This was a big fat lie, of course. Cate had been unconsciously grimacing at the thought of a naked Pugg. At five foot six inches he looked eye to eye at Cate. He wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t great looking either. Mostly he was… hairy. The hair crept from the cuffs of his shirt and spilled over his collar. He had long sideburns and a pompadour on the top of his head with a single curl pasted to his forehead. He was a car-crash cross between Elvis Presley and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley. And he had a horrifying habit of referring to himself as Pugg.

“Pugg likes this pot roast,” Pugg said to Cate’s mother. “Pugg would like to find a woman to marry who could make a pot roast like this.”

Cate’s mother beamed at Cate. “Cate makes a wonderful pot roast,” she said. “Don’t you, Cate?”

Cate blew out a sigh and forked up some mashed potatoes. She’d gouge out her eye with a rusted spoon before she’d make a pot roast for Pugg.

“Green beans,” Cate’s father said at the head of the table, and an arm reached across Cate for the bean bowl.

Food was circulating at warp speed around the table: the gravy boat, the dinner rolls, the butter dish, the green beans, the meat platter, the monster bowl of mashed potatoes. This was normal behavior at the Madigan dinner table, and over the years Cate had perfected the technique of passing with her left hand and simultaneously eating with her right.

“I heard the Sox are trading five guys,” Danny said.

Cate’s dad shoveled pot roast onto his plate. “Bull crap.”

“I got something brown on my dress,” Zelda said. “It smells like dookey.”

“It’s gravy,” Amy said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t like it. Make it go away.”

“Dookey dress, dookey dress, dookey dress,” Zoe said.

“Patrick sells tires,” Cate’s mother said to Cate. “He’s the top salesman at his dealership.”

Patrick Pugg winked at Cate. “Pugg is good at selling. Pugg is good at lots of things, if you know what Pugg means.”