I’m sitting with the finches and getting drunk. I wonder if last night Rosanna could tell I exaggerated my annoyance regarding this mystery man who sends roses and dictionaries. She’s not dumb. She knows I’m lonely and don’t get many chances, so of course I’d be excited when anyone shows interest. Recalling how she laughed when I hurled his dictionary across the room, I wonder if she secretly feels sorry for me. She knows very well what it’s like to be desired. I’m sure she can at least imagine what it would be like if it were never the case, but could she know just how undervalued it makes you feel?

  Enough of that. I should go out so I don’t spend the whole night dwelling.

  I called Darcy to see what she was doing. She was still at home. I could hear Hisato yelling in the background for me to come over. I’m going to take a bath before Rosanna and I leave.

  It’s later. It’s technically tomorrow. Maybe it would have been better had we not gone to Hisato’s.

  I guess the trouble started when Hisato interrupted the group laughter, got up from the sofa, looked at me and said, “I forgot, I have gifts for you.”

  “Here we go,” Darcy said.

  “More gifts!” Rosanna said happily as Hisato left the room. People said some other unimportant stuff and I noticed the residue on the glass coffee table.

  Hisato returned with his hands full. “Sorry, not sorry, they’re not wrapped,” he said and handed me a deck of cards, a can of three tennis balls, and a pair of blue socks with the LA Dodgers logo printed on the ankles in white.

  “Um, thanks?” I said, wondering why he was giving me such random things.

  Corinne snickered but Darcy rolled her eyes and said, “Someone discovered shoplifter porn.”

  “There’s shoplifter porn?” I asked.

  “Yes indeed! The internet has everything!” Grace squealed, delighted.

  Darcy continued, “Someone’s hoping to get caught red-handed by a muscular security guard who will make a backroom proposition not to call the cops.”

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  “Forever would be dull without fantasies,” Hisato answered and then went to his knees in front of the coffee table and emptied a small baggie of coke and began cutting lines.

  I looked again at the items he gave me and asked, “Was any of this stuff down your pants?”

  “Usually just down the front,” he answered nonchalantly and then glanced at Rosanna and said, “When I left you mentioned ‘more gifts.’ Did you all bring me something?”

  Rosanna looked at me and flushed, worried that she had spilled a secret.

  “It’s okay,” I said, resting my head on her shoulder. “You can tell them.”

  “Tell us what?” Hisato asked and then snorted a long line of coke and then offered the metal straw to Corinne, who slipped off the sofa and joined him on the carpeted floor.

  “A man sent Orly gifts,” Rosanna answered. “Roses and a dictionary.”

  “Who needs a dictionary?” Hisato asked. “He sounds broke.”

  “Says the guy who just gave me stolen tennis balls.”

  “Stealing shows I’m daring. Total green flag.”

  “He was trying to be clever,” I said, defending a guy whose name I didn’t even know.

  “And was it clever?” Corinne asked snidely and then snorted a line.

  “He flagged the word rendezvous.”

  “So he’s French?” Hisato asked mockingly.

  “Just so you know, the word appears in the English dictionary.”

  “Great, a loanword!”

  “Boring,” Corinne sighed, and then showed her fangs while rubbing the coke on her gums.

  Darcy interrupted them, turning to me and asking, “Is this the guy from the Otoboke Beaver show?”

  Corinne and Hisato looked back at her, surprised that she knew about it.

  I nodded.

  “So he wants to have a rendezvous with you? I do think that’s clever, using the dictionary since you went to that lecture,” she said, winking at me.

  “I think it’s sweet too,” Grace added.

  “Clever. Sweet. Things to settle for.” Hisato picked up the razor blade and began cutting more lines.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re a bad influence?” I asked rudely, but it just rolled off Hisato who leaned forward and said, “It’s on my resume,” before snorting another line.

  “You know, not all of us can just take our pick. Not everyone has every good looking jerk and musclehead security guard fawning all over us.”

  “Don’t say that, Orly. I remember your guy. He was cute,” Darcy said, but I still directed my ire toward Hisato. “I thought we were friends again.”

  “We are. I love you. That’s why I don’t want to see you wind up with some schmuck who thinks using loan words is clever.”

  That’s pretty much where it ended. As more drinks were poured, things got cheery again, but underneath it, I felt bitter and sorry for myself. Like I’m someone who has to settle. Am I someone who has to settle? Maybe I am in general, but I don’t think I am with this guy, whatever his name is. If I could have my pick, I might just pick him anyway. Him and his cute messy hair. Him and his fucking loan words.

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