LUCY WAITED UNTIL PANDA FINISHED his afternoon workout before she went upstairs to find him. Bree’s story explained her reaction to meeting him, but not his to seeing her. He stood in the middle of the small, overcrowded bedroom he’d taken for himself. As he pulled his damp T-shirt over his head, the sight of that sweaty, too-ripped chest distracted her. But only momentarily. “Why were you so rude to Bree?”

He sat on the side of the bed to take off his sneakers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.” One of his sneakers hit the floor. “When I introduced Bree, you threw yourself in your car and raced off like a teenager trying to beat curfew. You didn’t even say hello.”

“I’ve got no manners.” His second sneaker landed with a thud.

“You have perfectly good manners when it suits you.”

He balled up his socks. “I have to take a shower.”

“It can wait.”

But apparently not, because he walked right past her and across the hallway to the bathroom. The lock clicked behind him.

He kept away from her for the rest of the afternoon. She repaired her black fingernail polish, dyed her bangs magenta, and reapplied her dragon tattoo. Then she went upstairs to bother Temple, which turned out to be a big mistake. A brutal workout and a stinging lecture on the stupidity of Lucy’s “Good Enough” exercise philosophy left her drenched in sweat and pissed off.

Temple refused all of Lucy’s offers to make anything but a plain green salad, and that night they ate more frozen dinners of dry turkey, mushy brown rice, and mashed parsnips. Lucy fell back on her favorite expression from when she was fourteen. “This blows.”

“So does being fat,” Temple replied self-righteously.

“You blow, too,” Lucy grumbled.

Panda lifted an eyebrow. Temple reached across the table to pat Lucy’s hand. “Somebody’s got PMS.”

Panda slammed his elbow on the table. “I swear to God, if I hear any more about PMS, cramps, or even female acne, I’m going to blow something up.”

Temple waved a breezy hand toward the door. Panda glowered. Lucy hadn’t been able to get him alone yet, and she didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the farm stand in front of Temple, so she picked another target for her bad mood. “I hate this table.”

“Tough,” Panda said.

Temple snorted. “He likes being surrounded by squalor. It reminds him of his hideous childhood.”

“How hideous?” Lucy said. “He never tells me anything.”

“My father was a drug dealer shot by a dissatisfied customer when I was two,” he said matter-of-factly. “My mother was an addict. We had rats in our apartment. That’s the part Temple likes best.”

“And he stole food so they could eat,” Temple said gleefully. “Isn’t that sad?”