I lay sprawled across my bed, staring at the burgundy dress hanging on my closet door like some kind of beautiful but terrifying challenge. In just a few days, I'd be wearing that thing on my date with Marcel, and just the thought of it made my stomach do nervous flips.

The dress wasway out of my comfort zone.

The neckline plunged deeper than anything I'd ever worn before, revealing cleavage I usually kept carefully covered. The material clung to every curve like a second skin, and the hemline stopped halfway down my thighs—at least six inches higher than I was used to. I wasn't a prude, but I'd always preferred covering up. I liked being modest, safe and invisible.

This dress was the opposite of invisible.

And my mother was going to have an absolute fit when she saw it.

I could already picture her face, with that particular expression of tight-lipped disapproval she'd perfected over the years, the one that made me feel like I was five years old again and had tracked mud through the apartment. The lecture would be epic. Something about self-respect, sending the wrong message, and how young women today have no sense of propriety.

I groaned and rolled over, burying my face in my pillow.

Maybe I should have gone with the pink dress after all.

The next morning, I woke to the familiar sounds of the shop opening below—the usual scrape of the door, my mother's footsteps on the wooden floor and the jingle of keys. I checked my phone: 8:47 AM. Four days until my date.

I dragged myself out of bed and pulled on my jeans and an old NYU sweatshirt I'd gotten at a thrift store. My hair was a disaster, a tangled mess of copper curls sticking out in every direction. I twisted it into a messy bun and headed to the kitchen.

My mother was already gone, downstairs in the shop. She was always downstairs in the shop.

I made myself coffee—strong and black, just the way I'd learned to drink it during exam weeks, and stood at the kitchen window, looking down at the street. The pizza place next door was receiving a delivery, the laundromat was already full of people, and a steady stream of pedestrians hurried past on their way to the subway.

Normal. Mundane. The same as every other morning.

Except my mother had spent all of last night lecturing me about the dangers of going out after dark with Marcel. She'd gone on and on until I wanted to scream. She lectured me about how I didn't know the city as well as I thought I did, how terrible things happened to young women who weren't careful and worst of all, how Marcel was still practically a stranger even though we'd been neighbours for three years.

"You barely know him, Venus," she'd said, her voice tight with worry."You don't know what kind of person he really is."

"We've lived next door to each other for three years, Mother. I think I know him well enough."

"Three years of casual hallway conversations doesn't mean youknow someone."

It had gone on like that for an hour, circular and exhausting, until I'd finally excused myself and locked myself in my room.

Now, desperate to escape the apartment before she came upstairs and started round two, I decided to help out in the shop. At least down there, she'd be too busy with customers to continue her campaign of maternal paranoia.

I finished my coffee, grabbed my phone, and headed downstairs.

The shop was already crowded when I pushed through th