“Who isusthree?” I growled at her.
Her smile was all teeth now. “You and me and Maven.”
This was news. “You, me, and Maven?”
“Yeah.”
“Does Maven know you committed her to doing something?”
“Not quite yet,” she said brightly. “I’m gonna let you tell her. She likes you better.”
“Because you never check first.”
“Yes, but only because great ideas sometimes happen on the spur of the moment.”
She was right. Her ideas either for choreography or what we should commit our downtime to were normally spot on.
“There are so many reasons for you to stay here this year.”
Stay in Chicago? Why on earth would I want to do that? I loved to travel and see the world and meet fans and dance with my peers.
And what did she mean bymanyreasons? I could only think of one.
Luna was saying, “Not to mention, Chicago is lovely in the summer.”
“That’s a whopper of a lie.”
“Fine. You’re right, but come on, don’t you miss Eli when you travel?”
“What does he have to do with anything?”
Her brows furrowed. “Well, if I had a hot boyfriend I left alone every year, I’d miss him when I was gone.”
“Eli is not my boyfriend,” I said automatically, even though, now, technically, he was. We were exclusively dating, as we’d decided last night, as he’d reminded me this morning in a lovely note that he drew a heart on and signed with a bigE.
“He’s not?”
Fuck. “I mean, he is, but it’s a very recent development.”
“I’m confused.”
She wasn’t the only one. “Eli wasn’t my boyfriend until last night, but now he is. We’re going to try dating.”
“What do you mean you’regoing to trydating? You’ve been dating since I’ve known you.”
“No,” I told her.
“Yes,” she countered.
“We met at your party,” I informed her.
“What party?”
“The one you had three years ago,” I said, hoping to jog her memory. “I’d only been in Chicago, like, two months at that point.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no? You can’t just say no,” I declared irritably.