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“But I have noticed a lot of affective touching,” Anara pointed out. “Your level of physical proximity reminds me a lot of bonobos.”

“Monkeys?” I asked.

“No, bon-o-bos,” she pronounced carefully. “They’re a species of great ape.”

“I get what she means,” Heidi said. “You guys hold hands, you kiss his cheek, he hugs you…”

“A lot of that is just for content,” I explained. Our social media was going really well, and our affection was very believable. The video of my cheesy face had brought a ton more attention and Callum’s agent was currently negotiating two sponsorship deals. That made me feel like squirming again, but with happiness.

“It seems like you really care about each other.” Heidi shook her head. “I don’t think it’s feigned.”

“I’m not feigning anything,” I told her. “I do care about him. That’s totally real.” He had done so much for me. He had kept a dog from attacking me, he’d come looking for me when I was hurt, and he’d let me stay with him. He’d given me food, money, and safety. Out of all that, what I valued most was his friendship—I liked Callum, himself, and not what he was doing for me.

“He cares about you, too,” Anara said. “The proximity and affectionate gestures are hard to fake.”

“He’s not fake,” I assured her. “He’s a very honest person, which is something that I admire about him.” It was one of the many things.

She opened her mouth but then glanced at Heidi. “I don’t think this is our business,” she declared.

“That’s true,” Heidi concurred. “Rainey doesn’t have to share if she doesn’t want to.” But they were both watching me and clearly, they were interested in more.

I didn’t feel any desire to talk about it, though. We had only gotten into this conversation because Anara had been discussing her birth control and whether she and Demitrious should try something new. She’d polled me and Heidi about our preferred methods and I had said that my prior boyfriend and his friends had all refused to use condoms, which Damian had referred to as cock-killers. I had let that slip and then tried to explain. “You know, because they ruined the sensation of a woman’s…”

“Vaginal orifice and vagina,” Anara had filled in. She liked to be specific and clinical. “What do you and Callum use?”

In an effort to be honest, I had said that we didn’t use anything, which had led to them asking if we were trying to get pregnant, and then I’d had to explain more.

“We live together because he’s the best guy in the world,” I told them now. “I needed a place to stay and he said that I could come with him to Michigan. I’m trying to do my part and help him as much as he helps me.” For example, I was buying a lot more of the groceries. I was refusing to take money from him for new clothes, if they weren’t going on his body (he was still really fun to shop for). “And that’s the whole story.”

“It’s enough for us,” Heidi said. “We don’t want to hear anything else.”

Now who was the liar? But she turned the conversation to the reason they’d come over today. She was having an issue with one of the women at her job and she wanted our advice about how to deal with it. Her coworker was constantly trying to undermine other people in their small department but was doing it in such a tricky way that no one was sure about how to confront her. Their boss was too passive to deal with her and the company was too small to have a separate human resources department, so Heidi wanted tips from us.

Anara did have suggestions from the animal kingdom, like how honeybees could remove a queen by roasting her to death (literally), and how vulturine guinea fowl subordinates worked as a group to undermine leadership and get what they wanted. Heidi said that she had no plans to organize a swarm to kill their mean coworker with collective body heat, but she was interested in the tactics of those birds.

“I don’t have a lot of experience with animals or offices,” I said. “In my last job, I did work with a mean girl. Two, actually.” The more I’d been thinking about Sage and how she’d treated me, the less I seemed to like her. “I just tried to keep my head down and not cause more problems for myself.”

“George says that I should quit,” she told us. “He doesn’t think he’ll be with the Woodsmen after this season anyway, maybe not even past the trade deadline.”

“The what?” I asked. They explained that trades could happen up to a certain date during the season, and players could be sent to other teams. And suddenly, I had something new to worry about: I didn’t want to lose my new friends, and I also didn’t want Callum to move away from the place that was working really well for him. He had mentioned before that any Woodsmen could lose his spot at any time, but I hadn’t understood the real ramifications of that. Like, at the drop of the hat, you were done and you were leaving.

“If you ever got traded, that would be ok because we could deal with it,” I mentioned as I spooned up our dinner that night. This condo had come with some stuff to cook with, and I had added to the collection with a new frying pan, a pasta server, and a big pot. I had most of that piled in the sink right now, since the dishwasher was broken again, and I had planned to take it all with us at the end of the season, straight back to his grandparents’ house in Indiana. But if we needed to, we could take it sooner.

“What?” Callum put down his phone. “Sorry. I just got an email from Bryan, my old neighbor. Remember him?”

I did, because I had given him a show featuring my foot in order to get the phone for us. “What does he want?” I asked.

“He says that someone broke into my house and the door is hanging off the hinges. Hell,” he sighed. “I have to take care of that.”

“I can.”

“No, you can’t go down there alone. What if there are squatters? Anyway, I don’t think you should be coming in and out of that place at night. Or in the daytime,” he added.

“You know, when I first got to Los Angeles, I lived outside because I lost everything when my bag got stolen. I had to take care of myself back then and I could do it again now.”

He rubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t like to think about you out on the street on your own. I understand why you ended up with Damian, even though he’s such an asshole.”

“What do you mean?”