Chapter 3

The rules are simple: no messy feelings, no unnecessary expectations, and no bullshit. It's a pretty vague set of rules, but easily explainable. First, this is purely a friends-with-benefits relationship—and yes, we can call it a relationship because that's what it is. It's a symbiotic relationship: I let Sora use my vagina, he lets me use his penis, we play with each other's bodies, everyone is happy. Second, we expect nothing more than sex from each other, and even then, both parties have the right to refuse or terminate the relationship at any time.

We also do not expect nor are we entitled to an explanation if things end. We do not expect repayment for actions done voluntarily (so, for example, when Sora insists that I stay for breakfast the next morning, he shouldn't expect me to cook him breakfast or wash the dishes or give him a blowjob as a reward). Reasonably, we expect sexual pleasure from each other—in the "we're having sex with each other for fun" context—since that's the entire reason we're doing this.

Finally, no bullshit, which took a little longer to iron out. Basically, we follow the other rules and don't try to get around it. We don't fall for each other. We are honest with our thoughts and feelings regarding the sustainability of this relationship. We hold our end of the bargain. We don't overstep our boundaries, both inside and outside the arrangement.

See? Nice and simple.

I wake up fully clothed in Sora's bed the following morning. It's not as disappointing or as disorienting as last time because I actually chose to stay, which might have been a mistake, but at least I didn't go to sleep naked and at least I don't have to jog home. After making sure I didn't drool on his pillow (not that I could do anything to reverse it if I had, but it's nice to make sure I didn't do anything embarrassing while sleeping over), I roll out of bed and check the time, wondering why I'm awake before 11 on a Saturday. It's not like I have cartoons to watch, so really the best course of action is to crawl right back into bed and sleep until I feel compelled to do something productive.

I love weekends in college. Sometimes doing "something productive" means changing out of your PJs. To an adult, that's a necessary task. To college students, it's like an action deserving of praise—like wow, you got up today and changed into something decent and you didn't even have to. Take a bow while we slow clap for you.

Sora works loudly in the kitchen. He either knows I'm awake, doesn't give a shit whether I'm awake or not, wants to wake me up, or blissfully unaware that it sounded like he threw a pan into the sink from the other side of the room.

He's facing the stove. His Disney-themed pajama pants rest low his hips, the waistband of his boxer briefs barely visible. He still looks fantastic. Is there anything he can't pull off? I mean, goddamn. I had sex with that thing last night.

My backpack is still on the couch. I take out my wallet and slip some money into the hoodie I borrowed yesterday. The money's for the date that he paid for. I thought about leaving it on his desk with a note that says "thanks for the sex" but joke or not, he'd definitely try giving it back. So now the next time he wears his hoodie, he's going to think he's the luckiest dude in the world because finding money in a jacket is like waking up on Christmas morning.

"Morning," I mumble.

"Good morning! You look even better with sex hair. This should be a thing," Sora says with a smirk. He turns back to the stove. He seems a little… manic. He reminds me of a contestant on those cooking shows and how they handle like three or four pans at once, trying to make a dish worthy of a five-star restaurant with shitty ingredients and twenty minutes. Whether or not Sora actually knows what he's doing remains to be seen, but from here it looks like he's just frantically trying to not burn the house down. I can't really tell what he's cooking because the entire place smells strongly of coffee, but I know there's no bacon involved. I think I would have smelled that.

"Why are we up so early on a Saturday?" I ask, taking a seat at a small square table. There were only two chairs. I don't think Sora had guests over often, and if he did, then it was probably one guest at a time.

"9:30 isn't that early," Sora said. It sounded more defensive than an argument of opposition. "And I'm meeting a friend in half an hour. We work out together. This doesn't happen by accident." Sora breaks from his chaotic routine and points to himself, waving his finger around in a lazy circle.

"Oh. Well I appreciate all your hard work," I tell him.

"Oh, it's worth it," he says, winking.

"Lots of health benefits, right?"

"So many health benefits."

"What sorts?"

"I feel great physically. People are nicer when you look nice too, so it's great for your mental health and self-esteem."

He's not wrong, but he's bullshitting. "Mm-hmm."

"And best of all, I get to have sex with girls like you," he says. I was waiting for him to bring up the sex.

"Girls like me?"

"The one-in-a-billion kind."

I roll my eyes. "Sora, we've already had sex and agreed to have more in the future. You don't have to talk me up anymore."

Sora turns off the stove. "Yeah, but would you have slept with me if I didn't look like this?"

"I came back because you're good at it."

"How could you have known that without trying it though? Looking good gets my foot in the door. We eat with our eyes first, don't we?" Sora sweeps by the table and places a plate in front of me.

Holy shit.

Carefully arranged on the plate are two slices of French toast sprinkled with cinnamon, an arrangement of strawberry, banana, and melon slices, and scrambled eggs garnished with… "What's this green stuff?"

"Chives," Sora says, placing butter and syrup on the table. His plate looks like mine except not as nice, like he didn't take the time to plate everything neatly.

"Does it taste as good as it looks?" I ask.

Sora eats some of his scrambled eggs and frowns. "I didn't season them enough." He gets up again and brings back salt and pepper shakers. "You might need these."

I start with the eggs. They're delicious. "Holy shit, where did you learn to cook like this?" I ask. I mean, they're eggs, but you know there's a difference between real eggs and powdered ones, for example, and these taste legit. I sample everything on the plate. Fruit is fruit, but the French toast is perfect and fluffy and all kinds of incredible.

"Do you like it?"

"I love it."

"My mom's a chef," he says.

"Was that answer going to change based on whether or not I said I liked it?"

"Yup. I would've told you I taught myself instead of shame my mom's cooking," he says with a smile.

"She taught you?"

"For the most part. The summer before I came here—to this university—my mom made me cook every meal every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for like… two and a half, three months? She said I had to learn how to really cook." He pauses to eat more. "It was really shitty at first, but now I've got maybe three or four go-to recipes for every meal that I'm decent at."

"This is one of them?" I ask.

"Yup. She even taught me how to plate everything, which comes in handy when I want to impress someone."

Add this to the list of things that make Sora attractive. How the hell was this guy not in a relationship? He didn't seem to have commitment issues. If anything, it seemed like he preferred long-term relationships. "Hey, what are you bad at?" I ask.

"What?" he asked.

"You're a little too perfect and it's freaking me out," I say. Damn. This is the best French toast I've ever had—not that I've had a lot of French toast in the past or like, ever, but still.

"Are you falling for me already, Kairi?"

"So you're full of yourself. What else?"

"Kairi, I cook a lot and I've put in the time, so it's not like I'm magically good at everything."

"I believe you, so surely there are things you're terrible at."

Sora shrugs. "Hmm. I speak one language. I can't sing—in fact, I don't really have a musical bone in my body. Art in general is wasted on me," he lists them, his eyes cast upward in thought. "I always envied people who could play an instrument. Also my grades are pretty bad."

"Oh good. Now you're average again."

He laughs. "I don't want you forming any unrealistic expectations of me."

"Hey, we agreed that wouldn't happen," I say. "What else?"

"I tend to talk a lot when someone asks me about myself when I should really be asking other people what they're like," Sora says.

"I actually prefer it like that. The less people know about me, the better," I say. "So how shitty are your grades exactly?"

"I'll be rocking a solid B-average throughout college at best, worse if I get distracted."

"What, by like a girlfriend or something?"

"Or college life in general."

"That's not incredibly shitty."

"It's not competitive either," Sora says with a shrug. "One of my teachers in high school told me I'd be fine anyway. Said something about how in today's world, it's all about who you know and networking with the right people."

"I agree. You seem like you're easy to get along with," I say. "Just sleep with everyone you meet and you'll be good to go."

Sora laughs. "That's one way to impress people, though somewhat unethical."

Sora kicked me out after breakfast.

No, he didn't really, but he should have. He was too considerate, and that's why he was going to be late meeting his friend.

"If you slack off and become ugly, the deal's off!" I said sweetly as I left.

"I'm going to pretend that wasn't extremely disheartening and tell you thanks for the motivation!" he called after me. I had to look him in the eye to make sure he was joking. I think he was.

Oh well.

I shouldn't have slept over anyway. It's too intimate and leaves a lot of time for post-sex bonding. I guess we're more resistant since we're aware, but generally speaking, it's tough to separate feelings from sex. I mean, it's not a problem if it's a one-time thing, but developing feelings is a dangerous and somewhat likely possibility when you repeatedly engage in something as intimate as sex. This is the first and last time I sleep over, I tell myself, even though it's technically the second in as many days. The first time didn't count since that was a one-night stand. I technically left in the morning, and I wouldn't have slept over anyway if I hadn't been exhausted.

I drive home and decide that I need to shower. Naminé is in her room when I enter, which I'm grateful for since I don't feel like answering questions right away and I think I smell bad, or not really bad, but just different. Sometimes I feel like people can smell that I've just had sex. There's a little axiom about how if you can smell yourself, others can smell you too. It's a pretty big deal if you can smell yourself too since you smell yourself all the time, even if we think ourselves odorless. But I know I smell because I'm followed by Sora's scent. I'm half-convinced my vagina also smells like rubber. I swear I can still smell it.

Maybe I'll ask Sora to get tested so we can just ditch the condoms. I'm on the pill, which is enough to keep babies from growing inside me and stealing my life force, but it's best to make sure that neither of us picked up any weird diseases before meeting each other.

When I get out of the shower, Naminé is knocking on my bedroom door.

"Lunch later?" she asks.

"Why not?" I shoot back.

Saturday with Naminé surprisingly belonged to me. I think she and Roxas designated Saturday afternoons as me-time or something. They spend a lot of time together during the week, and on Sundays they're out (or in Roxas's apartment) the entire day. I think Naminé feels guilty for taking up my Saturday afternoons—afternoons I'd no doubt spend doing basic ass shit—because once a month, she always offers to treat me to lunch at my choice. She says it's because she never likes going alone, but I'm not sure if that's the truth. She's the kind of person who'd claim she was okay or had no problem doing favors if it made others feel less guilty.

No joke. She's the type of person who'd be bleeding out in the back seat and say, "Of course we can stop for milkshakes on the way to the hospital. A little knife wound never killed anybody!" if anyone mentioned they were craving frozen treats. She's the type of girl who'd apologize to an egg after dropping it and hold a funeral for it where she'd read her handwritten thirteen-page eulogy lamenting the life it never lived.

Okay, I'm getting carried away.

After I put some clothes on, I invite myself into Naminé's obscenely clean room. Naminé sits at her desk, reading what looks like a huge block of text on her laptop.

"Lots of homework this weekend?" I ask, throwing myself across her bed. It occurs to me that there's a fairly large chance that sex happened on this bed fewer than twelve hours ago and I sit up. Is that unusual? Sometimes that's the first thought I have when I toss myself on someone else's bed. Like, I wonder if the other students living in the dorms wonder if their mattress, which is provided to them, has been broken in for them by lord knows how many people that have copulated on those uncomfortable cushions.

"Nothing more than the usual," she says without looking away from the screen.

I don't even know if Naminé has sex. I just assume she has since she's been in a long term relationship. The dirtiest thing I've seen them do is canoodle on the couch—some really sick shit, I know—and that was only because I surprised them by walking in. Naminé acted like she killed my dog (I do not have a dog) and apologized profusely at a later time even when I told her there was nothing to apologize for. She's very private with her sex life.

I guess that's just another similarity that we share.

I should smell the sheets.

Ew no! There is no winning outcome from smelling the sheets. I could just as easily ask Naminé if she and Roxas have touched all the bases. That's not likely to yield an answer, sure, but at least it's not creepy. Plus it'd be weird if Naminé sees me inhaling her sheets. My options out of that one are "I like the smell of you" and "I was wondering if your sheets smelled like sex." Both are kind of creepy.

"Did Roxas stay over last night?" I ask.

Naminé found this question worthy of eye contact. "Yup. And I don't recall you coming in at all last night."

"Oh, I did. Like, really late," I say. "Then I left really early this morning to meet a friend for breakfast."

"Sora?" She smiles. "The look on your face says yes."

Damn it, face. I'm trying to lie here. "Er, yeah. I decided to give him another chance."

"And you gave him that chance at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning after a night of little sleep," Naminé said with a sigh. "You must really want him to pass whatever test you've laid out for him."

"Right. This morning's test was 'can he be entertaining enough to keep me awake through breakfast without annoying me while I'm tired,' and I'm proud to report that he passed."

"And he must really like you if he's trying to reach your impossibly high standards," Naminé added.

"You're ready to ring the wedding bells, aren't you?"

"I'm claiming maid of honor before you make more friends," she says with a shrug. Much to my relief, she changes the subject. "Have you picked your classes for next semester yet?"

"I'm locked out of registration for like another week and a half. Don't people with more credit hours get priority?"

I must have said something stupid because Naminé gave me a look. "Come back with your laptop."

Why do I feel like I did something wrong?

"Open the class registrar," Naminé says when I get back, and then we spend the next half hour planning the next semester. Naminé is on point with everything. I don't know how or why she knows so much, or at least she seems like she knows more than the average freshman, because as we go through the steps, I realize how much I have to do just to prepare for registration.

Why do they make you jump through so many hoops to register? To start, I update my emergency contact information, which boiled down to pressing nothing but "update my emergency contact information" because I don't need to fix it. Then I'm told to change my email password. I have to include a capital letter, a number, use at least eight characters, and include a symbol like a question mark or ampersand, and can't use real words. What the actual fuck? Who does that? I get by with three personal passwords and none of them include symbols and only one of them has eight characters.

After several attempts, my new password is Ka1r!dagr8. Kairi the Great: easy to remember, but just fucking ridiculous enough that the system accepts the shitstorm of characters called a password. I don't get to be satisfied with myself for too long because Naminé then makes me go through the list of courses.

"Have you finished your general education prerequisites?" Naminé asks.

"Uh, maybe? What are those?" I ask. She sends me an easy-to-digest table. I recognize the requirements—thank goodness—and read through. General education exists so that every student proves competency in every field that may not be included in their major, like history and math and sciences and language and computer literacy. It insures that you don't get a science major, for example, who can't write a proper essay. I finished most of these with credit from high school, and the current semester was constructed around filling anything I might have missed. "I have to take one more social science."

"Oh! Take Human Sexuality and Culture with me. It's an anthropology course. I need to do some 'out of discipline' studies and that seemed interesting, so hop on board. Plus, I hear it's not too difficult," Naminé says.

"I didn't take you for someone who'd trade learning something new for an easy A."

"I'm not going to make life harder than it has to be, "Naminé says. "Besides, I don't know anything about how other cultures view sex or the sexuality spectrum or sex views through history."

"The fact that you're aware seems to be a good indicator that you won't encounter anything new in this class."

"Well, sure. I have information, but I don't have knowledge on the subject."

"What's the difference?" I ask.

"Stars and constellations," she says.

I think about it for a bit. "That's a pretty good point," I say.

Naminé brings up this spectacular spreadsheet filled with ideal schedules and contingency plans. This girl is the real deal. She has planned for every possible conflict from missing out on the class entirely to fallbacks just in case there are scheduling issues. She has back-ups for everything.

"My god you know everything. I need to quit fucking around," I say. I briefly wonder if Sora is still working out when Naminé pulls me back to the task at hand.

"I'm making you one on another tab, don't worry," Naminé says. "Now that we got general education out of the way, let's dig into major coursework."

"I currently have no official major," I say meekly, reminding my roommate that I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

"Right. Forgot about that." Naminé walks out of the room and returns with my schedule in hand. I had pinned it on the fridge so she knew my class schedule in case of emergencies, or if I wasn't picking up when she needed to find me. "You took a bunch of hard classes this semester," she says as she reads over my schedule.

"I did exactly what my advisor told me to do," I say. Maybe my advisor was hoping I'd get kicked out of the university or placed on academic probation or something. I wouldn't be surprised if they were trained to do that. Colleges these days thrive on statistics, so reducing their unemployment rate among graduates is probably a priority. If indecisive people like me, who are probably less likely to have a job lined up out of graduation because we still don't know what to do with our lives, are kicked out of the university before graduation, then they're all set.

It's a rather cynical view, I know, but I'd do shit like that too if my reputation mattered that much.

"How are your grades?" Naminé asks.

"Fine, I think. Might get all A's depending on how finals go. If I do that poorly I might get all C's." Well, C+'s if I fail every single final, which probably won't happen, but isn't that crazy? College exams are scary. Shit's casually worth forty percent of your grade (AKA your livelihood, self-worth, pride, etc.) and everyone walks around like the stress that causes is normal.

"Want to major in finance with me?" Namine asks.

"I think I'd rather gouge my eyes out," I say. "No offense."

She shrugs. "It's not for everyone. I do it because I can."

"Yeah, but you enjoy it, right?"

"Most of the time, I guess. I wouldn't say I'm passionate about it or anything."

"I guess it's enough to say that you enjoy it more often than not."

Namine nods. "There isn't going to be a major where I like every little thing I do. The courses I take are interesting and the field after college is pretty safe, not to mention I've found that I'm pretty good at it."

"It's a lot more fun to do things you're good at," I say. I guess I fall into the category of people who don't know what they're good at or people who aren't good at anything.

For what feels like the next few minutes, Naminé helps me construct my own ideal schedule with back-ups backing up my back-up choices of section, class, and class time. There are a few tangents here and there—whose turn it is to clean the kitchen or living room, the changing weather and subsequent fashion necessities, and people who pretend not to be cold and tell everyone how not cold they are: do they take things too literally and think being ice cold is cooler than being cool?—but we stick to our task pretty well.

Before we realize, it's lunchtime.

I feel like I was productive this morning. I know all I did was take care of pre-registration roadblocks, but I was like a real college student this morning. Thank goodness for roommates who have their shit together.

Is this what people feel like when they have a direction in life? When they know what they want? They really are one step ahead. All I know is that I want my ideal schedule to happen so I won't have schools on Fridays, and that sorry excuse for a plan has put me over the moon. Maybe one day I'll be one of those people who says "after this semester I will be doing X internship at Y location" and "I think I'll join Z organization because it seems to coincide with my interests."

Naminé ends up taking us to one of the more popular joints in Twilight Town, if only because it offers healthy food at an affordable price. Seriously though, why is it so expensive to be healthy sometimes? Or maybe it's better to ask why it's much easier to be unhealthy instead. I don't know. Healthy and delicious sometimes feel like they're mutually exclusive.

I order a salad, and when the employee behind the counter asked if I wanted chicken with it, I wasn't expecting it so I panicked and said sure, throw it in, and that costs a little extra, so now I'm poorer than I have to be because I panicked and I really didn't need the chicken in my salad. Oh well.

But come on. I just accomplished something today. Don't spring surprise chicken on me.

"Where do you think that girl got her dress?" Naminé whispered when we found a table near the window. Her eyes flicked over to the girl on the other side of the room. "I kind of want—wait, no, it'd look shitty on me actually. I'm too pale."

"Oh shut up," I say. "You pull off pretty much anything."

Take now, for example. Naminé normally wears dresses, but she's rocking floral pants right now. For real? I never know what to wear with floral pants. I guess now I do, since I think Naminé looks fantastic and I think I need to add blazers to my wardrobe. She looks so… professional? Adult-like? Like, real adult. College graduate with an above-median salary job adult. Yeah. That kind. Leave it to Naminé to dress up for hangover hour lunch like it's a Sunday brunch.

"I think when you go off to see Roxas I'm going to sneak into your room and try on all your clothes," I say.

"Feel free." She laughs. She's totally serious too. "And don't look now, but there's a guy in line right now staring at you and smiling like an idiot. Happen to know anyone with crazy hair?"

"Huh?" The only person I know with crazy hair is her boyfriend. Well, more recently there's Sora, but he wouldn't be here.

"Oh, he's coming over. We made eye contact. Sorry!" Naminé said sheepishly.

Oh come on, life. Why you gotta do me like that? Don't spring surprise Sora on me.

"Are you following me, Kairi?" Sora greets as he arrives at our table. He looks out of place in his warm-up jacket and swimming trunks, like he didn't check the weather before going out. It reminds me of the "people who pretend not to be cold" conversation earlier.

And yet… he makes it work. Kill me.

He turns his attention to Naminé. "Hi there, I'm Sora."

Naminé goes from timid school girl to Cheshire cat in a hot second. "Hello, I'm Naminé! I'm Kairi's roommate," she says sweetly, shaking Sora's hand.

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too. Kairi's told me a lot about you," Naminé says.

I raise a brow. She and I both know that isn't true.

"Really?" Sora asks skeptically. "I'm flattered."

"Yeah, she was just telling me how much fun you guys had last night. And speak of the devil, right?" Naminé smiles broadly.

Sora looks surprised, but he runs with it. "Yeah, I'm glad she had fun… I guess."

"So what are you doing here?" I ask Sora. Seriously, he couldn't have planned this. This is the second time in as many days that he's run into me unexpectedly. Even if the first time was intentional, it's hard to believe the second was an accident.

"Uh, just getting smoothies with my friend." Sora looks toward the line. "Hey, Riku!" he beckons.

Riku? I've heard that name before. Isn't that the guy—

Oh shit.

"Riku, this is my friend Kairi"—Sora doesn't miss a beat in calling me a friend—"and my new friend Naminé. They're roommates. And ladies, this is my best friend, Riku."

I make eye contact with Riku. Yup. This is the guy I tapped on Mingler. Like Sora, he's just as hot—if not hotter—in real life. If Sora was sculpted by the gods, then Riku was assembled in a lab by gay men who understood and appreciated everything that made a man physically attractive.

That's a step up from being sculpted by the gods, right?

Sure enough, a quick look around the room tells me that every girl has noticed Riku. And, now that I have a better look, every guy has too. He's tall, broad-shouldered, muscular. I can't stop staring at his hands. They are perfection. I mean, he's pretty impressive in general, but his hands are an entirely different matter. I want to bite them.

"Naminé and… Kairi?" he asks, confirming the names with us. His gaze lingers on me. Does he recognize me? I can't tell, and he doesn't bring up the fact that I tapped him on Mingler. "It's nice to meet you both."

"Likewise," Naminé says. She shakes his hand, and when he extends it to me, I have to resist the urge to pull it to my mouth and chew on his fingers.

I don't know why I have this urge, but I'm telling you, hashtag real talk, that his hands are perfect.

"So, just two dudes getting smoothies together," I say to Sora. I haven't known him long, but there's already a level of comfort with him that I can retreat to and forget the fact that I was hoping to match with his best friend and subsequently sleep with said best friend. Plus, Sora's easier to look at. I think Sora's a ten, but Riku makes him look like a nine. Riku's like an eleven that you can't stare at for too long. If I had to come up with a shitty metaphor to try and sound profound (and I don't, but I'm going to anyway), Riku's the sun that outshines the star that is Sora.

"Straightest thing ever, right?" Riku asks with a smirk. "It doesn't get much better than a smoothie after playing an underwater contact sport with other mostly naked dudes."

"When have we ever turned down a blitzball game?" Sora asks Riku. "Anyway, this guy's just mad that he was on the losing side."

I smile. Honestly, I don't know shit about blitzball or care for the sport in general, but these two are clearly ribbing each other, so to keep it from getting awkward because it's so unfunny, I laugh too.

"Why don't you guys pull up some chairs? Kairi and I are about to have lunch and you're welcome to join us," Naminé offers.

"Thanks for offering, but I actually have to cook lunch for this guy," Sora says, pointing his thumb at Riku. "I lost a bet."

"Aww, okay. Maybe next time," Naminé says as she looks at me. I can't tell if she's looking for approval or asserting that there will in fact be a next time.

Sora and Riku are called to pick up their to-go order and wave as they leave. Our food arrives shortly after.

"So that's Sora," Naminé says. She doesn't bring up the fact that my story and his don't match up, and she's not stupid enough to believe that I was out all night with Sora only to go home and meet up with him for breakfast early in the morning. She knows that I stayed over and she probably knows that I slept with him.

And she doesn't bring any of it up. I'm prepared for it, but she doesn't press.

I think this is why she's my best friend. I know she's dying to ask questions, and I have no doubt in my mind she'll bring it up later, but she's smart enough to recognize that I'd rather not talk right now.

"That's Sora," I say, stuffing my face with salad and chicken.

"His friend's pretty cute," she says.

I laugh. No, his friend Riku was panty-dropping hot. Sora, on the other hand… "Yeah," I say, "I guess he is."

000000000

After lunch, I check my phone while Naminé's in the bathroom. There are two notifications, one of which a text message from Sora.

Sora: I didn't know we were telling people about our arrangement

I reply: We aren't, and I haven't. You did though. She didn't know where I was last night.

His reply comes quickly.

Sora: Oops. Sorry about that.

Me: Not a problem.

Sora: You comin over tonight?

Me: Maybe. I'll let you know

There's one more notification from Mingler. I open the app to see Riku matched with me a little while ago, probably as soon as they left.

So he did recognize me. He left a message.

Riku: It was nice meeting you today, Kairi. If you're free tonight, we should meet. I'll buy you a drink. And don't worry. Sora doesn't know.

Well now. That's unexpected. I send a quick message to Sora, letting him know I wouldn't be coming over tonight, and answer Riku's invitation.

Name the time and place and I'll see you there.