By the end of the meal, we still hadn’t brought up the elephant in the room, so after the waitress took away our plates, I said, “I know we have to talk—”

“I’ve been thinking—” Steph said at the same time.

We both stopped. I said, “Go ahead.”

Steph grimaced. “Okay.” But she didn’t speak for several moments. I heard someone across the small restaurant break into laughter, and the clink of a fork against a plate. Steph dropped her gaze to the clump of noodles she’d dropped on the table. “I made a mess,” she said.

“They’ll clean it up.”

“I’m not sure I was talking about the food.”

The waitress brought the check on a small plastic tray. I pulled my wallet out of my purse as Steph took her money out, too. “Split it?” I asked.

“Sure,” Steph said.

We each laid down cash; neither of us needed change. We had both come prepared, as if we’d mutually agreed to make this part, at least, easy. The waitress appeared moments later to pick up the money. She had been watching us all night with a curiosity that seemed to go beyond making sure our orders were correct, and I hadn’t figured out if it was because I was Asian and there weren’t many other Asian people here, or if it was because she couldn’t decide if Steph was a boy or a girl. I’d noticed that Steph got confused looks sometimes, and it struck me that if I were her girlfriend, I would be part of that confusion. The two of us together could be perceived as either a stereotype or a mistake.

“Do you need change?” the waitress asked.

“No thanks,” I said.

“You want to go?” Steph asked after the waitress left. “We can talk in my truck.”

“Okay.”

It was almost dark outside, and Steph pointed toward the parking lot across the street. “I’m over there at the end.” She led me to the far side of the lot, where her truck was parked facing a big bush that blocked the lot from the street on the other side. She climbed in first and then reached over to unlock the passenger side door.

When I got in, the cab smelled faintly of french fries. The bush in front of the truck gave us a sense of privacy, and after a few moments the dome light clicked off, leaving us in the dark cab. There was no more putting this off.

“I know you’re with Lisa,” I said.

“I don’t want to mess things up,” she said at the same time.

“I don’t want to mess things up either,” I said. “For you or for us. I mean, I’m leaving on August twenty-first. I won’t even be here. I wasn’t trying to start anything, I really wasn’t.”

Fraud.

“I wasn’t either,” she said.