Ben glances at me, picking up on the weird vibe. “Um, I like…chocolate cake?”
“Amazing,” Luca says, dry. And then he turns to Jesse, clearly keeping me for last.
As Jesse reports that his favorite is bread pudding, and Rafe that he just likes chocolate chip cookies, I renew my determination to stick to the plan I made last night. When Luca gets to me? I have to lie.
Let him think that the dream state was a figment of his imagination – I’m never going to meet him there again. The plan I came up with last night – to convince him that it was real? That was foolish – it is so, so much simpler to just…never go there again.
“And you, Ari?” Luca asks, and Jesse turns to him a bit with a frown, because in public Luca never calls me by what he thinks is my name – he always calls me Shrimp.
“W
