“All right, kiddies.” I stand and throw enough cash on the table to cover dinner for all three of us. “Thank you for the confessional. But I’m gonna get home.”

I hug them both, give a quick wave, and am out on the sidewalk before Vera catches up to me. “Eliot! Are you sure you want to go home? You could come over and watch a movie. Or I could come to your house!”

I blink at this unusual offer before I realize what my wonderful baby sister is really doing. I told her about the break-in tonight but there was so much ground to cover between the Vegas wedding and the anonymous girlfriend and the webcomic and romantic gestures that we didn’t talk about it nearly as much as I’d guessed we would. “BB, really. It’s okay. I’ve been doing a lot better recently. I’m fine to go home on my own.”

She bites her lip. “You promise?”

“I promise.” I tug her into a hug. “You’re a good sister. Now, get out of here and go have fun with Fred.” I wince. “But not too much fun. Oh, God. It’s just occurred to me that we’re only like four blocks from your house. You’re totally gonna go back there together, aren’t you? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Never answer that. Oh, boy. I’m really gonna have to get used to you and my best friend dating. Okay. Bye. I’m going now. I’m going to find the most interesting movie on earth and watch it fifty times in a row. I’m going to pin my eyelids open, Clockwork Orange style. That’s the only way to get this line of thinking permanently erased from my poor, poor brain.”

Vera gets a maniacal glint in her eyes and she opens her mouth, surely to say something I will have to scrub from my memory with steel wool and hydrogen peroxide.

“No!” I shout, shoving my fingers in my ears and leaping away from her. “I’m leaving. Keep your thoughts to yourself!”

She’s laughing and waving but I hear nothing as I jog toward my apartment. Because I’m a masochist, I pull out my phone. Nothing. No calls or texts. I pause for a second and go into the webcomic app, just to make sure—for the hundredth time—that everything has been uploaded correctly and yup. Wow. There are already a boatload of likes and comments. I quickly scroll through them and I nearly sprain my cheek muscles when I see what people have to say about the Jessie character I included, named JB in the comic.

Let’s just say she’s . . . already pretty freaking popular.