“I’ll tell you who’s about to freeze up,” Jayla’s voice cuts through, sounding at times like a stuttering robot. “Ridley, when I drag him out of his cozy little mansion in Claremont and dump him into the ocean right on his prep-school ass.”

“I don’t think he actually went to prep school,” I say, not that it matters.

“Well, he—” Jayla says, and then she gets all pixelated, her voice turning into a series of weird-sounding vowels as her internet crashes. Her brother is probably live-streaming his video games again. It always messes with her Wi-Fi.

“What?” Nikki asks, leaning closer to her screen like it will help her to hear better. It won’t. I shove another peanut butter cup in my mouth as Jayla’s screen goes black and then just says CONNECTING.

“We lost her,” Nikki says, looking sad. But Jayla will log off and back on, and if we get lucky, we might get a few more minutes with her before she has to do it all over again. The coffee shop would have made this so much easier.

“She’ll be back,” I say, more for me than for her. I need Jayla to come back on. She’s my grounded friend; Nikki is the romantic. If she’s not back soon, in all likelihood Nikki will have me forgiving him and picking out wedding flowers within the next two hours. And the worst part is, I almost want to.

Not the wedding flowers, but the forgiving-him thing. I know what Jayla will say, that I always do this, that I stayed with Dakota too long and forgave way too much, that I only see the good in people and people take advantage of that. But I don’t know. Is it so bad to always look for the good?

“What are you going to do?” Nikki asks, tucking herself into the warmest-looking fleece blanket I’ve ever seen.

“I have no idea.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to text Bats and tell him I’ve had a shitty day and let him make me feel better and pretend like none of this is happening.”

“The hell you are,” Jayla says, her face popping back onto the screen. “Do not listen to Nikki’s star-crossed lovers BS. He lied to you. That’s it. Game over.”

I sigh and grab another piece of candy.

“It does seem a little like fate, though?” Nikki says, her voice lilting up at the end like a question.

“Screw that.” Jayla leans closer to the camera on her phone. “It’s not fate to manipulate somebody into caring about you so that you can spy on them. It’s creepy and abusive, and we’re going to tell the whole world what an absolute piece of trash he is and blast The Geekery all over the internet.”

“No,” I say firmly, “we’re not.”

“Why are you protecting him?”