The knob turns and Salem lets himself inside, holding one of the beige clamshells they keep at the Beast for takeout. My stomach rumbles at the sight; missing dinner may have been a necessary sacrifice for privacy, but it wasn’t a welcome one. “Any chance that’s for me?”

“You know it is,” he says, perching on the edge of my desk. “Complete with extra garlic bread, in thanks for your service this weekend.”

“Good thing I won’t actually be kissing anyone tonight,” I say, motioning for him to hand over the food. Mmm, garlic bread. “So, your parents seemed pretty eager to buy that.”

“Right?” He shakes his head. “It’s so bizarre. I think it’s a weird PTSD reaction to Sabrina’s breakup with Molly, or something. It was rough.”

I pluck a piece of garlic bread from the clamshell and take a careful bite; I’m definitely not trying to sleep in crumbs tonight. “Looks to me like they actually care about seeing you happy and well adjusted. Novel concept, I know.”

He snorts. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I was fine and even relatively well adjusted at my old school. I mean, yeah, I smoked a lot of weed, skipped some classes, and got in trouble occasionally—”

“Salem. You got caught spray-painting unspeakably raunchy pictures of Daniel Tiger on a public wall.”

“First of all, that’s disgusting. Daniel Tiger is a child. The pictures were of his parents, and it’s not my fault they’re so foxy.”

“Do you ever actually listen to yourself speak?”

“Nah, who wants to hear that noise?” He rakes a hand through his hair, and it falls back in his eyes immediately. “Anyway, thank you. I know we didn’t give you a whole lot of choice in signing on for that this weekend, but you made my parents happy, and they really needed a win.”

Don’t I know that feeling … “So, you think they liked me?”

He rolls his eyes. “They fucking loved you.”

That shouldn’t make me nearly as happy as it does. “What’d they say?”

His mouth quirks up in a grin. “That it was nice to finally meet someone in our circle with an ounce of social grace.”

Social grace. I don’t think anyone in the world has ever said anything like that about me before, and I like the sound of it.

Frankly, it makes me a little disappointed that it was fake, too. Not because of Salem, of course, but I’ll miss his parents and their warm seal of approval.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye,” I say, and I mean it.

“Don’t worry—I told them you had cramps. They got it.”

“Oh my God, I despise you.”

He smirks. “No, you don’t. I’m the bringer of emergency tampons. And garlic bread.”

“And trouble. Always trouble.”

“That too. But listen—”