Page 69 of Pretend You Love Me

“You’re officially overthinking,” she counters. “It’s just a thing. A friend thing. With friends. Doing friend activities.”

“That sounds like something someone would say when they’re planning a surprise,” I say.

“It sounds like something someone would say when they want you to stop asking questions so they can finish this layout,” she says, and then, without warning, “Your font choice is wrong. For the children’s section. The one you picked is too juvenile. It’s giving ‘educational television’ and not in the good way.”

“It’s literally the font from that show about the talking animals,” I tell her. “The one Milo watches. He picked it.”

“Then Milo has questionable taste,” she says. “Come look at these alternatives. I’ve made three versions and they’re all better than what you have.”

Across the room, Noah and Luca have emerged from the back, now carrying what appears to be a stack of small white boxes. They’re whispering something to each other, heads bent together, and when they notice me watching, they immediately stop and adopt expressions of such exaggerated innocence that they might as well be holding a sign that says, “DEFINITELY PLANNING SOMETHING.”

“Those look suspicious,” I call.

“They’re completely normal table decorations,” Luca says, with the emphasis of someone who is absolutely lying. “For the completely normal friend gathering that is definitely not anything else.”

“I don’t believe you,” I tell him.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “You just have to stand over there and not ask questions until we’re done. For the atmosphere.”

“For the atmosphere,” I repeat.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s very important for the… vibes.”

I’m about to press the point when I notice Milo has somehow acquired what appears to be a substantial quantity of icing. It’s in his hair, on both cheeks, across the front of his shirt, and, based on the particular gleam in his eye, also on the ceiling, though I haven’t confirmed this yet. He’s standing in the middle of the café with his arms outstretched, apparently extremely pleased with this development.

“Icing,” he announces. “Good icing.”

“How did you get icing?” I ask, already moving toward him with a napkin.

“Cupcakes,” he says, as if this explains everything.

I look at Luca, who is now arranging the small white boxes on the central table with the precision of someone handling something vital. “There are cupcakes? Why?”

“Cupcakes never need a reason,” he says, with a completely straight face. “They’re their own justification.”

“That’s not an answer,” I tell him.

“It’s the only one you’re getting,” he says pleasantly. “Now, Harper needs your opinion on her cover. Something about the model. I don’t know. Author things.”

Before I can respond, Harper is already crossing to us, laptop in hand, her expression arranged in what can only be described as manufactured interest. “I can’t decide between these two options,” she says, already angling the screen toward me. “The publisher says I need to choose by tomorrow and I’ve been staring at them so long they don’t even look like people anymore. What do you think? A or B?”

I look at the screen, which shows two nearly identical versions of what appears to be a book cover, the only difference a slight variation in the spacing of the author name. “They’re the same,” I tell her.

“They’re completely different,” she insists. “Look at the kerning. In option A, there’s literally an extra .003 millimetres between the H and the A.”

“I think you might be having a breakdown,” I tell her.

“I think you might be avoiding a very important decision about typography,” she counters. “Which is its own kind of breakdown. So, we’re even.”

Throughout all this, Maisie has remained remarkably quiet on my hip, watching the proceedings with the careful assessment she brings to situations she’s still making up her mind about. Then, without warning, she leans forward and says, very clearly: “Secret.”

I go still. “What secret?”

She looks at me with the solemnity that appears when she’s decided something is worth her full attention. “Secret,” she says. “Noah secret. Lu secret.”

I look around the room. Harper has frozen mid-explanation, laptop still extended. Liv has stopped scrolling through her tablet. Clara is very deliberately not looking in our direction. And from the back room, I can hear the particular sound of Luca hissing “she knows” followed by Noah’s immediate “she doesn’t know.”

“I definitely know now,” I call.