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I spun back around in my seat and found Cally staring at me, his eyes wide.

“You okay?” I mouthed.

He looked down, writing something quickly in his notebook. When he was done, he tilted it my way. Did that really happen? was written in tight capital letters.

“Crazy, right?” I whispered.

He leaned closer, whispering back, “My dad is going to⁠—”

Before he could finish, the rep cleared his throat. “As I was saying …”

Cally straightened up, his pen poised at the ready, the picture of a model student.

I shook my head, fighting a grin.

This fucking guy.

By the time the briefing finally wrapped, I was starving. The grocery store was mostly empty when I got there—as far as I could tell, just me, a couple of guys who looked like they’d come from a job site, a cashier who could have been anywhere from forty to sixty, and a kid stocking shelves with AirPods in his ears, rapping along to lyrics he definitely should not be repeating.

I steered my shopping cart through the produce section, tossing in a few oranges, a head of celery, and a bag of those little carrots I’d eat for two days then forget about.

I was about to snag a bottle of blue cheese off the shelf when I looked to my left and saw Cally standing by the dairy case, a basket hanging from his forearm as he debated between two yogurt options.

I’d been eating alone every night since camp started, and I was so fucking tired of it. I hated the quiet—the absolute boredom—and while Cally wasn’t the most talkative person I’d ever met, for some reason I could get him to talk to me.

I dropped the dressing into my basket and moved toward him. “Hey.”

His head whipped around, his expression startled. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

I tipped my head toward the two quarts of yogurt he was holding. “Need help?”

He lifted the tub in his left hand. “This one isn’t organic, which means the milk could come from just about anywhere.” He set it back on the shelf, turning the one in his right hand so that the label faced me. “This one is organic, but has carrageenan in it, and I don’t love that.”

“Carra-what?” I asked, leaning forward to peer more closely at the list.

Cally set it down next to the other one, then crouched to place his basket at his feet. “It’s a thickening agent derived from seaweed. Some research suggests it causes inflammation in the gut lining, though the evidence is mixed.”

“Seaweed in yogurt?” That sounded revolting.

“It’s not like chunks of seaweed or anything. It’s a powder.”

“Still, seaweed? Doesn’t that, like, affect the taste?”

He shook his head, glancing into my cart. “You probably eat it every day and don’t even know it. Ten bucks says it’s in that dressing.”

I picked up the bottle of blue cheese, turning it to review the nutrition information. Sure enough, there it was.

“Well, fuck.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Told you.”

I tossed the dressing back in my cart. It was my favorite brand, and it hadn’t killed me yet. “Hey, so … umm. You doing anything tonight?”

“Just this. Why?” He bent down to retrieve his basket.

“Do you wanna eat dinner together?”

His lips turned down in a frown, his eyebrows scrunching together. Those first few days of camp, I would have interpreted that expression to mean he absolutely did not want to do that—it was what that would have meant from anyone else I’d ever played with—but I’d gotten to know Cally a little bit better the last couple of weeks, and that was just how his face worked when he was processing new information. Eventually, his eyebrows would relax, the divot between them would even out, and he’d blow out a breath.