It wasn’t until much later in the evening, after Touch had gone to bed, after Ros had retreated to Jess’s, that I had my epiphany. Maybe Ros would never love me, not the way I wanted. They seemed happy with Jess, even though there was no way that was going to last, not with our going back home at the end of the summer. But maybe, if I couldn’t get Ros to fall in love with me, I could at least get them to see what they were missing out on. I would have been a fantastic girlfriend, and I would prove it at the dinner party. All I had to do—besides cook the perfect meal and host the perfect evening—was slip into the Cinderella dress hanging in the back of my closet. By the end of the night, Ros would regret not falling in love with me.

DINNER THEATER,
or a Crash Course in Limes

The party took place on Friday, August 1, and the first thing to go wrong was the limes. I’d decided at the eleventh hour to make a key lime pie for dessert—Ros’s favorite and coincidentally Oliver’s as well—but the little grocery store in Lovesick didn’t have key limes in stock, so I drove forty-five minutes to the bigger, fancier grocery store, only to discover that they didn’t have them, either. I settled on regular limes. According to the internet it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway, though being a purist I had my doubts—and the limes I found were puny and rock hard, more like avocado pits than actual fruit, but by that point I’d already bought condensed milk and graham crackers and butter at the first grocery store, plus I’d lost an hour and a half driving to the bigger grocery store, and most importantly, it was Ros’s and Oliver’s favorite, so it was just too late to change course. Key lime pie it was.