enough, at least."

"I'm pretty sure wearing your boyfriend's sweatshirt is always a fashion statement," she explained, gratefully accepting it. "Are you okay?"

His eyebrows furrowed. "Yeah, of course. Why?"

"Nothing," she mumbled, shaking her head and then making the split-second decision to go ahead and pull the sweatshirt on. The colors had started to fade and the hems were slightly frayed, and yet it was exceptionally soft for something that had to be at least a few years old. "Very comfy, thank you."

"No problem. I think my parents are almost done bullying the logs into catching on fire if you want to go ahead and wander outside."

Amelia snorted. "That's quite possibly the weirdest way you could have worded that, but let's do it."