“You can bring your boyfriend too, if you want,” Devin says.

“You remembered I have a boyfriend?”

Devin rolls eir eyes. “Please, you talk about him all the time. Drag him along, though. He’s totally welcome.”

I smile. “Fine, I will.”

For what it’s worth, Devin does a pretty great job of distracting me. Once the kids head outside, e pulls out subs for both of us, and we sit around for a while pretending we don’t actually have to get to cleaning up.

“So you’re bringing me free food now?” I ask, biting into the sandwich.

Devin shrugs. “I’ve been baking more, so I thought I’d give you something to try.”

I pause, my eyes wide. “Wait, you baked this?”

“The bread.”

“Obviously.” But it’s pretty ridiculously amazing, just crispy enough at the edges but soft in the middle.

Devin laughs. “When I first started going to therapy, my therapist told me I needed to pick up a hobby, so I just started a bunch of different ones, and I guess they just kind of stuck.”

“And being a baker?” I ask.

“My dad cooks a lot,” Devin says. “After I—well, I think my dad thought it would be good for us to have something to bond over, you know? So we started baking together, and now it’s just kind of a thing. Usually on weekends.”

We fall into silence, and I feel bad digging for anything else since I’ve already reopened probably the world’s worst can of worms.

Fortunately, I spend the rest of my working hours thinking about Devin and that life-changing bread, so I only remember about Becca as I’m grabbing my stuff and climbing into Brian’s car, clicking my phone to find I missed another three calls.

I groan, my head falling back against the headrest.

Brian sighs, turning the key in the ignition. “Please don’t hurt yourself. I don’t want to have to take you to the ER.”

“How do you deal with friends who are being unreasonable?”

He gives me the side-eye and says, “Usually by making sure I’m not the one being unreasonable first.”

And I hate that he said it because it’s such a Brian thing to say, and I know there’s a pretty good chance he’s right. And maybe I need to get better at the self-reflection thing, but I also don’t know why Becca would be mad at me. Because I’m with Drew? That just seems petty. It could be because I didn’t support her TERF crush, but really, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

But maybe it goes back further than that. Maybe she’s mad because I left for the summer, and now I’m in Colorado getting the best meet cute of my life while she’s trapped in Florida and hating every minute of it.