Page 24

“Oh my god, hi, Abby!” She came in and, before I could ward her off with crossed arms or maybe a knee to the stomach, she was hugging me, too. I stood there stiffly until it was over. “I’m Bonnie. Seth and I went to school together.”

I wondered if she was part of this fabled friend group. “Oh, wow. So you must have some good stories.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “We came here for a trip in elementary school and he got lost, I think? That was you, right, Seth? Except it turned out he wasn’t lost. He was hiding, because he wanted to see if the dinosaurs came alive at night.”

I shot him an amused look. So he did think it would be cool to sleep over at the museum. Even if he was blushing about it now. “Seems like a poorly thought-out plan, considering that if they did come alive at night, you’d probably get eaten.”

“I was a kid,” Seth defended. “And most of my exposure to dinosaurs had come from the book How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah? Where they were cuddly and friendly and giving one another Hanukkah presents.”

Another girl came up beside Bonnie. Bonnie pulled her close with an affectionate arm around the waist. “This is my girlfriend, Nora.”

“Nice to meet you,” Nora said, resting her head against Bonnie’s shoulder.

I was suddenly very aware of the two feet of space separating Seth and me. No hands being held, no shoulders being draped with arms, no cheeks pressed by lips. If we were an actual couple, wouldn’t we be more comfortable with each other?

This was probably something we should have discussed. He’d specifically told me his parents wouldn’t be expecting any PDA, but hadn’t told me anything about friends.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I stepped closer to Seth, so that my hip rested against his thigh, and leaned my head against his shoulder. He still smelled like oranges and campfire, despite using his family’s lavender soap. “Nice to meet you, too.” There shouldn’t have been a pulse in his shoulder, but I swore I could feel the beating of his heart, fast and uncertain, against my ear.

Nora looked to Seth, as if waiting for him to say something. He did, a moment too late, stumbling over his words. “Nice to meet you.”

I steadied myself against the warm, solid bulk of him, leaning in a little so that my hair brushed the hollows of his neck, because that was what a girlfriend would do. And what a girlfriend would do was stay there after a few minutes of small talk, then for a minute after Bonnie and Nora had bid us goodbye and disappeared back into the crowd, because what if one of them circled back or looked over their shoulder at us? It was the good, responsible thing to do, and that was it, and it had nothing to do with the warmth.

Seth finally cleared his throat. I blinked and jumped back, feeling almost like I’d been woken from a sound sleep. “Thanks for improvising.”

“Of course. That’s what I’m here for,” I said. The words tasted a little sour. “Is Bonnie part of your friend group?”

He shook his head. “No, just an old classmate. So you really didn’t have to…” He waved his hand around, indicating the hug and the closeness and whatever else.

I forced a smile. “Sorry if you didn’t want—”

“No, it’s not that,” he said hastily. “I just…never mind.” He cleared his throat again. “Maybe we should discuss our parameters for being around other people I know. So that neither one of us gets uncomfortable.”

I couldn’t help but shrivel a little bit at that last word. So I’d made him uncomfortable. That was the last thing I’d wanted to do. But I’d already apologized, and I wasn’t going to make things awkward by apologizing again and again. “You know I’m not a super touchy person, but I don’t mind if we have to hold hands or hug to make this relationship look real.”

“Okay,” Seth said. “So it would be okay if, like, we ran into a friend and I put my arm around you?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

“Okay.” An awkward silence fell upon us, as thick and smothering as a wool blanket. I coughed to fill it. It did not help. Maybe more words would? “So now that we have the rules, do we have plans with your friends to use them?”

“I don’t know. Hey, want to move on to the sharks?”

It was getting awfully crowded around here, and I was pretty sure we’d been in the background of at least seventy pictures of people with the T. rex. “Sure.” Maybe my bones wouldn’t be the only thing that future people would see of me. In fifty years kids would ooh and aah over pictures of their grandparents with me and Seth holding each other in the background. What a cute couple, they might say, not knowing any differently.

The shark exhibit was full of bones and teeth and models hanging from the ceiling. We strolled through it, musing on which shark we’d most like to get eaten by. “I think the little shark would be best,” said Seth. “There’s at least a chance of me being able to fight it off.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It still looks pretty strong. And I’d rather just get devoured in one big gulp than chewed to death by a thousand tiny bites.”

It was kind of a depressing debate, and I wasn’t inclined to finish it. “Hey, before, you said you didn’t know if we’d be seeing your friends,” I said. I wasn’t prying; it was a legitimate question that applied to my job as a fake girlfriend. Right? It was only fair for me to know what the plans were for the rest of the trip. “I thought you said in the car that we would be? The group chat was buzzing.”

He grimaced, either at me or at the thought of how easily he’d fit through the jaws of a megalodon. “Yeah. The group chat’s still buzzing with plans. I don’t know, I just…I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of avoiding them.”

That didn’t seem like him. That seemed like me. “Why? You don’t miss them?”

“No, I do. I just…” He sighed. “I’m nervous. You know, Freya and I broke up, and then I disappeared without even saying goodbye. I’m kind of worried they’re mad at me.” He was quiet for a moment.