“Yeah, sorry about that. You sure came up swinging.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about that, too.”

“Not at all. That was on Reyes, love. Who will be here in a few minutes.”

“What is that woman doing?”

I’d paused the video. “Oh, you won’t believe this crap.”

I replayed it, to his utter mortification. “I’ve been alive for centuries, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Thank God that’s unusual. I was worried.”

Reyes showed up and – instead of apologizing to our guest, the one he’d tried to beat senseless that morning – went straight to his apartment for a shower. Osh was cool with that. He sat and watched a game with Ubie and Swopes as Cookie cleared a space in my kitchen for the food when it arrived. Gawd, she was handy. I needed like three of her.

Remembering she needed actual utensils, she ran back to her place to grab some. No idea why plastic forks wouldn’t do. Much less work involved later.

“I have a joke for you,” Amber said as she sashayed into the room, her long dark hair hanging in tangles down her back.

“Okay,” I said, giving her my full attention.

She stood beside me, drinking soda from a can. “You know how you have a bun in the oven?”

I stifled a laugh. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Okay, and you know how Reyes calls you Dutch?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering where she was going with this.

“Well, you’re like a Dutch oven. Get it?” She giggled.

“I get it,” I said, giggling, too.

“You’re still coming to the carnival, right?”

“Abso-freaking-lutely.”

She deflated. “You don’t know anything about it, do you?”

“Sure I do.” I seemed to recall something about a carnival. Cookie may have mentioned it. Or it may have been in that 747 I’d crashed into the toilet. Memo or no memo, I was not fishing that out. “I just forgot when it is, exactly.”

“Awesome. It’s tomorrow night.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

She giggled again. “You’re such a bad liar.”

Oh, my god. Clearly, I needed lessons.

“Let’s go into my room,” I said. “I need to change.”

She shrugged and grinned as her phone dinged with a text.

“Quentin?” I asked, leading her that way.

After a quick glance at Osh, who nodded a very cool acknowledgment, she said, “Yeah. He got in trouble today in shop.”

“Uh-oh. What’d he do?”

“He made a wooden heart for me, but his teacher said it didn’t look like a heart. I have no idea what else it would look like, but he got detention for the rest of the week.”

“Hmmm, I’ll have to call Santa Fe in the morning, see what’s going on.”

“Okay.”

“But things are good with him?” I asked. She seemed quite taken with Osh. Then again, so was I. What teenaged girl wouldn’t be?

She sat on my bed, her expression morphing into dreamy. “Things are wonderful.”

“I’m glad.” I chose a white sweater, then put it back. White and Italian didn’t always mix. Going for a soft black sweater, I took off the vest I was wearing and tossed it on a chair in the corner, then unbuttoned my blouse. “Don’t look. You’ll be scarred for life.”

“Okay,” she said with a giggle. “I have a question for you, though.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you ever, you know, experiment with a girl?”

“I did once in high school. She was my lab partner, and we had to dissect a frog.”

“No, not that kind of experiment. The other kind.”

I was worried she meant the other kind. “Oh, okay. I did experiment once in college. It was kind of the thing to do.”

“Did you like it?”

“I certainly didn’t hate it, but I did find out I’m not g*y. Still, twenty bucks is twenty bucks.”

“Yeah. Misty Rowley says if I want to give it a try, she’s game. But I just think I like guys, you know?”

“She’s not pressuring you, is she?” I asked in alarm.

“Oh, no. She just said if I wanted to try, it was okay with her.”

“I’d go with my gut on this one, kiddo.”

“Yeah. Her family is kind of weird anyway. She said her mother has a strap-on named Event Horizon.”

I hid a burst of laughter behind a cough, then asked, “Do you know what a strap-on is?”

She gave me a look of incredulity. “Of course. I know what a bra is. You strap it on.”

“Right.” I patted her shoulder. “Well, some people name their bras. Personally, I find the practice bizarre.”

She giggled. “You name everything.”

“Not my bras. Who does that?” I asked, refraining both from explaining the error of her definition of a strap-on and the fact that I was currently wearing a bra named Penelope.

After lifting a delicate shoulder, she said, “I have another question for you. But this one is kind of hard.”

“Anything. Unless it involves math. Four out of three people are bad at math.”

She fidgeted for a moment before continuing. “No math. I was just wondering, is Reyes’s… you know, package, is that an accurate representation of what a guy has?”