I swallow, staring into her dark eyes, the color of angry clouds and midnight skies, and I find myself threateningly close to liking them a little too much. I shake myself out of it and clear my throat, averting my gaze to the cup of noodles. “So, why seven minutes?”

“Because ramen is best al dente,” she notes, still giving me the same look that makes my skin hot and cold at the same time, “and seven minutes is the perfect amount of time. What would you do in seven minutes?”

“In heaven, or here?”

She grins. “Here.”

Oh—oh I am in trouble.

Because I think I have a crush on this girl with curly dark hair and ink smudges on her brown fingers and trouble tucked into her maroon-colored lips.

Her cell phone beeps. The seven minutes are up. She takes off the lids and stirs the noodles with her chopsticks, and I do the same.

“Bon appétit,” she says.

Imogen

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named ended this way:

He didn’t call, he didn’t text, he didn’t even say, “Sorry, babe! I lost my keycard and got stuck in an elevator and I had to fight off some Hydra agents with nothing but a shield and my superior good looks!” Although we both know I wouldn’t have believed him. The point is, Jasper didn’t even make the effort to do any of those things. He just didn’t show. He ghosted me hard—and I don’t think he even felt bad doing it.

I hate it.

I think what I hate more, though, is that I’m lying here on the soft carpeted floor of Jessica Stone’s hotel suite, looking at the clock on the nightstand as it turns ten o’clock.

Screw it, I think as I push myself up and onto my feet. I’m not going to stay in here.

I want to say I don’t feel super incredibly foolish that Vance hasn’t called but…I do. Of course he wouldn’t call. He has better things to do, with parties to go to and hot people to meet, and I was that lousy girl who fell for his I’ll call you later?

Ugh.

I’m so freaking mad at myself I could cry. Because a part of me knows that I’m here in this suite because Jess told me I couldn’t be anywhere else, and the only other place I could be, as myself, is with my moms down the hall as they do their nightly unwind with wine and Buffy, or with my brother down at the Stellar Party…