My quid pro quo double date with Jeff, Kristina, and Justin is at the Legion Diner on 773. It’s a popular place to get anything with fake mashed potatoes and gravy. I’m in love with their grilled cheese sandwiches. I don’t know what they do, but they make them taste better than any grilled cheese sandwich I’ve ever eaten in my life. I think they dip them in grease first or something.

I decide to walk because it’s five minutes from my house. Justin and Kristina drive there together and are ten minutes late, as always, and to avoid being stuck with Jeff by myself, I wait in the alleyway behind the diner until I see them park. When we get inside and sit down, Justin squeezes Kristina’s ass all the time and they kiss and hold hands, and you would never ever know that they are not two teenagers in love. I think they could both embark on serious acting careers just based on this behavior. At the same time, I wish they’d stop. They’re giving Jeff ideas, and I don’t like it.

He tries to nuzzle my ear before our food comes and it gives me a chill and I jump. Then he puts his right hand under the table and on my thigh a little too casually, and I kick Kristina under the table.

Our food comes and my grilled cheese is greasy and cheesy and crispy on the outside and I eat it in about three minutes and excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. I hear the bathroom door open while I’m peeing, and Kristina comes in, sits on the toilet in the stall next to mine and once she releases her pee, she says, “Oh, my God, Astrid. He is totally in love with you.”

“I know. He keeps squeezing my leg under the table.”

“No, I mean he’s actually in love with you. He said it. Just now,” she says.

I feel my cheeks warm.

“He said it?”

“Yep.”

I flush and zip, and while I’m washing my hands, Kristina joins me and gives me a sympathetic look.

“How can he be in love with me when he doesn’t even know me?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Do we really need to string him along like this?” I ask. “I mean, I don’t mind being the bad guy and telling him to go away.”

She’s touching up her eyeliner. “Claire will want to know why.”

I sigh and think about it.

“Anyway,” Kristina adds, “if you keep being cold, he’ll get the picture. He wants in your pants in a big way. Maybe you can tell him that you’re gonna wait until you’re married. That’ll probably scare him off.”

“Oh, God. Imagine if Claire heard that,” I say. I look at myself in the mirror and adjust my hair to its perfect position across my forehead.

“Are you sure you don’t have anything to tell me? Because I hear things, you know?”

“What would I have to tell you?” I ask. “And who’s telling you things about me?” But I know I’m really bad at lying, which is why I’ve never really lied before.

She shrugs and gives me a half-disappointed look and pushes the bathroom door open.

I look into my eyes again in the mirror. I can see her there—the me who’s waiting to come out. The me who doesn’t have to send her love away. The me who loves Dee Roberts and isn’t afraid to say so. I stuff her back inside my Unity Valley suit and go back to the table.

As I walk between the tables, I notice a toga at the counter, sitting on a stool. I should have never named him Frank. He was fine for 2,400 years as just Socrates without me conjuring him up to help me out of dumb messes like fake double dates with Jeff the leg jiggler.

When I get back to the table, Justin has a look on his face that’s a mix of pain and laughter or maybe fear. Kristina leans over him and jiggles her boobs in front of his face and then plants a huge kiss on his lips. Then she whispers something to him, and he looks at me in that way—like he’s disappointed, too.

I sheepishly slide in next to Jeff, who immediately puts his hand on my knee.

“I was asking my man Justin where you guys are going tonight,” Jeff says, mouth half full of roast beef and mashed potatoes.

“And I told him we go different places,” Justin says. He kicks Kristina so hard, the table wobbles.

Kristina says, “Private party for a friend of mine who goes to Mount Pitts.”

“And I can’t come?”

Justin lets out a disappointed chuckle. “Not just you, bro. No guys allowed, apparently. I’m out, too.”

“All you hot girls in one place?” Jeff says. “I wish I could crash that party.”

Kristina and I look at each other. I have no idea what to say.

“You’re just going to have to be a gentleman and wait your turn, dude. Plus, it’s a sober party… and in an hour, I’m hooking you up, right? So, that’s, like, two strikes against you.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “I guess.” I can sense his skepticism. It’s a seed. But it’s there. I want to distract him before he waters it or lets in any sunlight, so I kiss him on the cheek.

Outside, a half hour later, he has me pinned up against his car and is trying to get his tongue in my mouth, and I choose to nuzzle into his neck instead. I accidentally find the spot where he must have slopped on his nasty cologne, and my eyes water instantly. I have to keep myself from gagging.

Kristina yells for me to hurry and I kiss him on the ear, say good-bye and squeeze out from under him right before he squishes me that tiny bit too hard. Which is creepy and makes me promise myself never to fake-date him again.

17

WE HEAR THINGS.

“DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING you want to tell us?” Kristina asks from the front seat as we drive to Atlantis the long way because we have some time to kill.

“No.”

“We hear things,” Justin says.

“Will you guys stop saying that? If we all believed what we hear, then you two would be screwing each other in the backseat right now. And there’d be barking. But that’s not true, is it?”

“You seem so distracted lately,” Kristina says. “We just want to help.”

I sigh. I’m sick of lying, so I pick something true to say. “I hate that I’m lying to Jeff like this. It feels wrong. I think Claire would be fine with you guys covering for me. You could tell her that you’re trying to find me a soul mate at the movies or something. It would totally work.”

“We could do that,” Justin says. “But that’s not what we’re asking.”

“Yeah. I’d be happy to do that. I mean, that’s what friends do, right? And we’re best friends,” Kristina says.