For now, I was content to shift into neutral and coast through this as casually and shallowly as possible. It was flattering, Anelace had a nice build, with a tight-fitting suit to showcase it, he was a hero, and as awful as he was with timing he had some decency to him. So long as I didn’t dwell, I could just enjoy the vague idea, try to adj—

“Wait, what’s this?” Chicken Little asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Secret meanings?”

“He wants to take Antares out on a date,” Tattletale said, taking me from the shallow-casual dip into the pool of romantic notions and pushing my head beneath the waters. “It’s like saying ‘do you want to come in for coffee’? It’s not about the coffee.”

“This is, for the record, very awkward,” I said.

“Blame the guy who propositioned you with a bunch of colleagues, an old nemeses, and a kid hanging around.”

“No, no,” I said. “I’m happy blaming you, Tattletale.”

“Of course you are.”

“And it can mean just meeting to hang out and catch up.”

“That’s true, and that fact is the only reason I didn’t drag my fingernails down my cheeks from the cringeyness of it,” Tattletale said. “But I know and you know what he wants.”

I floundered mentally while Tattletale pushed my metaphorical self into the deepest corner of the pool. At least she hadn’t called me Glory Hole.

“Tattletale knows stuff,” Chicken Little said.

“Unfortunately,” Tattletale said. “Not a mental picture I wanted.”

“Unfortunately. Agreed, yeah,” I echoed Tattletale. “Can we change the subject?”

My phone booped. A message from Anelace. The same stylized image that was on the wall of Foresight was his avatar in phonespace. He had the address.

“Twenty-second and Blockgreen. It’s not far.”

“Heard,” Snuff said. “Twenty-second and Blockgreen.”

“Um,” Chicken Little said. “I know we changed the subject…”

He trailed off, not continuing.

“It’s fine,” I said, regretting it as I said it.

“You can do better,” he said. “Anelace said something like how you can’t be cool if you’re trying to be cool and that seems like a douchey thing to say.”

Snuff sniggered in the front seat.

“How do you be cool if you don’t start out cool? It’s like it’s the privilege of the cool-by-default and nobody else is allowed to try for coolness.”

“I think you’re good, Chicken,” I said. “The Heartbroken and Lookout think you’re cool.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk about Lookout, because I’m a little unsure about some stuff.”

“We can do that.”

“But before that, I wanted to say that Anelace guy talks about being cool but I was sitting there thinking his costume and his team’s costumes are trying way too hard to be edgy.”

“Amen,” Snuff muttered.