The swoony photos are working like a charm. The meddlers are more invested in us than ever. Jules keeps fishing for juicy details. Margo told me I’m glowing. Christopher texted me his big-brother He better take good care of you or else proclamation. And Sula and Toni keep pulling up Instagram at work and making smoochy noises.

Sighing dreamily, Sula says, “He’s a good kisser, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Faking it or not, the man can kiss.

A funny sensation fizzes beneath my skin when I remember that kiss across the chess table at Boulangerie. The way he breathed me in and groaned with pleasure. Like he really meant it. Like all of this was real.

Which, of course, it isn’t. That kiss wasn’t for kissing’s sake. It was for revenge, and yes, also possibly because kissing Jamie is never a chore. I loved kissing him while knowing his shitty ex might be watching, a prick of jealousy burrowing in her shriveled-up heart.

And yet, I didn’t just kiss him to punish his ex. I kissed Jamie because I like kissing him, because we don’t often speak the same language, but nothing gets lost in translation when we kiss. Because I can show him with my mouth and touch what I don’t always know how to say or worry I’ll mess up with words.

But those feelings are not fake-relationship territory, so back in the ominously full Jamie closet they go, slipped beneath the door.

Distracting myself, I flip open my sketchbook to the night sky I was drawing and run my finger over the design. I savor its secrets and the delight of having finally found some inspiration.

“Yes?” Sula says. “I ask about kissing and that’s all I get?”

Toni sets my phone back on the display table and pokes my waist. “Cough it up. I gave you a fifty-page report on my first kiss with Hamza.”

“Ursula, you nosy little horndog. Back up out of my business. Antoni, the kiss report was your idea. I was happy to listen, but you would have told a mailbox about your first kiss with Hamza. I’m not giving either of you a blow-by-blow of my love life with Jamie. Not even our kisses.”

Toni drops his elbows onto the desk and leans in conspiratorially. “So you are on to blowing?”

I shove him halfheartedly. “Go away.”

Sula cackles, rolling back into the office. “I just love watching her blush.”

“Especially when she’s drawing her muse,” Toni says.