"You do know how to get to your house, right?" Bella asks, heading towards the parking lot. "I imagine if you're generally driven to and fro it might not sink in." She trips on an uneven paver in the sidewalk and catches herself before splatting on the sidewalk.

"Okay." They reach her parking spot; Bella unlocks the car. "Which way do I turn when I pull out, then?"

"Left," he says after glancing toward the parking lot's exit.

Bella starts up the car. She buckles her seatbelt, and watches him expectantly.

"You're really very casual with your safety," she mutters, and she pulls out and turns left.

"So I call you Delaney in front of them?" Bella says, amenable. "Okay. What about non-jokes about you getting beat up?"

"...Non-jokes like what?" he says. "I mean, almost certainly no, but like what?"

"Well, 'He keeps provoking guys who are bigger than him into repeatedly punching him in the face' isn't very funny," Bella says. "Unless I was doing an impression of a cartoon character and the context was exactly right in some unfathomable way."

"Yeah, trust me, they know that," he says. "They don't need to hear it again. You will get kicked out of the house and I will get to listen to Dad tell me I have shitty taste in friends."

"Thank you."

"I did say it was stupidly huge," he reminds her. Cheerfully.

"I don't suppose you have six brothers and sisters to justify the size of the place?"

"Nope. Only child. I mean, if you had a kid like me would you ever want another one?"

"That's no guarantee. Perhaps you were a perfectly charming two-year-old, or you're the youngest among several very dissimilar offspring."

"I have been a total shit all my life," he says with some amount of pride.

"How impressive. Personally, I have no memories before age four, and any information about the time before that is contaminated by my parents wanting to assure me that I had nothing to do with the divorce," says Bella, getting out of the car. "I notice you didn't explicitly deny older siblings, though."

"Well, my parents are still together," he says, following, "although if they split they'd probably both take great joy in blaming me, don't tell them I said that. And nope, like I said, only child."

"It's just that I already have reason to believe you're willing to lie to me," shrugs Bella, starting towards the house. "As long as that persists I'll make you give me some information in several pieces, to make that more difficult. Do we just walk in or does having a guest mean knocking?"

"I like you," Alice concludes. "You're twisty. And me not having a key means knocking," he says as he reaches for the doorbell.

"You haven't got a key? Why not?"