I’ll admit, I’m pretty rusty at the whole friendship thing. I met Duke post-fallout with my dad. He moved to town the following summer and is a fair-weather Unitarian, so the whole religious drama meant nothing to him.

But Meg is different. Underneath her bubbly exterior, I picked up on some serious hurt. Totally justified and seemingly fresh hurt, but I don’t know. I’m hardly the person to talk when it comes to a healthy spiritual life. Or parental drama. Or relationship advice.

Not that she was asking for that. Advice or otherwise. She was just cute is all.

Aaaaand I’m shutting down that particular train of thought in three … two …

“All right, Cash,” I say, standing. As predicted, he’s quick on the uptake and scrambles to his feet. I lunge, loosening my quads as he stretches, yawning. “Show-off,” I grumble.

He licks my hand with a snap in response.

“It’s all downhill from here.”

I’m avoiding Brian and my mom and anyone else who wants to talk about the hearing. Consequently, I’m at work even though it’s Monday and I’m not on the schedule. Duke’s behind the counter, taking an end-of-season inventory on sunglasses, and I’m spinning on Dani’s stool, keeping an eye on things, while she’s next door at the coffee shop getting brownies.

That’s the perk of sharing a wall with a coffee shop. We always know when they’ve pulled something delicious out of the oven. And since Dani has the reflexes of a distracted five-year-old, she’s the forever loser of “Nose Goes.”

“How was ice cream?” Duke asks, not stopping in his movements of checking and recording.

“Huh?”

He pauses, his eyes flickering up underneath his hair, pinning me. “With Meg in the Pink Hair,” he clarifies needlessly.

“Oh.” I’m stalling. He knows it. “It was good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Real good. She’s nice.”

“Pretty, too.”

I shrug.

“Just ice cream?” he verifies.

“Just ice cream.”

“Damn.”

I huff. “If you hoped for more, why’d you want me to turn down Em?”

This time, he shrugs, closing the display case with a click and pulling out the key. “It’s not that, exactly. I don’t like Emily. She’s…” He scrunches up one side of his face. “She uses you.”

“Maybe I use her,” I shoot back.

My best friend snorts, wiping away his smile. “Sorry. But no.”

I don’t bother arguing. “Well, Meg’s not like Emily. Very much the opposite. She’s a church girl.” Even as I say it, I wonder if Duke can really understand the significance. It’s been a few years since I attended any semblance of a youth group, but it’s a whole thing. Church girls are different. There’s this guilt factor associated with anything physical that’s a big old flashing DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.