As they settled around the table, Julia remembered to introduce herself as Meg, and her friends followed suit.

Kat’s greeting as Bridget was wan, and Julia hoped her friend cheered up soon. She hated seeing her upset and hoped Kat’s mood wasn’t a sign she’d already gotten emotionally invested in Zach. This was exactly the kind of thing Julia had been worried about.

Like you’re one to talk, Miss Make Out on a Log. That was different. It was just a kiss. One epic kiss in the rain.

And a dozen more imagined in the shower. Julia grimaced. She couldn’t escape her own BS detector.

One of the flaws in her plan to “just have fun” was that she tended to get too serious too fast. Physical intimacy always seemed to carry more weight for her than the person she was intimate with, ever since her first real kiss.

In high school, Julia had been thrilled when she’d been asked out on her first official date. Ben. That had been his name. The evening had started out with the typical dinner and a movie. But then she and Ben had taken a walk in the park after. She could still remember how the gravel trail glowed in the moonlight, the night sounds of insects humming softly in the background as her date had pulled her close in the shadow of a giant oak and kissed her. A kiss kiss, with tongue.

At the time, Julia could have died from the romance of it all. She’d been so wrapped up in that kiss and the feelings it inspired in her that she’d assumed the intimate moment was the start of something serious. She was so sure of it, in fact, that Ben’s reaction the next day had caught her completely off guard. Instead of asking her to be his girlfriend, or even asking her on another date, he’d given her the cold shoulder, as if what they’d shared had been no big deal.

Like the awkward encounter at the junior high dance, her heart still bore scar tissue from that experience. It had been a painful lesson … one she apparently had yet to learn. In retrospect, she thought cynically, considering her first kiss in the forest and her make-out session in the woods today, maybe her problem was that she had a tree fetish.

Pasting on a smile, Julia turned her attention to the couple, who had introduced themselves as Harry and Sally. “You must have gotten a kick out of the dessert last night, huh?” she asked.

“It was perfect,” the woman gushed.

“She kept shouting, ‘It’s my pie! They’re serving my pie!’” Harry raised his voice, mimicking his wife, before turning to smile at her indulgently. “I think she scared a few of the people at our table.”

“I do have a tendency to get carried away.”