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“Pour one out for Heath Ledger,” I say, dumping the rest of my milk shake from the tall metal cup into the fancy glass cup.

“Well, I got the idea from that. The whole bleacher scene. ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.’ She was at soccer practice, and I called in a favor from my friend in jazz band, had them play the song. I didn’t sing because that would have been mortifying for all of us, but I held up a big sign....” He stops, taking in my side-eye. “I guess it was a little ridiculous, yeah, but I thought... girls liked that sort of thing. But Natalia said I wasn’t being authentic.”

“News flash,” I say, waggling my fingers. “Girls aren’t all the same. I mean, I would have loved to see your Heath Ledger cosplay. Actually, can I get a performance right now? I’ll sing backup.” His eyes go wide. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! But I guess I get why someone would hate all that attention... maybe you didn’t really get to know her and what she wanted.”

I worry I’m going too far, that he’s going to get defensive and peace out on this night, maybe even this whole friendship, but instead he nods.

“Yeah, you’re right. I know you’re right. And that’s why I’m single.” He leans back in the squishy booth. “And I’ll just go ahead and make myself look even more pathetic by admitting that Natalia was my first girlfriend. I didn’t grow into these ears”—he pushes them forward even more—“until sophomore year. And when I wasn’t doing schoolwork or volunteering, mysocial life was pretty much just playing Xbox and watchingLaw & Orderreruns with Michael. So when I finally figured it all out with Natalia, I guess... I didn’t want to lose her.”

“And then you lost her anyway. How tragic.” I smirk. “And are you sure you grew into those Obama ears?”

He snorts out a laugh and shakes his head at me. “Okay, so now that I’ve thoroughly embarrassed myself, it’s your turn to share, right? I feel like there’s some good stories in your romantic past.”

I shrug. “Nah, I’m good.”

“You can’t let me just confess all of my terrible boyfriend flaws and then give me nothing.”

“I can’t?”

He looks me right in the eye, a challenge there. I stare right back at him, and we stay like that, not blinking for who knows how long. But then his eyes start to cross, and he sticks his tongue out, making the most ridiculous face ever. And I start laughing, losing the staring contest. I put my hands up in defeat.

“Okay, fine. Fine! But let me skip over my long and cringe-y history of fuckboys and declarations of ‘I don’t date Black girls.’ Or worse, ‘I only date Black girls.’”

He raises his eyebrows. “Yikes.”

“Yeah. So, we can just begin and end with the most recent asshole, Jay. He sums up my shitty romantic luck pretty well.”

I tell him all about the months I wasted with Jay, keeping things on the down low so he wouldn’t get in trouble with his parents. And then all about the prom night from hell, when Ithought we would be meeting up and then seeing him with the girl his parents apparently had no problem with.

“Wow, what a dick,” Alex says.

“Yeah, and that’s an understatement.”

“You don’t deserve that, Lenore.” He shakes his head. “What the fuck.” He crosses his arms, and his face scrunches up in anger. And I feel... touched? It’s only been a few days, but I can tell that he genuinely cares about me already. It’s not a front.

“Has he tried to contact you at all? Since then?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” I try to say it all casually, like it hasn’t even occurred to me, but of course it has. “My phone doesn’t work, and I haven’t checked my email. But it’s whatever. I don’t care about him.”

His warm brown eyes lock with mine, but it’s different from the silly staring contest before. I feel like I’ve suddenly become transparent, and he can see all of my mushy, gooey insides. All of the embarrassing shit I keep in lockdown from everyone else.

“It’s okay to care,” he says finally. “It’s okay to not be okay about it.”

I bite my lip and look down. Why does that all feel totally possible when he says it? I spend so much of my life trying to be the Lenore people expect. Letting things rolls off me, too confident and self-assured to care. But that’s not all of me. That’s just the side of me that’s easy to be around. What would happen if I showed the other side, the side that’s pissed off and sad and hurt and not so easy sometimes? What would happen if I showed that side to Alex?

When I get the courage to look at him again, he’s sticking a candle in the top of my milk shake and lighting it with a Zippo that appeared out of nowhere. The candle is wobbly, because duh, it’s in a milk shake, and he has to flick the lighter over and over before it finally catches.

“Boy, what are you doing? You’re gonna burn this place down!”

He nods. “You’re right. Let me call the waitress over here to bring a cake instead. Do you think they know the Stevie Wonder version of ‘Happy Birthday’?” He holds up his hand. “Ma’am!”

“No. No! You better be quiet.” I grab his hand to pull it down, and he laces his fingers with mine, squeezing once before letting go.

I can feel my cheeks, my neck, my whole body burning, and I blow out the candle, hoping that will extinguish whatever’s going on inside of me.

My eyes are heavy as we stumble back to the upper deck, and when we make our way outside, I see that it’s much later than I thought. How many hours have we spent together tonight? It’s passed in a blur. The air is warm, and it feels like we’re wrapped in the blanket of the starry sky and the dark ocean. It’s hard to see where one begins and the other ends.

Alex sits on a deck chair, and pats the one next to him. So I sit down too, tucking my weirdly colored Pikachu behind my head like a pillow. I can see that Alex is sleepy like I am, hiseyes heavy-lidded. And it makes sense after the full day we had in Athens, and this night of video games and food and whatever strange feelings are brewing between us.