“Where did you find those?” Owen asks

Cass points to a pile in a lounge chair, and Owen proceeds to wrap himself in four towels: one for each leg, one around his torso, and another around his shoulders like a cape.

“Nice look,” Ryan says. “But also, the pool’s not the only thing that got an upgrade. The rooms are ready too.”

The lobby is still mostly empty, but Ryan really has set up rooms for each of them: robes in the closets, chocolates on the pillows. There’s no shampoo in the shower, though, let alone conditioner. Removed from the thrill of the moment, Lulu thoroughly regrets getting her hair wet. There’s no way it’s going to dry presentably. Her makeup is a lost cause.

At least the water pressure is strong, though, and the spray comes out hot. She stands under it and tries to adjust to this latest version of The Hotel. It’s not like Cass didn’t warn her that it was always changing. It’s just that she wasn’t entirely ready for this iteration, for it to stop being a safe, in-between space and start looking like everywhere else in the world.

She startles when someone knocks on the shower’s glass door.

Cass is standing on the other side, looking uncertain. “There’s a drought on,” she says when Lulu opens it. “I didn’t want to waste—”

“Come in,” Lulu says. “Come in.”

Afterward they can’t stop laughing. Lulu doesn’t know what’s so funny, only that everything is: this improbable girl in this improbable place, the late afternoon light slanting through the window, Cass’s stick legs and knobby wrists poking out from the ostentatiously fluffy robe she’s wrapped in, the shape of the spot her damp hair leaves on the pillow.

Cass eats Lulu’s chocolate and kisses her when Lulu complains. We could do this, Lulu thinks. We are doing this. Something in her stomach zips tight, and she has no idea if it’s excitement or fear.

Because she’s done this before—with Owen, who’s probably kissing Kiley right now, too serious to laugh about it. Because she did this with Owen and then he got tired of her and she got tired of him, and there’s nothing there anymore. Or not nothing. But not enough.

She’s never done this with a girl before, and it’s different, and it’s so good.

“Cass?” Ryan calls in the hall. “Cass, where did you go?”

Cass knows better than to keep Ryan waiting. She goes to the door and pokes her head out. “Here!” she calls.

Ryan brushes past her into Lulu’s room. Lulu doesn’t like the idea that Ryan can just insert himself into their moment like this. We’re on his property, she reminds herself.