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“I bet Mike can eat it too. It’s soft,” she said, getting up.

“He’s not gonna eat that,” I said.

She looked at me weird. “Why?”

“He’s more of a protein and steamed vegetables kind of guy.”

“Oh,” she said, shrugging on her jacket. “Right. The training. Okay, well, more for us, McNougat.”

“You don’t get to call me that,” I said.

“You don’t get to choose your nickname,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “That’s not how nicknames work.”

I was smiling at her and she had her hand on the knob when Mike appeared behind me in the doorway of his room. I knew this because Larissa’s face brightened. “Oh, hey,” she said, coming back in and setting her purse on the table. She made her way to the doorway and slipped her arms around his waist. “How are you feeling? Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I could eat,” he said weakly.

She looked at me. “Do you think we should blend it? It’s got the beef in it. You think that might get stuck in his gums?”

“Probably.”

“Okay. I’ll puree it.”

She let him go and Mike came around the sofa and dropped onto the cushion next to me while Larissa went to the kitchen with Woofarine trailing behind her.

Mike rubbed his forehead. “Am I tripping or did Jesse get video?” he said, his voice rough.

“He did. I deleted it off his phone while he wasn’t looking.”

“Thanks.” He leaned his head back on the sofa cushion and closed his eyes. I could hear Larissa moving around in the kitchen.

“Do you know what soup she made?” he whispered. “I’m not eating anything with pasta.”

“I thought you wanted to carb load for the race,” I said quietly.

“Dick.”

I laughed dryly.

“She made it from scratch for you,” I said, my voice low. “It doesn’t have pasta, but even if it did, you should eat it.”

He groaned.

“She was cooking for over an hour. Also, it’s good.”

“Fine,” he mumbled, like he was making some huge sacrifice.

I pressed my lips together. Maybe it was just the way we were raised, but it wouldn’t even cross my mind to turn down something like that, no matter what was in it.

Mike was the only boy in his family, and Donna spoiled him. She cooked things he liked and he didn’t eat what he didn’t. I on the other hand, did not have parents who cooked. Mom and Dad were a lot of things, but chef was not one of them. They were always so busy I ate most of my meals growing up between Jesse’s, Xavier’s, or Mike’s house—mostly Mike’s. And as a guest, you said thank you and you ate what was given to you, and you acted like you liked it, even if you didn’t. It was what was polite.

That aside, the soup was delicious. And it was thoughtful too. Larissa didn’t have to come over at all, especially because he told her not to. It’s not like they’d been dating very long, nobody expected her to step in.

I liked that she had.

I leaned over the coffee table and picked up the book Larissa and I had been reading and looked at the cover while the blender started up around the corner. I still had a few more chapters. I was going to read them while she ran home, but suddenly I just didn’t feel up to it, like there was no point now. The book wasn’t good. The fun part was talking about it with her. Now that Mike was here, we couldn’t exclude him by discussing a book he hadn’t read.

So now I was a third wheel.