It took only seconds for my shoulders to fall back into place.

“Daya!”

God. I’d just walked in the front door after spending the entire day with Shanti, and I was really hoping to just walk up to my room and collapse into bed. But of course, that was too much to ask. A racket of whistles, plucking, singing, and more came from the living room.

“Hi, Vicki.”

“Daya, we had such a wonderful time with you and Shanti this morning. She’s so… sweet.” She was carrying maracas.

Translation: She’s capital N Not what we expected for you at all.

“Yes, so sweet! We’d really love to see her again.” Priam rounded the corner from the living room with a mandolin in one hand. It must have been their “Jig and Jam Night”—a collection of their musical nerd friends dancing and jamming with instruments that, I was fairly sure, did not go together.

The jingles and drum thumps continued from the living room. I tried to remember where I’d put my earplugs.

“Um, thanks. Shanti’s pretty cool.” Truthfully, even though I was exhausted, just saying her name sent a small burst of excitement through my gut.

We’d spent the afternoon parked at the beach, making out and talking and making out some more. We hadn’t talked about my “fight mode” anymore—she’d given me some space from that and I’d been thankful—but I’d told her about Fee and how important they were to me, about skateboarding, and even that I’d boxed before—though I’d kept that conversation brief.

She’d told me about her classes and all the eccentric people she met at the bookstore where she worked. About her obsessions with the Doctor Who TV series and sci-fi books. About her favorite comic book characters. About how much she loved puzzles.

Every nerdy thing she said just made me want to kiss her. And every time I realized how much I wanted to kiss her, despite every nerdy thing she said (or maybe because of it), I had to take a deep breath to calm the panic in my chest that was telling me not to get too close—not to run the risk of letting someone in, of losing them. What if she saw the deepest parts of me and hated what she saw? But each breath kept me present, kept me in front of her instead of retreating, which was what a pesky part of my brain was telling me to do. I’d breathed my way into an entire day with Shanti, and thinking about that now gave me a little bump of energy.

“Have you eaten?” Priam asked.

I hadn’t. Shanti and I had been too busy to eat. Traces of garlic and onions had been wafting in from the kitchen. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say, but I said it anyway. “I’m starving.”