Orientation: The Benchmarks Series

into bed right on time. I wasn't opposed to doing the tucking—I'd tuck the fuck out of him—but there was no need to rush.
In fact, rushing wasn't even a concern at all as I couldn't find a single thing to wear. I tossed another sweater on the bed and headed toward the staircase leading up to the main level of my sister's house.
"Mallori," I called. "Can you help me?"
I lived with my sister—and her husband and kids.
"With what?" she shouted back.
The basement wasn't so much an apartment but a dark, slightly damp dungeon with a small bathroom that leaned hard enough into rustic chic that my niece and nephew were terrified of stepping a single toe in there. But it was free and free was a bangin' deal.
I leaned back against the wall. "I don't know what to wear."
She made a sound, one that conveyed frustration, impatience, and grudging affection all at once and carried through walls and ceilings with ease. It was the knuckleball of mom sighs because it was never clear which of those emotions would connect the hardest.
"Jeans and a nice sweater," she replied.
I shot a baleful glance at the pile on my sofa bed. "I don't have any nice sweaters," I yelled.
We were yellers. We might not have been born this way but we grew up that way and hadn't managed to outgrow it yet.
"Oh my god," she muttered as she jogged down the stairs from the kitchen. "I gave you a nice sweater last Christmas, and the kids gave you one for your birthday a couple of years ago. What's wrong with those options?" She gave my boxer briefs the why are you practically naked mom sigh before turning her attention to the bed. "What's this all about?"
"I have a date," I said.
"Really? You kids still use the word date? That's neat."
My sister was barely two years older than me yet treated that gap like two decades. She was always the adult in our relationship. Always the smart one, the mature one, the sensible one, the settled one—and she knew it.
I was…none of those things. I lived here because I'd had nowhere else to go when things with Teddy fell all the way apart last winter. Walking into our apartment and finding him with another man on my birthday was the last and final straw. There'd been other last straws, too many to count, and I was ashamed of each one of them because I'd put up with Teddy being terrible to me for much longer than I could cover up with excuses.
I glared at her as she picked through my pile. "I don't know about the other kids but yeah, I'm calling it a date, Mallori."
"It's clear you're not going down to Dedham House of Pizza with this amount of drama." She snorted and plucked the navy sweater from the heap. "This is cute. Wear this and don't stress."
I folded my arms over my chest. "I'm not interested in cute."
"Be cute and be happy about it," she said, tossing me the sweater. "This shows off your tan."
To Mallori, there was nothing better than a good, lasting tan. She was known to drag a lawn chair out in March, all bundled up in a winter coat, just to catch some rays on her face.
"It's not—" I held up the sweater, wishing she could understand my distress. "It's just not."
I didn't know where Jory would want us to go, but I knew this sweater wasn't right. He was always talking about the books and journals he read, the podcasts he listened to, the documentaries he watched. He'd want to go somewhere intellectual like that—maybe a museum or a symposium. I didn't know what a symposium actually involved but it seemed like something he'd enjoy.
Or a symphony. Did I have anything appropriate for a symphony?
No. Definitely not.
"Okay. I know that look. You're freaking out. We need to pull it back in, Coach." She dropped her hands on my biceps, gave me a firm squeeze. "Step one: where are you going on this date?"
I shook out of her hold and raked my hands through my hair, which was now fully fucked up. "I don't know!"
"Oh." She squinted at me as I paced the short length of the basement. "Then…why don't you call him and find out?"
"Because I'm trying to be easy," I replied, shrugging as if nothing could possibly bother me. "I'm trying to go with the flow. I'm trying to be low maintenance."
"Did he give you the impression you needed to be low maintenance in order to spend time with him?"
I picked up a pair of jeans and smoothed out the legs. "No."
Mallori blew out a breath as she rubbed her temples. "This little situation we're having right now should inform you that approach isn't working. You're sacrificing your boundaries to meet the needs you've assigned to someone else. You're letting yourself slip into second position again because that pattern is familiar and it feels safe but you know it's not. You know you deserve to be as high maintenance as your emotions require, and if he can't hack that, he's not right for you."
Did I mention my sister was a marriage and family therapist? Because yeah.
"Okay, Mal, I get it." I reached for another pair of jeans. "But I have to meet him in an hour, and I don't have anything to wear to a symphony so we need to hurry this counseling session along."
"Max, honey, it's nine a.m. on a Saturday morning. You're probably not going to the symphony, and even if you were, this guy should have the decency and common sense to tell you that in advance."
This was probably true. Jory was all about common sense.
"Call him," she said. "Ask for the dress code if you don't want to pump him for all the details. If he's a good guy, he'll be able to give you that much. If he can't, perhaps this romantic opportunity is one you should reevaluate." She moved toward