Miguel eyes me suspiciously, his deeply tanned skin crinkling at the corners of his dark eyes. “Well, considering the way you ran out of here earlier, I’m guessing it has something to do with Walsh. I’m trying not to run wild with what that might mean because I know my best friend and loyal girlfriend wouldn’t be cheating on me without a heads-up.”

Ouch. Okay, I deserve that. And because I have zero poker face, I wince. Miguel visibly tenses up. “It’s not what you think,” I say, because apparently that’s my mantra lately. “I didn’t tell Jack about Mal; she saw you together.”

Miguel mutters something under his breath that he definitely wouldn’t say within a hundred feet of his mother. “But the two of you?”

“Have maybe fooled around a little bit. Just a couple of times,” I add sheepishly, like that makes a difference.

“I cannot believe you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want you to freak out! And I didn’t know how to handle”—I wave my hand back and forth between us—“this. There are reasons I don’t usually mess with Atherton girls, as you know.”

“But you like her.”

“I do, yeah. And I want you to like her too. She could use a friend on the team. And I know you and Malcolm could use some relationship normalcy. So, I was thinking … double date?”

I suppose I should be grateful to finally see an expression on Miguel’s face other than anger, but him cracking up at my proposal isn’t what I had in mind. “You’re joking.”

“Oh, come on—it’ll be fun!”

“And where exactly do you want to go on this magical date?”

The ride to school gave me exactly enough time to plan this, in fact. “Gutter Kittens. You know no one from school would be caught dead there.” For good reason—the decrepit bowling alley is ridiculous and cheesy and somehow looks like a Victorian disco. But my mom and Aunt Lily used to love taking me there when I was little. It’s been years now—Aunt Lily got married and moved to Hilton Head, and now she and my mom drink over video chats rather than bowling lanes, Cyndi Lauper, and watching me struggling to lift a hot-pink glittery ball—but I know it’s still around because I took Miguel once when he needed an extreme injection of goofy fun. “You can’t tell me Mal wouldn’t love it.”

“Of course he would,” Miguel mutters, affection bleeding into his voice. “That dork.”

“So? Saturday night? Eight o’clock?” I don’t even care that I sound too eager; this is far too win-win for everybody for me to have an ounce of shame about it.