“You’re overreacting.”
“I sent that post as a joke, not a suggestion. Honestly, tell me you’re not actually thinking of going.”
“I’m not actually thinking of going.”
“Really?”
“No, not really,” she says with a grin. “Come on. It would be amazing.”
Priyanka shakes her head. “I literallyjustwatched this show where a girl gets stalked by someone on a train, and—”
“You watch too much TV.”
“Well, you watch too many movies.”
Mae laughs. “So what happened in the show?”
“It was all a big mix-up,” Priyanka says, picking up a slice of pizza. “The guy turned out to be great and they fell in love and lived happily ever after.”
“Really?”
“No,”she says. “She got murdered. What do you think?”
After lunch, Priyanka drives Mae home, steering her car into that familiar circle at the top of the driveway. For a moment, they just sit there staring at the blank face of the garage.
“Okay, you’re right,” Mae says, tipping her head back against the seat. “Now I’m kind of sad.”
Priyanka laughs. “See?”
“We’ll talk all the time, right?”
“Definitely.”
“Promise you’ll call me more than you call Alex?”
“Only if you promise you won’t get on that train.”
“Let’s just agree to play it all by ear,” Mae says cheerfully. As she starts to unbuckle her seat belt, Priyanka puts a hand on her elbow.
“Listen,” she says, her brown eyes searching Mae’s. “I don’t want you going off to college thinking that love is like a pizza.”
“Would it be better if I thought it was like a calzone?”
Priyanka ignores this. “Love is…I don’t know. Something bigger than that. It’s like the sun.”
“In that you can get burnt by it?”
“No,” she says wearily, but already her eyes have that starry quality they get whenever she’s thinking of Alex. “In that it makes everything brighter and happier. And it warms you from the inside out.”
“So does pizza,” Mae says, and this time Priyanka swats at her.
“You know what I’m saying. Just promise me you’ll be open to the possibilities.”
Without quite meaning to, Mae finds herself thinking of the video she sent to Hugo W., and how easy it had been to answer his questions. She takes a deep breath and nods. “I promise.”
Priyanka seems satisfied by this. She reaches for the door handle and gets out of the car, and Mae does the same. They hurry around the front to give each other a hug.
“I love you like a pizza,” Priyanka whispers in her ear, and Mae laughs.
