“Power Jam,” Oliver repeated, looking at me with an expression that was caught somewhere between disdain and pity. “Celia. Come on. Do you really think he’s acting this way because of Power Jam?”

It hit me like a punch, but one that seemed to be coming from the inside. Like a million little people were drumming on the backs of my eyes. All the heavy food we’d eaten was roiling in my stomach.

Of course Touchstone wasn’t acting this way because of Power Jam.

Pining sucks, Touchstone had said. It suuuuucks.

We’re competing for girls, he had claimed.

“I mean—look, yeah, we should all be nice to each other, but I can take a certain amount of abuse. Do you know how many guys thought I shouldn’t have been with Ronnie? They had no problem telling me that, to my face. His behavior is fine. What makes me really upset…” He paused, and his voice got very small, a cautious little mouse squeezing itself through a teeny, tiny hole. “Is that I sort of thought there was something happening between us?”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I had swallowed a frog. Of course there had been something happening between us—all that horsing around in the costume shop, our date to the spring, the sunglasses, the lunches at the Dropped Acorn. But I had been too in love with Ros to really give us a chance, and I saw that now, fully.

Oliver was still talking. “Now it just seems like… well, it seems like tonight you were mostly interested in making me your prop.”

“Please just stay,” I said, and my voice was suddenly hoarse. “We haven’t even had pie yet—it’s good, you’ll like it—it’s nowhere near as good as the stuff at the Dropped Acorn, but—”

“It’s better for me to go,” he said. “I just—I want you to know something. I should have told you this earlier. But you looked incredible in that dress.”

I was shaking when I stepped back onto the patio.

“You are such an asshole,” I said.

I don’t think I’d ever been so angry—at Touchstone, at Ros, at myself. How had I not seen any of this sooner? How had I let things get this far? Ros and Jess were back from wherever they’d gone, cuddled up on the couch.

“Me, the asshole?” said Touchstone.

“Guys,” said Phoebe. “Guys.”

“I’m not the one who left in the middle of dinner!” said Touch. “I’m not the one who showed up two hours late reeking of sex!”

“Whoa,” said Jess. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

“Leave Ros out of this,” I said.