I seat two tables in the remaining minutes of my shift, giving the welcome spiel. In the lull between lunch and dinner, we seat patrons in the front room with the windows and maximum natural light. This time of day, midafternoon, the sun reflects on the gold foil artwork on the ivory brick walls. Chao Down’s aesthetic is elegant without being pretentious—even when the quality of the food is worthy of pretension.

“Hey, Natalie,” Kenny Chao—Henry’s cousin—says, approaching the hostess stand to relieve me. As always, I am grateful punctuality runs in the Chao family. Kenny is nineteen, has the most perfect smile, and always brings me a Thai bubble tea from the kitchen during our shift change. “Let the changing of the guard commence.”

“Thanks! You’re my favorite Chao,” I say.

Normally, I’d stay for a few beats and flirt, because platonic flirting is kind of my thing with Kenny. But not today! I take the tea, tuck my phone into my pocket, and bolt toward the action at the back of the restaurant, untying my hostess apron. Everyone is crammed around six four-seaters pushed together to create one big table.

I take in the image, everyone eating and commiserating over their clubs.

Sipping my tea, I slide into the seat across from Henry, who is texting.

“Ready?” I ask.

Henry hits send and nods. “Let’s do this.”

Before we get everyone’s attention, I’m interrupted by the one group not yet represented.

“Hey! I’m sorry we’re late,” Danica Martinez’s melodic voice projects from behind me. It takes a moment to fully process that the most influential senior at LHS is here. In Chao Down. In shorts with fishnets under them, a ripped band T-shirt, her long brown hair in a mermaid braid down her back, as if her last performance was headlining a nineties grunge band.

“Hey!” Henry says. “We’re just about to get started.”

Danica’s turquoise lips smile wide as Henry stands and goes in for a hug. Whoa. Fitz and I look at each other, her eyebrows shooting to the sky as we process the texting. The hugging. The stupid smile on Henry’s face. It is all… a new development.

“Of course! My therapist says I need a healthy way to channel my negative emotions.”

“Mood,” Fitz says.

Not a new development? Fitz’s crush on Danica. It dates back to post Luna Blue breakup, during the good old days of Performance Studies 101 with Miss Bryant. Danica, a junior at the time, convinced her scene partner, Jacob Linetti, to perform a gender-swapped rendition of the “Stella!” scene from A Streetcar Named Desire.

Fitz has been quietly pining ever since.