Why are you even talking to her, Lulu types, and then deletes. Of course Bea wants to be friends with Kiley. Kiley’s beautiful and cool and she’s dating Bea’s boyfriend’s best friend. She’s the kind of girl who messes up and then apologizes instead of freaking out and picking fights and making everything in her life elaborately weird.

We are. It’s just still weird, Lulu sends instead.

Well she’s not my BFF. You are!!!!! Bea says.

Lulu believes her. For now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WHEN RYAN TEXTS Lulu, Hotel has a reservation for you today, you gonna keep it, on the twenty-seventh, she feels like she has to go. If she doesn’t, who knows what bullshit Ryan will try to pull on Cass. He’s such a baby.

Cass does kind of let him get away with it, though.

Lulu finds Ryan, Owen, and Kiley sitting around in the lobby, which has been furnished with plush armchairs. She curls herself into one, grateful that its wide, high back keeps her from craning her head to see if Cass is walking in the door.

Instead she hears it when Cass enters: the whoosh of the door opening, and then the sound of her boots on the floor. Cass walks up to them and pauses next to Lulu, hovering for a bare moment. Lulu’s eyes find the cup of coffee in Cass’s hand.

“Can I?” she asks.

“Sure,” Cass says.

Lulu lets their fingers brush in the handoff; she puts her mouth on the cup where Cass’s mouth has been and pinks it with her lipstick. She licks a stray drop of coffee, pale with cream, from the plastic lid. She hands it back. The whole exchange takes maybe fifteen seconds, but Lulu feels like the rest of the room freezes, just briefly, to allow it to happen.

“I would have gotten you some if I’d known you wanted,” Cass says.

“It’s fine,” Lulu tells her. “Next time.”

Owen says, “Lulu always wants coffee.”

Los Angeles is in the middle of a funny rush of desert weather, warm dry days and long, clear nights, and Cass is dressed uncharacteristically softly, in a loose white shift that stirs in the breeze that followed her through the door. It gives Lulu glimpses of the outline of her shoulders, her hip, the curve of one thigh. It’s very distracting.

“What’s up, Ry?” Cass asks. “Your message made it sound like there was something, like, happening.”

Lulu’s glad that she’s not the only one who noticed the demand in his tone.

“Something is happening. It’s by the pool,” Ryan says. He laughs. “I mean, it is the pool, actually.” He nods for them to follow him.

Lulu sees it before she understands what she’s seeing. It’s just so— She’s gotten so used to—

The pool is a pool now. Full of water.