“The Fourth of July?” said Ros. “We’re gonna go to Lovers’ Lagoon. It’s supposed to be a good swimming spot. Back in the day it was where you went after you visited the spring, to meet the new person you were going to fall in love with. Do you want to come?”

No, I thought automatically. I did not want to spend a day with Jess, who inspired poetry and was wearing Ros’s chain. I wanted to spend the day just me and Ros, convincing them that I was the one they were really in love with.

“Can Audrey come?” Touchstone said. “We were maybe going to do something that day.”

“Sure,” said Ros. “The more the merrier. Celia? How about you?”

To reiterate: I did not want to come. Certainly not with Ros and their new squeeze, Jess, and certainly not to a place called Lovers’ Lagoon. Couldn’t these people come up with any normal landmarks, things that didn’t revolve around love? Faces carved into cliffs, say, or extremely large balls of twine?

“Earth to Celia,” said Ros.

“Sounds great. I’m in,” I said.

“Easy peasy,” Touchstone said, and Ros and I finished, in sync for one brief moment, “Lemon squeezy.”

Footnote

16 In fact, I did have an idea how difficult it was to film, thanks to the special edition magazine that Ros had bought me for my birthday. Not only had Oliver sprained his wrist when filming this scene but his costar had sustained a severe bruise to her tailbone when she fell when Oliver first kissed her. The injuries were significant enough that the showrunners decided never again to film a sex scene on wheels, which was a real disappointment, if you asked me.

NEEDLE AND BONE,
or On Losing My Voice

Of course—it wasn’t that easy. Nothing ever is.

I woke on the morning of the Fourth of July with a pit in my stomach. And then I walked into the kitchen, and there was Jess Orlando.

She was a tiny goddess in a sports bra, running shorts, and a backward baseball cap. Her strawberry-blond ponytail was thrown across her shoulder. Ros’s chain glinted at her neck.

“Hey,” she said, and she gave me a big, friendly hug. Her head came up to my shoulder, and next to her, I felt oddly like a giantess—not unlike the ogre she’d clocked that first night we saw her. “Nice to see you again.”

“Hi,” I said, trying not to notice how good Jess smelled—like a redwood forest in human form. “Where’s Ros?”

“They’re grabbing sunscreen from the car.”

“I don’t keep sunscreen in the car,” I said.

“No, my car,” said Jess Orlando. “I always have some in there, just in case. Lovers’ Lagoon is pretty shady, but still, you never know when you’re gonna need it.”

“Prudent,” I said.

“What’s that mean?” she asked.