My secret hope in going to the Dropped Acorn was that I’d run into Jess delivering bouquets again, and that this time, Ros would be with her. But even though the restaurant was crowded—everything had been crowded lately as more tourists flooded in to see the shows—there was no Jess in sight. With all the people to serve, the food took longer to arrive than it had our first day. Touchstone kept checking his watch.

“You have somewhere to be?” I asked, mock-offended.

“Yeah,” he said. “I need to be back on campus at one for a movement workshop with the visiting director. They’re coming all the way from Seattle. They’re supposed to be kind of a big deal.”

“Oh,” I said. “You haven’t heard anything from Ros, have you? They’ve been, like, silent on the group text.”

“Actually,” said Touch. “I saw them the other day.”

“Wait. Really? Way to bury the lede, Touch. You two hung out without me?”

“It wasn’t really like that,” Touchstone said. “They came to the Lily Pad to get some of their stuff. We ate your cake.”

“I saw someone had gotten into it. I just assumed it had been only you.”

“It was really wet in the middle. Like it hadn’t cooked through.”

“You try baking a cake in a broken oven,” I said. “How’d they seem?”

“They seemed good,” he said. “They joked about writing a poem about your baking efforts. It was titled ‘Wet Cake.’”

“Seriously,” I said. “How’d they seem?”

“Honestly?” he said. He sighed, and for a second he seemed almost bored. “I think they were kind of upset with you. They wanted to hang out with you on the Fourth of July. They wanted you to get to know Jess.”

“I talked to Jess.”

“You talked to Jess for two point five seconds and then rushed away with this bogus excuse about buttons. You left us all stranded there, looking for a way home.” Touchstone played with his fork, dropping it and resetting it. “I think you hurt their feelings.”

“I—” I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t even considered Ros’s feelings—or anyone’s feelings, for that matter. Between me and everyone else, I was the one with feelings. Why would Ros—or anyone else—be upset with me?

“It wasn’t a bogus excuse,” I said finally. “It was a legitimate emergency.”

“Celia, really? Come on. I mean, even I was kind of upset you did that. We wound up getting home fine, but it was sort of a pain in the ass for you to ditch us like that.”