But Lulu doesn’t want to be home alone, so she lets Bea put her in one of her dresses—something loose and flowy, which turns perilously tight and short on Lulu’s curves—and get her in the car. She’s actually almost looking forward to it by the time they arrive. Whatever it is when she gets there, at least she’ll know. It can’t be as bad as she’s imagining. Right?

Even thinking that was asking for trouble, she realizes, when she walks into Jules’s house and the first person she sees is Sloane.

“Um,” Bea says.

Jules introduced them. Jules introduced them at that party in August. He’s how Sloane came into her life in the first place, so Lulu should have known. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but Lulu’s been so distracted that she forgot to worry about this single particular thing, so of course this is the thing that’s happening. Sloane Mori is sitting on a couch next to Patrick, drinking what looks like a rum and Coke.

She sees Lulu and she smiles and then she looks away, and Lulu has no idea how to respond. She knows what she wants to do, though, which is what she does: walks into the den where they’re hanging out, sits down in one of the chairs, and pours herself a drink. She swallows it in two gulps and makes herself another.

“Hey-o, Shapiro,” Patrick says. “What is up.”

“Feel you, girl,” Sloane says. “That’s exactly the mood. Also. Um. Hey.”

They haven’t seen each other since That Whole Thing happened. They haven’t spoken since they came downstairs at the party where they met, and one of the boys said, “Rude of you to let the internet watch, but not the people who are actually here.”

For an infinite, split-second moment, Lulu didn’t know what he meant; then he held up his phone, and she did. She fumbled her phone out of her pocket and deleted the video, and even then, fingers shaking, nausea roiling through her, she knew, instinctively, that she was already way too fucking late.

“Hey,” Lulu says to Sloane now.

Bea comes and balances herself on the arm of Lulu’s chair. She nudges Lulu with an elbow. “Bartender,” she says. “Make me one?”

“Sure,” Lulu says.

She busies herself pouring while Bea introduces herself to Sloane, as if she doesn’t know who she is. Rich shows up and distracts Bea; Jules and Cristina Vega and Faye Samson arrive with him, and then there’s more people to say hi to and drinks to pour and sip and distractions, and somehow Lulu is at a party, a party with Sloane, and it’s—fine, she thinks. Somehow it seems like everything is actually kind of almost fine.