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Erica shook her head.

“No, she’s a lot more than that. You’ve never really gotten to talk to her, you’ll like her, I swear. But we’ll talk about that later. Iwon the bet! Tell me everything. But wait, why does that explain why you were up so early? Shouldn’t you still be in bed with your new conquest?”

Taylor sighed.

“I wish I was still in bed with my new conquest, but she had to go to work, unfortunately, and so she very nicely kicked me out of her apartment early this morning, and I thought, ‘Who better to enjoy a surprise early Saturday morning with than my best friend Erica?’ ”

“Who is this mystery woman?” Erica asked. “Where did you meet her? How did this happen? Has she professed her love for you yet? Tell me everything.”

“I will answer those questions in reverse order. No, she has not, as a matter of fact she said this morning that she knows I’m not ready for a relationship and that she isn’t, either. I met her a while ago, but for real earlier this summer. And the mystery woman is…Avery.”

Erica’s reaction could not have been better. Her eyes got huge, her mouth dropped open, and she clapped her hands.

“Don’t yell,” Taylor said before Erica could say anything.

Erica shut her mouth and nodded repeatedly for a few seconds, her eyes still wide.

“AVERY?!” she finally scream-whispered. “The hot girl you’ve been teaching how to hit on women all summer?”

Taylor couldn’t stop giggling.

“Yes, that Avery,” she said. “I only know one.”

“You finally gave in and hit on her? Or did you teach her so well that the student became the master?”

“It was a combination of the two, actually,” Taylor said, still giggling.

Erica dropped her hands to the table and leaned back in her chair.

“Okay, I’m going to stop asking questions if you’re just going to answer them in that cryptic way that makes me have more questions. I need you to start from the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

Taylor grinned.

“I made a…maybe slight tactical error—or an excellent choice, depending on your perspective—with my selection of a flirting lesson for last night. I told her that it was time for a midterm, and she had to flirt with me.”

Erica cackled until the server brought over their food. Taylor thanked him and glared at Erica.

“What is so funny?” she asked once he’d walked away.

Erica picked up her fork and knife.

“You are. Your test for a woman you’ve wanted to fuck all summer—and don’t tell me you haven’t—was that she had to flirt with you? They should have named you Taylor ‘Playing with Fire’ Cameron.” She paused, a neat triangle of pancake halfway to her mouth. “Someone who didn’t know you as well as I do would think you’d done that on purpose, that you’d set a trap all ready for her to walk right into. But you’re neither that crafty nor manipulative; you wouldn’t do something like that on purpose.”

“Thank you, I think?” Taylor said. She looked down at her breakfast. The potatoes at this place were always the precise amount of crispy she wanted them to be. It made her happy every time.

“You’re welcome,” Erica said, after she finished chewing her bite of pancake. “The incredible thing about you is that I’m sure you did this genuinely, you thought it would be a good little test for Avery, and you’d tell her at the end that she did a great job andgive her a few pointers, and she’d get a great ego boost out of it and that would be that. Right?”

Taylor frowned at her.

“I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds like there was something wrong with it. Obviously there was, but I didn’t plan for it to go like that.”

Erica patted her on the hand in that slightly condescending way that she did.

“No, no, I know you didn’t, that’s the whole point. You didn’t plan for it to go like that, but literally anyone who has ever met you would know that’s exactly how it would go, that is, if this Avery had any game in the slightest, which I guess she did.”

Taylor thought back to the night before and grinned.

“She absolutely did, which I didn’t expect.”