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“She always had this attitude,” Seth said. “Sometimes she wouldn’t give me the whipped cream I paid for just because she didn’t feel like it. Or she’d snark at me when I wished her a good morning. You know. But I got past it.”

Okay, now my hackles rose and stayed up. He got past it? Seriously?

Come on, Abby, I told myself. Be a good fake girlfriend. Nice and sweet and demure and whatever. Remember the festival.

But my mouth opened on its own. “How generous of you to get past it,” I said breezily. I turned to Bev with a wry smile, hoping she’d think I was joking. “He might have thought I was grumpy and difficult at first, but I thought he was so annoying. Like, I’d just be trying to get through my day, get all my orders right and deal with problem customers, and he’d be in there trying to chat with me about how nice it was outside or how he just loooooves the smell of autumn.”

I’d gone too far, I immediately thought, but Bev laughed. “Sounds like Seth,” she said.

I should probably smile, too, to show that I wasn’t being serious, even though I was. I stretched open my lips, negating my usual resting bitch face.

“So the two of you started off getting on each other’s nerves, but obviously that changed,” Bev said. “What happened?”

Seth glanced at me. “Well. It was a wild day.”

“The wildest day,” I said, jumping in. Not a chance I was going to sit here silently and let him emphasize how grumpy and difficult I was. Even if, it occurred to me a second later, that was exactly what a good fake girlfriend would do. Because what did it really matter? He was the one who would be stuck with these people for the rest of his life, while I would never see them again after seven more days, so what did it matter what they thought of me?

It was too late, though. The words were already spilling out of my mouth. “Seth had come by in the morning for his usual sugary latte, and it was storming outside. Pouring down buckets. Lightning flashing in the sky.”

“Are you sure about that, dear?” Seth asked. He cocked his head at me, grinning a little. “I remember it being bright and sunny.”

I felt a smile twitch at my own lips. “No, it was definitely storming. How could you forget? Considering you’d just come in for your morning sugary latte and the ceiling opened up.”

“You’re right, how could I forget,” Seth said, raising his eyebrows at me, like he was challenging me not to laugh. “It was pretty unforgettable how the water poured right on your head.”

The image was absurd. I swallowed the laugh down so he wouldn’t get the satisfaction. “Seth leapt forward to rescue me, but I was screaming about the expensive coffee machine. It wasn’t like I’d gotten a blowout that morning—my hair could take a soaking, and I could always wash my clothes. But my espresso machine?”

“Right,” Seth said. His parents were glancing back and forth between us as if we were bouncing a Ping-Pong ball from hand to hand. “You were screaming in panic, looking like a drowned rat, scrabbling in place trying to stay upright as the water tried to drown you, and all you would say was, ‘Save the machine!’ So I gallantly dove into the fray and moved the machine to a dry table, then went back in for you.”

“If only you hadn’t slipped and fallen!” I interrupted.

“I fell?” Seth was raising his eyebrows, his lips pressing together hard like he, too, was trying not to burst out laughing. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll never get the image out of my head,” I said earnestly, turning my eyes up to the ceiling, because if I spent any longer looking at his face I was definitely going to explode. “I was standing there with the water beating down on me almost like a massage, trying to calculate how much this was going to cost to fix, only to have you come sliding into me like a soggy Rollerblader.”

“How could I forget literally knocking you off your feet?” Seth’s voice was strangled now.

Do not look, Abby. Stick the landing. “You’re misremembering again, because I didn’t fall,” I said. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. “You don’t remember how I had to stoop down and drag you out of the fray so that you wouldn’t be like that urban legend of a turkey who drowned because it was too stupid to stop looking up at the rain?”

“Somehow I did not remember that.”

“I’m not sure how; it was very memorable.”

“That’s right. I’m remembering now,” said Seth. “The water was so slippery and moving so much that you might not have fallen at first, but you fell after dragging me out of the waterfall. Leaving us both lying on our backs in the pool, turkeys looking up at the downpour.”

My deep breath shook with the effort it took not to laugh. I almost broke when I looked at him to see him grinning at me with his eyebrows raised.

But I didn’t. I held strong as I said, “And that was, of course, when you saw fit to ask me out.”

That did it. He burst out laughing. I looked down, smirking with victory, as he covered his face with his hands, shoulders shaking.

“Sounds…romantic,” Bev said doubtfully. “But what about your ceiling?”

Right. If that had happened in real life, I would’ve been freaking out, because I definitely would not have been able to afford the café being closed while my landlord lackadaisically arranged for the repair. Maybe I would’ve finally gotten to be the target of one of Lorna’s emergency meetings. “Oh, it all worked out,” I said, because the less specific detail I gave her, the better. “But, you know, I want to hear about you, too. Seth told me you’re a podiatrist and a lawyer, right? Those jobs sound very interesting.”

Immediate brownie points for me as Benjamin’s face lit up. “It’s extremely interesting. I’ve spent most of my career working with tax and estate law—”

“Oh, she doesn’t want to hear about tax codes and people’s feet,” Bev interrupted, though the pleased expression on her face told me I’d gotten some brownie points from her, too. “I’d much rather hear more about you. What about your first date?”