Free Paper Bullets by Annie Reed

bustled into the kitchen when I was just about to pour dressing over the top.
    “On the side!” she said, like I was drenching her food with poison.
    I arched an eyebrow. “When did you get so high maintenance?”
    She gave me The Look.
    The one I was becoming increasingly more familiar with, and that I saw on her friend Maddie’s face all the time.
    The look that said moms are the dumbest, most out-of-step creatures on the face of the earth.
    “Most of the calories in a salad are in the dressing,” Samantha said. “Everybody knows that.”
    I did, in fact, know that. I just didn’t care. I was a little concerned that Samantha did, although I supposed that sooner or later my now fashion-conscious daughter would also become my weight-conscious daughter.
    Weight-conscious was one thing. Obsessive was another thing.
    Samantha wasn’t overweight in the least little bit. Maddie, who’d never been overweight either, was well on her way to becoming emaciated, as far as I was concerned. She’d lost more weight than she needed to over the summer, and I didn’t like to think about how she’d done that. The last thing I wanted was for Samantha to follow in her friend’s footsteps.
    Not that I could say that. I’d learned from my relationship with my own mother that there was a fine line between comment and criticism from a kid’s perspective.
    “Okay,” I said. “I’ll put the dressing down and slowly back away from the salad.”
    I did just that, and I got the hoped-for response: Samantha giggled.
    “You’re just lucky I didn’t decide to serve cheeseburgers and chili-cheese fries,” I said.
    “Yuck.” Samantha plucked a small slice of lunch meat from the salad. Smoked turkey, thinly sliced. “You know that stuff’s not good for you.”
    This from the girl who’d shared a banana split with Jonathan a mere eight months ago.
    Samantha carried the salad into the living room and put it on the coffee table. I followed with a tall glass of iced tea for me and plain water for her. While I sat down on the couch, she popped in the movie.
    We ate our dressing-free salads in companionable silence while Robert Downey, Jr., and a bunch of other extremely fit and good-looking men, women, and demi-gods went about saving the planet.
    Samantha thought Robert Downey, Jr., was pretty good looking “for an older guy,” but I had dibs on the demi-god with the blond hair and big hammer, a weapon whose name I couldn’t pronounce if I tried.
    When the movie was over, Samantha took charge of the remote and searched through the Blu-ray’s special features.
    Now or never, I thought to myself. Might as well plunge right in.
    “So,” I said. “Jonathan’s mother tells me you’re thinking of inviting him to spend a night or two here instead of just a day visit.”
    Samantha froze for only a split second before she kept on scanning through the special features menu. “It seems silly to waste that much gas on such a short visit,” she said. “We were thinking that maybe over Labor Day weekend he could come here for a day or two.”
    Labor Day. Jonathan would be having a long weekend that weekend, too.
    “You’re supposed to be with your dad that weekend,” I said. “Have you run this by him?”
    Samantha didn’t say anything.
    “He might have other plans for you,” I said.
    He might also have something to say about housing a boy he hadn’t even met yet. Or heard about, except from me.
    Samantha looked down at the remote in her hand. “I was hoping I didn’t have to go. I’d rather stay here.”
    She knew that I had plans to go to San Francisco with Kyle.
    While I might have felt weird about mentioning the trip to Ryan, I’d kept my relationship with Kyle out in the open as far as my daughter was concerned. To a point. I wasn’t about to discuss my sex life with my teenaged daughter, but I figured she knew that part already, even if she didn’t want to think about it.
    “I’m not going to be home that weekend,”