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"Resident," she corrected. "And absolutely not."

"Wow. No loyalty anywhere."

Cam snorted into her water glass across the table. I'd gotten very good at reading that tell over the past three weeks, at the way she'd try to hide her amusement behind that controlled Captain Miserable façade, the way her eyes would lighten just slightly before she remembered she had a reputation to uphold.

Three days of "friendship."

Three days of texting too much and looking at each other too long and pretending we weren't both thinking about what it would be like to stop pretending.

Three days of torture disguised as mature emotional boundaries.

"How are those boundaries working out for you?" Mia had asked me yesterday, watching me stare at my phone for the seventeenth time in an hour.

"Great," I'd lied. "Super healthy. Very mature. I'm basically a relationship guru now. I should start a podcast."

"You're a disaster."

"I'm a disaster bisexual with excellent self-awareness. That's called growth."

But the truth was, the "friendship" was killing me slowly. Every text from Cam felt like a small electrical shock. Every time we hung out in groups, I found myself hyperaware of exactly where she was in the room, who she was talking to, whether she was looking at me when she thought I wasn't paying attention.

Spoiler: She was. Often.

And I was looking back. Also often. Ugh.

"Earth to Harper," Destiny called from down the table. "You still with us?"

"Spiritually? Debatable. Physically? Unfortunately, while also possibly debatable, yes."

"We were asking if you're coming to the game on Friday."

"Oh, I wouldn't miss it," I said, injecting maximum enthusiasm into my voice. "Watching people throw balls into hoops is my passion. My calling. My reason for existing."

"You still don't know that much about basketball, do you?" Alex asked, grinning.

"I know there's a ball. And a hoop. And people get very emotionally invested in whether the ball goes in the hoop. What else is there?"

“She knows more than she’s letting on,” Cam said, amusement colored in her tone. She would know. She’d been sending me basketball articles and videos like clockwork every night at eleven PM. More and more started to click for me. And it didn’t hurt that I could text my own personal and enthusiastic human basketball encyclopedia every time something didn’t make enough sense.

"Details." I waved my hand dismissively. "I'm there for the vibes. The atmosphere. The overpriced nachos."

"The nachos are definitely overpriced," Morgan agreed.

"See? Morgan gets it. We're nacho solidarity sisters now."

After dinner, we sang Happy Birthday to Isla, who looked genuinely moved despite being surrounded by people she saw constantly. She blew out the candles on an enormous cake Laine had apparently commissioned from some fancy bakery that probably required a blood sacrifice and your firstborn child as payment, and we all pretended not to notice when she got a little teary-eyed.

Kindra immediately started taking pictures of the cake.

"Is that going on your stream?" I asked.

"No. My kid wanted pictures."

"Tell Kairi I personally protected it from everyone until the candles were blown out."

"You asked if you could have a piece before we sang."

"She doesn't need to know that."