“This is Nate, that’s Joel,” she says, and I spend the next ten minutes making small talk. Which basically amounts to lying when they ask where I’m from and what brought me to town. I say something about taking a semester off from U Mass to write a novel.

“I knew you seemed wicked cool!” she shouts. She pokes Joel in the chest. “Did you hear that? She’s a famous writer!”

I was wrong. She’s drunk.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I’ve been bona fide stood up. I tell myself I shouldn’t be surprised; if Luka comes on that strong to everyone with his intense gaze and stormy eyes, he’s probably back at his place with some girl he met before I got here. Nor do I care, even if my ego is bruised. But it does throw a wrench in things . . . until my gaze drops to the wristlet dangling from Keri’s hand.

“We’re going to the Limit after this drink,” she announces over the music, looping her arm through mine. “You should come with us.”

“I would,” I half-yell into her hair, “but my friend was going to meet me here, and I don’t have my phone.”

Keri hands her beer to Nate, unzips the wristlet, and presents her phone with a flourish. I flash her a grin and signal that I’ll be back.

I glance toward the door, but I’m no longer in the mood to run into Luka if he shows. Instead, I weave my way toward the back, where I assume I’ll find a bathroom. I find the line first—leading midway down a short hallway toward the kitchen. I slide past the line and the men’s room just beyond it, stop outside the kitchen door, and peer through the window. A man in his forties is delivering plates to the pass-through in the bar as a cook mans the grill. There, to the right, is the side door.

I pocket the phone and then lunge into the kitchen, hand over my mouth.

“Hey!” the older man says, pointing. “Get outta here!”

“Sorry,” I say. “I feel really sick.” My fourth lie in the space of thirty minutes. I am so going to hell at this rate. The man yells at me again, and I shove through the door as though I might spew any instant. Never mind that I’ve still got a beer in my hand, sloshing over my fingers.

Even with the waft of stale cigarette smoke clinging to the bricks outside the kitchen, the air feels crisp and clean. I kneel behind some trash bins, wait to see if the man comes after me. He doesn’t. Apparently I’m not the first person to drunkenly wander through the kitchen.