Page 51 of 16 Forever

“What do you mean what do I mean? It feels like we have some kind of history. Like, when you looked at me on the first day of my reboot, and then I thought I saw you crying.”

I stare at my phone. Roberta is still three minutes away, her little car icon stopped at the traffic light on Donner Hill Road.MOVE, LITTLE CAR, MOVE!!!

“Yeah, I was crying,” I say finally. “Because I felt bad for you. But not because... any other reason.”

“You wanna know what I think?” Carter says, grinning more than ever, holding on to the side of his car to stay upright.

“Not really.”

“I think you’relying.”

I have no idea what to say, so I just shrug. “Roberta’s here in two minutes.”

“Then again, very possible I’m wrong and embarrassing myself. As you are aware, I don’t actually know anything. Unless it happened more than six years ago. Then I’msolid. Hey, is Taylor Swift still a thing?”

“Well. She’s a woman, not a thing. And yes, she’s like the most popular person on the planet. Some of her new stuff was playing at the party.”

“Ithoughtthat was her! Wow! That’s impressive. Staying famous for so long. That’s, like, a lot of famous. How do you even do that?”

“I know. I think if you work with really good producers, they help you—GAH! I don’t want to be having a conversation with you!”

“Nevertheless, you are. Hard to stop, right?” He flicks his eyebrows at me again.

“I can stop. I’m stopping right now. And Roberta’s only a minute away. So stopping is easy.”

“We have good chemistry,” Carter says, and my brain thuds onto the street with a dull squish. “Don’t you think we have good chemistry? Yet another reason why I think you’re lying to—” He interrupts his own sentence to buzz his lips some more.

“Look,” I say after I’ve had a moment to pick up my brain and reinsert it into my skull, “we don’t have chemistry. And we don’t have history. And we—”

“How about precalc? Do we have precalc?”

“No! We don’t have any of those. And we won’t! Because I’m into Chord now. I just met him, and he’s very mature, and his name is a musical term, and I like that. A lot!”

“Cord? That’s not a musical term, it’s a wire.”

“No, it has anhin it. Like when you play a—”

Roberta finally pulls up in her blue car, god bless her, and hilariously enough, it is a Honda Accord, just like Carter’s car, Toro.

“ACCORD!” Carter shouts, staring at it. “Like when you play ACCORD! That is a freaky-ass coincidence. Her car finished your sentence.” He’s not wrong. “Also freaky because it looks just like my car.” His jaw drops. “MaybeI’mRoberta! Am I Roberta? That would be a cool twist.”

“You are not Roberta.” I pull open the door to the back seat. “You need to get in and go home.”

“But we’re having so much fuuuuuuuuun.”

“Gosh, I know,” I deadpan, even as a small part of me is cringing in shame because I reallyamhaving fun.

“How will Roberta even know where to take me?”

“I already gave her your address. That’s how the app works.”

“Aha!” Carter throws a triumphant finger into the air. “You know where I live! Because of our history!”

He should not be this cogent when he’s this drunk! “Just get in the damn vehicle.” I shoo him into the car with the back of my hands because using my palms seems too intimate and therefore risky. “I have a Chord to make out with.”

“Okay, but make sure it doesn’t get tangled around your neck. That could be dangerous.”

I shut the door and walk around to the driver’s side, where I hand Carter’s key to Roberta and tell her to give it to him when he leaves the car. I’m impressed that her bob cut looks exactly like it does in her thumbnail, and I almost tell her that before realizing it’s more of an observation than a compliment. Roberta probably doesn’t need that.