That seemed like an insult, but Summer brushed it off. “Are you worried that you’ll never fall in love?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“I am,” she said.

“But you’ve already been in love.”

“That only makes me more worried. I’m a romantic.”

He nodded.

“I believe in true love,” she said.

He nodded again.

“But I clearly don’t know it when I see it. How can I ever say ‘I love you’ again? I’ll have to asterisk it—‘I think I love you, but the only other time I said this, I was wrong. I don’t actually know what love looks or feels like. I think I love you, but what do I know?’ ”

Benji just listened. He kept listening after she was done talking. He ate his salad, and Summer ate her pizza.

“I think you’re getting this all wrong,” he said after a while.

“How so?”

“I don’t have the proof worked out yet,” he said. “But you’re wrong.”

Summer frowned. What did Benji know.

He’d never even been wrong about being in love.

Summer ran into Benji in the elevator again on the way to dinner. He was alone this time. He had his whole stupid outfit on.

“That’s it,” she said. “Give me your hands.”

He put out his hands. “Why?”

She started taking off one of his terrible gloves. It was probably pickled in dried sweat. “Because I can’t take it anymore! You can’t wear these to dinner!”

“But I don’t have pockets!”

She was pulling the second one off. “I do.”

She tucked the gloves into the front of her hoodie. “You can’t just wear these all the time. It’s unbearably weird.”

“I told you—I wear them to dinner because I go straight to the gym, and I don’t want to forget them.”

“Put them in your bag!”

“I don’t want to!”

“Benji, I am telling you this from the bottom of my heart, with the kindest intentions: It’s gross, and you look like a meathead.”

He seemed like he might grab the gloves out of her front pocket. “Who cares?”

“Me!” Summer said. “I have to look at you!”

That made him laugh for some reason. “Fine,” he said, turning toward the elevator doors. “Because I look so much less like a meathead now.”

“It’s a matter of degrees,” she said.

Benji found her on the StairMaster. He looked up at her with his big, brown eyes. They were green in the middle, and his eyelashes were so thick, they looked like all one piece.

She reached into her front pocket and pulled out his gloves. He took them from her.

Michelle was staring at him. He nodded at her and walked away.

“That’s that guy,” Michelle said when he was gone.

“His name’s Benji,” Summer said.