“Oh yes.” Adam’s eyes go dramatically big. “Of course, the ever-important nutrient that is chocolate cake. How could human beings have evolved this far without it?”

“So you made chocolate, then?” I wiggle my eyebrows and he laughs, biting his bottom lip in an attempt to keep the higher ground. My heart squeezes and I twist my hands together under the table so I don’t reach out and touch him.

“Fine,” he says loftily, “you win. It’s chocolate on chocolate. With raspberries.”

“Oh man, I could have guessed that.” I lean back in my chair and cross my arms, feeling restless, stuck in this stiff chair, forced to look at Adam’s smiling face with an entire table between us.

“Oh really?” He leans back also—a challenge—and the sparks turn into butterflies. I’m standing in the doorway of the plane again.

“When Becca M. brought in those fancy-ass cupcakes for her birthday you got a raspberry chocolate one and you were happier than I’d ever felt from—” Adam’s smile deflates slightly and I tense, sucking the rest of my sentence down and rerouting. “I mean, you seemed to really like it. I should have guessed it was your favorite.”

Adam’s not buying it. I’m being reckless and either Adam is going to figure it out (how could he?) or decide I’m way too weird to keep hanging out with. Maybe I should just do it now—rip off the Band-Aid, tell him right here at the table. I lean forward again to say something—god knows what—just as Adam inhales, eyes narrowing, ready to interrogate me no doubt, when the lights suddenly go out.

“Happy birthday to you…” Adam’s parents re-enter the dining room singing, Mr. Hayes’s hand still on the light switch. Mrs. Hayes is carrying a fire hazard of a cake and making up the on-key half of the singing. I join in, somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Hayes’s abilities, and my heart surges at the way Adam looks at me.

The cake is as delicious as I would have expected from the boy who seems to be perfect at everything he tries. I mumble something along those lines and nearly vaporize in my seat at the pleased warmth that rushes through Adam. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes decide to have another glass of wine each, letting Adam have a few birthday sips, and between that and the sugar, the whole atmosphere loosens. We’re joking and laughing and I’m basking in the glow of the Hayes family relaxed and teasing each other when I start to feel … weird.

My head feels full of loosely packed cotton and there’s a slight buzzing in my ears. I’m weightless and sleepy. The conversation around me moves in and out of my understanding and I’m seeing everything through a slight golden haze.

Oh god, I’m getting drunk.