“We’re not. Trust me. No one’s more afraid of getting sick and dying than Parisa.”

“Well, she wasn’t so afraid of dying when she was chugging vodka and popping edibles,” Elena replies.

“Actually, she was. Why do you think we got caught in the first place?”

Julia and Elena exchange a look. Clearly, our one-time mistake made a lasting impact.

“I hope getting caught isn’t the only lesson you learned from that night.”

“Oh my God, guys! Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic.”

I want to tell them that drinking in high school is a completely common occurrence and that they’re lucky I’m such a dork that the night in Parisa’s bathroom was my first experience with uncontrolled substances. I hate that their history with alcohol has made them more overbearing, and strict, and frankly somewhat psychotic. It would be nice if they didn’t project their own experiences and mistakes onto me. But I suppose that’s parenting in a nutshell.

We eat the rest of our breakfast quickly and in relative silence. Julia has to tend to the vegan chili she’s been slow cooking in the Instant Pot, and Elena has to load the car. Business has been slow these days, and it’s been hard to find any spot with enough foot traffic to turn a profit. With cases and deaths spiking after the holidays, the county announced a much stricter lockdown ordinance. The parks, the beaches, and the playgrounds are all closed again. It’s like the entire world has hung a sign on their storefront that says, BE BACK IN 12–18 MONTHS. How do you even look forward to anything that’s more than a year into the future? The thought overwhelms me.

I wish I could turn back the clock to last night and live forever in the giddiness of making it official with Wes. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, I’m pretty sure the start of our relationship would have been much more romantic and epic. I would have shown up at Wes’s house, knocked on the door, and delivered a monologue about how I’ve been an idiot since the moment we laid eyes on each other freshman year. He would have picked me up, spun me around, and I would have kissed him without any hesitation or fear of getting each other sick. But then I remember that we have the pandemic to thank for bringing us together in the first place. So instead, the monologue was delivered over FaceTime. And at the end of it, I told Wes that I did have feelings for him, and if it wasn’t too late, I wanted to pursue them.

“What are you saying exactly?” Wes asked.

I closed my eyes and replied: “I want to be your girlfriend. I mean, if you’ll take me.”