Two weeks go by, and the August heat encourages my AA group out of the air-conditioned community center and onto the spacious lawn out back, right under the sun, which feels counter-productive. But I don't complain. Sarah serves lemonade to us all. I refrain from telling her that the sunshine makes me crave beer.

Mom's waiting for me in the parking lot when I'm finished. The initial silence in today's ride home lasts for roughly seven minutes. An improvement, for sure. I had no idea that screaming at my mother about how disappointing she is - used to be - would have affected her so badly, given that it never got through to her in the past. Since that morning I stormed out I've apologized, but she always deflects it, asks me something about the AA program. It's very conflicting; she goes out of her way to help me, like with these lifts to the meetings, and then when I try to talk to her she's as unresponsive as ever.

But today, she speaks first. Progress. "Are you sure you don't want me to drive you tonight?"

I snap out of singing a song in my head. "Yeah, I told you. Wendy's driving."

"I don't mean to be rude, but I've seen that girl's driving."

I groan. "Mom, you're not much better."

"Says who?"

"Says the stop sign you ran three blocks back."

"There was a stop sign?" She tuts and glances in the rearview mirror. "They really ought to make those things harder to miss."

"They're... bright red and right by the side of the road, what more could you ask for?"

It's totally unexpected, but we both laugh at the same time, followed by mirrored smiles. The woman still baffles me. I can't escape the feeling that she's going to drop the act at any moment, that she'll turn around and reveal that her shift in character has been driven by an ulterior motive. I wonder how long she'll have to keep up her motherhood before that feeling goes away.

"If you get into any trouble, you'll call me, won't you?"

"What kind of trouble am I going to get into?"

"Like, alcohol-related."

"What am I gonna do, accidentally down a shot of tequila? I'll be fine, Mom. Honest."

There's a strip of wall in my living room that used to be completely blank, save for a wall clock with dead batteries. That wall has now been consumed by the investigation into Ford's maze; we taped up a copy of it, along with the map of Scuttlebutt Island, and a handful of pages from Mabel's notebook with various shapes and squiggles, which most of the time only serve as a record of our failed attempts at solving the maze. Mabel's standing at the wall when I get home, which has become a standard occurrence - same as how she doesn't greet me when I walk in. We spend so much time together now that a grandiose hello after two hours apart feels pointless.

"Any new developments, Chief?" I say, walking up beside her and studying the wall.

"Ooh! Are we doing a detectives thing now? That's cool. Keep calling me that."

"Okay. In that case I'll repeat my question - any new developments, Chief?"

"Nope. Nada. I've been dividing the maze up into squares, like the map here, seeing what happens if I rotate the pieces, which is giving me a freaking headache. There's like a billion combinations, and that doesn't even include if I have to move the pieces around, too. But I find it odd how you can divide the maze into sixteen pieces, like, the walls line up with the edges of the squares."

"Have you got the original map? What if you rotated the pieces of the maze exactly how you rotated the pieces of the map?"

"Way ahead of you, sister. That was the first thing I tried. If you do that the maze becomes unsolvable. Anyway, how'd your meet go?"

"It was okay. I told them about going to Portland tonight."

"Did any of them say it was a bad idea?"

I shrug. "It's a judgment-free zone. But, who knows what they were thinking. It doesn't matter. I told them I have some wonderful friends to look out for me." I pinch Mabel's shoulder and wander over to the counter to flick through the stack of junk mail that somehow winds up on our floor five times a week.

"Wendy's picking us up at four, by the way."

"Mhmm."

"And I might go to the grocery store this afternoon, if you wanna come."

"Sure," I say, walking back over to her.

"I wanna get one of those giant watermelons we saw the other day."

"You're never going to eat the whole thing."

"I know, but whatever we don't eat we can cut out of the rind, and then we can use the rinds to drink out of. Trust me, it's delicious. It might not be as exciting with non-alcoholic drinks, actually, but I'm sure we can come up with- why are you grinning?"

"I just noticed that your eyes look the same. It's totally healed."

Mabel tilts her head and smiles sweetly. "I noticed that this morning. Must be your apartment. It has healing properties."

"Clearly. I guess you'll have to stay here forever."

She rolls her eyes. "If only. What's the commute to Sacramento State like from here?"

"Um, worth it?"

"I don't disagree. Just a little impractical."

The nerves kick in at around 2 P.M. It's a foreign feeling - I'm a connoisseur of nightlife, there shouldn't be a bar on Earth that can make me anxious, but I've been out of the game for too long. Add in the fact that tonight could be a major turning point in my rehabilitation, and it's no wonder I'm on the brink of hurling up my lunch. I know it should be easy, but try telling that to my hyperactive imagination.

The outfit I pick out is a blue sleeveless shirt with a floral pattern, and a gray tube skirt. It's an atypical combination for me, from the far reaches of my closet, but I like how it looks in the mirror with my hair down, kind of summery. Mabel says that I have the look of a "sexy businesswoman," which makes me blush profusely. She herself is dressed up like a goddess, in a gold silk blouse and black leggings, her hair up in a tidy bun. She has four or five silver bracelets around her forearm that jangle whenever she moves it.

Even Wendy, whose wardrobe has a monopoly on flannel, is wearing an emerald green sundress. My jaw drops to the sidewalk - she's more gorgeous than I've ever seen her. I'm about to step into the back seat of her van when she says, "you can stop looking at me like that." She wraps her arms around my neck and whispers into my ear, "I'm still only interested in men."

I linger in a cloud of surprisingly girly perfume for a second - no trace of cigarette smoke - and push her in the chest. "You're a tease and I hate you."

Mabel rides shotgun, so from the center back seat I can admire her outfit without her noticing. I can only really see her left cheek, arm, and thigh, but it's enough to make my heart flutter in that irritating way that it does. It isn't a crush, or a revival of my feelings of old, or anything like that. I just appreciate beauty when I see it. Right?

"I'm excited," Wendy says, drumming on the steering wheel at a stoplight. "How long has it been since you came out with me, P?"

"I don't know. Long enough that I'm actually excited about it."

"Are we playing the numbers game tonight?" She turns her head to Mabel. "We used to compete to see who could get the most phone numbers. If I could get five before she could get one, then I won. I always won."

"Apart from the time you didn't realize I'd taken you to a gay bar," I point out.

"Yep. That was demoralizing. And then embarrassing. And you ended up texting seven different girls for an entire week."

I relax into the seat and sigh. "That was a good week. But, no, I will not be playing that game tonight. I have since come to realize that it's shallow and immature."

"Loser. What about you, Mabel?"

"I don't think so," Mabel says. "I'm not really planning on meeting anybody tonight. I mean, I'll meet people, obviously, but I don't want to meet anyone. It's too soon."

The statement puts me at ease. I've been wondering whether her faith in guys has been brought down a notch after Jason. Since she moved in I've been reading up online about abuse victims and the lasting effects, the PTSD. Tonight, my mission is to keep her away from any touchy-feely or creepy-looking types, without making myself appear clingy. Given that I stole a glance at her butt when we left the apartment earlier, I believe I belong to the category of people I just described, which lands me in quite the paradox.

None of us really anticipated how long the drive to Portland would take. Wendy said it was "just a couple hours north," but by the third hour into our journey I'm starting to wonder why we didn't wait until we got to Nina's apartment before we got changed. I can either sweat in the van or roll down the window and fundamentally screw up my hair. I'm especially curious as to why Wendy was wearing so much perfume, unless her game of collecting the most phone numbers begins with the hitchhikers in the various towns along the interstate.

Needless to say, when we arrive at Nina's apartment four hours after our departure, the three of us rush through the overly enthusiastic hellos and pile into her bathroom to freshen up. The floor of the living room is already set up with three sleeping bags and pillows, the furniture spread to the corners of the room. Nina's so excited to have us here that my heart melts; having lived here for only a month, I can't imagine she has spent much time with her own friends. Kyle, her boyfriend, is out of the apartment all night playing poker, so he won't have to deal with the overwhelming femininity.

The apartment building is a short distance from downtown Portland, so we walk a couple of blocks to an Italian restaurant for dinner and eat under an awning outside, as the sun sets at the bottom of the street between two skyscrapers. An endless stream of men and women pass our table along the sidewalk, in lively groups, heading into a night of their own, their pleasant aromas fending off petrol fumes from the road.

I sit with one leg over the other and shake my foot for the duration of the meal, bottled water not doing a whole lot to calm the nerves. There isn't much room under the table, either, so a couple of times my foot brushes Mabel's leg and I look up to apologize but she looks away, which might sound odd, but things have been just like that - like we're working our way back to being close friends but we haven't made it yet. She knows now, all the things I thought about her in the years she was gone. Everything's out in the open, the ugly truths, and while ultimately it feels healthy, it's also laid out on the table between us and keeping us from how we used to be.

The night club we wind up at is much more laidback than I was expecting, which I'm silently thankful for. There's no line to get in but it's relatively busy inside. There's an open spot at the bar, which lines the left wall almost all the way to the back, the right-hand side is lined with booths and soft stools to sit on, way at the back there's a smattering of high tables, and the center of the room is a dance floor. Everything is purple. Like, everything - purple furniture, purple walls, purple light swallowing the bar and the wooden floor.

Wendy leads the way to the gap in the bar-obstructors and orders some kind of cocktail that I don't catch the name of over the music. She buys all of us a drink; I'm the last in line and ask for a Diet Coke. I notice Nina and Wendy staring like they anticipated me fucking up and ordering a Martini.

We stand around one of the tall tables and spend half our time catching up with Nina, and the other half scoping out the club. Nina has been applying for part-time jobs but spending most of her time writing poems again. She's become a lot more active on her blog and gained an influx of followers, which I already knew because I'm a die-hard follower myself, but I can't keep the grin off my face - some time off work seems to have done wonders for her mood. With her first cocktail out of the way, Wendy informs us that she must dance right away, and disappears into the throng of people, failing to drag Mabel along with her. I hate to admit it, but I feel myself relax more now that she's out of sight - out of everybody here she's the most likely to raise two middle fingers to Alcoholics Anonymous and force a drink down my throat.

Everything is so, so normal, until I spot Katie Heywood, my short-lived golf-course kissing-partner from the spring before I graduated high school. She's sitting in a booth near the entrance - Wendy's giant head must have been blocking her from view. I think I'm imagining things at first; since I told Mabel about the girl two weeks ago during the disclosure of my late teenage years, she's popped into my mind a few times. It's plausible that I've mistaken the girl I'm staring at for the face so fresh in my mind, but no, I'm certain it's her. Her bangs are cut to the same length they always were, and while she listens to her friends she keeps smiling in that way I always liked, lifting one eyebrow like she can't believe what she's hearing. The only difference is the lack of a beanie.

And just to confirm everything, she catches my eye from across the room and double-takes, then breaks into a wider smile. I think I look away first, my heart thrumming. How many more old flames does the world want to throw at me this summer? I'm almost terrified to go and talk to her, in case she ends up moving into my apartment.

Katie glances at me twice on the way to the bar, which I suppose is my cue. "Guys, I'm gonna go to the bar. Think I saw someone I recognize."

Mabel and Nina nod, smile, and go back to their conversation that I wasn't paying a lick of attention to.

I have to bump a couple of shoulders to reach her, and when I do, I just hover over her shoulder with my hand raised, like I'm charging up my social competence. After a few seconds I tap her shoulder and she turns around and bursts into a smile.

"Hey," she says. "I was just going to come over. Can I get you a drink?"

I'm not sure why the first thing to come out of my mouth is, "aren't you a little young to be here?"

"Shh," she says, glancing from side to side. "They don't appear to be IDing. Besides, I'm nineteen. How young did you think I am?"

"Sorry. I guess in my head you're still- we're still high-schoolers. Um, I'll have a Diet Coke, please."

While she orders drinks I twiddle my thumbs over the bar, feeling very gauche indeed. What the hell happened to me? I used to be the queen of smooth. It would be soul-destroying to find out that my heyday was fueled entirely by alcohol.

But Katie doesn't seem fazed; when the bartender walks away she turns back to me and runs a hand along my shoulder. "How the heck have you been? You look amazing."

"Thank you, so do you." And she does - the black dress compliments her brown eyes and bangs, the array of freckles on her cheeks is visible, and I don't think I ever saw her wear make-up before. "I've been good, actually. How are you?"

"I'm good. How long has it been? Three years?"

"About that, yeah."

"Man. That's insane. I was literally talking about you a few days ago."

I frown. "You were? With who?"

"I was hanging out with some friends from school. High school." She thanks the bartender and hands me my caffeinated anxiety-juice, then gestures to two stools at the very end of the bar, which we claim as our own. "Um, do you remember Josie Miller and Cheri Hyde?"

I shake my head and sip from the straw.

"We were reminiscing about our high school crushes. Your name came up. Of course I told them you were a little more than a crush, you were... well, actually, I never figured out what we were."

"That's right," I say. "The last time I saw you you were with... um..."

"Allison." She rolls her eyes as if the very name disgusts her. "Yeah, that didn't last long. All I'll say is that falling in love over the internet does not mean you'll work out in real life."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago." She takes a sip of her cocktail and shakes her head, her bangs swinging along with it. My lips curl upwards. It's kind of adorable.

"You know what's funny? I was talking about you the other day, too."

"Seriously?"

"Yep. Do you remember, when we first met, I told you about a girl I'd had a thing for, and she abandoned me for a guy?"

"Mhmm, I do. What was her name? Bella?"

"Mabel. Well, I was telling Mabel about you a couple of weeks ago. About our golf cart adventures."

Katie gives a contented smile. "Those were fun, weren't they? I remember it well. So, wait, you're talking to Mabel again?"

I glance over to the table that I ditched, and point out my temporary roommate. "That's her right there."

"Oh. Wait, are you two... together?"

"No. Just friends. She's staying in Gravity Falls for the summer. We weren't really getting along when she got here, but she's been through some difficult stuff, and now she's staying at my apartment. So we've bonded, I guess."

Katie nods, sips her drink, and says, "so you're not seeing anybody, then?"

I feel a devious grin take over my face. I don't remember her being so confident. "Nope. You?"

She smiles and gives a subtle shake of her head, holding my gaze all the while.

The purple lighting gets dimmer as the night flies by, the only purpose of which seems to be for couples to disappear into pockets of darkness and get a little more tactile with one another. I didn't plan on talking to Katie until midnight, but it happens anyway - the first time I glanced back to Mabel and Nina, they had been joined by a pair of guys, and the shorter one with glasses was making Mabel laugh a lot, and I didn't care to find out what was so funny. About a half hour later the table was vacant, and while Katie went to the bathroom I bobbed my head around scanning the room only to find Mabel and Nina dancing with the guys from before. My heart sank at the sight and I can't place why. I felt irrational anger bubbling inside me, either at the guy for taking such an interest in Mabel, or at Mabel appearing to enjoy it. If I were in her shoes I couldn't imagine wanting to look at a man for at least a few months, but maybe that's my inner-lesbian talking.

Katie is a wonderful distraction, however. She tells me that she's studying Economics at the University of Portland, having just finished her freshman year. She's living at home for the summer, and staying with some of her college friends this weekend, so it's a wild coincidence that I ran into her in the city instead of Gravity Falls. With every passing second I remember one more thing that I liked about her, and my heart beats a little faster, and my mind keeps wandering to where this reunion might lead.

But the fantasy is interrupted when, over Katie's shoulder, I see Mabel emerge from the crowd and hurry outside the club. Nobody follows her or appears to notice. I touch Katie's shoulder, interrupting her sentence, and tell her I'll be right back.

She's facing away from me, leaning against the brick wall of the neighboring building, highlighted by both a streetlamp and the purple neon from the club's sign. The air is still warm and sticky, but pleasant against my bare arms.

"Hey," I call out, pacing up to her. She spins around but relaxes at the sight of me. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she says, her tone betraying her. "Sorry, I just needed some air."

"Did something happen?"

"No. Yes. I was- there was a guy, Seth, he was really nice, but he..."

Oh, god. Did it actually happen? Exactly what I was afraid of? While I was busy flirting my ass off? "What did he do?"

"Nothing. Nothing bad, just, he asked me if I wanted to dance, and I said yes, but when he put his hands around my waist I could hear Jason screaming in my head. I saw, like, I saw him in my mind. It was- it freaked me out so bad."

Her words stammer out in bullets and I want so badly to reach out and comfort her, but I force my hands to keep to themselves. "It's okay. He can't hurt you anymore," I say, though it sounds facile out loud.

"I know. God, that was weird. Sorry, you can go back inside if you want." With a sheepish grin, she adds, "looked like you were getting somewhere with that girl you were talking to."

Curse my transparency. "Yeah- um, maybe. Are you sure you're okay?"

She nods and smiles, and it's convincing, but leaving her out here doesn't feel at all noble.

"Let's just go back to Nina's," I say.

"What? No, I don't want to ruin everybody else's night."

"Then we'll go back. Just you and me."

"But-"

"I didn't want to come here in the first place. I mean, I was down for coming to Portland, and seeing Nina, but to be completely honest, it took a long fucking time to get up here, and I released a lot of sweat into the atmosphere along the way, and I woke up pretty early this morning so I don't know about you, but the best thing for me right now would be a good night's sleep."

She stares at me for a second then laughs, looks down at her shoes. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay. I'm gonna go find Nina and Wendy and tell them that we're leaving, okay?"

Katie is in the same spot at the bar, which is both endearing and upsetting. I tell her that I need to go and assure her that everything is okay. She's incredibly cool about my immediate prioritization of Mabel over her. We stare at each other for a moment before the words roll out of my mouth. "I'd love to see you again."

She breaks into a grin, and in a move that drives a flurry of excitement through my body, she hooks a finger through a belt loop on my skirt and pulls me toward her, thrusting her cell phone into my hands. "Then put your number in my phone."

Nina ends up walking back with us. Wendy almost does, too, after we tell her what happened with Mabel, but we have to practically tear her from the burly dude whose mouth she was attacking to do so, so we convince her to stay in the club and have her fun. When we get back to the apartment Nina changes into pajamas and Mabel and I change into the spare clothes we brought with us. We sit around her kitchen table and eat grapes out of the fruit bowl while Nina drinks bucketfuls of water and encourages Mabel to do the same. Nina will be up five times in the night to pee, she always says, but at least she won't have a headache in the morning. At about one-thirty my head flops over and I jolt awake, after a split second of sleep. "Time for bed," I murmur, and the girls agree.

Nina allows her guests to use the bathroom first; Mabel and I brush our teeth at the sink with heavy eyelids, our elbows lazily bashing against each other. She spits at the same time I reach for the faucet, landing a delightful blob of toothpaste and saliva on the back of my hand. My eyes shoot open and before she can say anything, I wipe my hand on the front of her t-shirt.

"Hey!" she says through incredulous laughter. "This is a new shirt!"

"You spat on me!"

"By accident!"

We slip into the sleeping bags in Nina's living room, giggling about nothing in particular. When Nina finishes up in the bathroom she hovers in her bedroom doorway. "Lights out?" she asks us.

I say, "yes please, your highness."

"Yeah, go lie down in your fancy bed, with your fancy sheets," Mabel teases.

"I have a bad back," Nina says, throwing her hands out. "I need my mattress. It's memory-foam, so it-"

"Boooo," I call out. "Nobody cares about your boring mattress. We get it, you're too good for carpet-peasants like us."

Nina rolls her eyes and flicks off the light. "Goodnight, Mabel. Screw you, Pacifica."

"Goodnight, Nina," Mabel says. "Thank you for everything," she calls through the closed door. "Can she hear me?"

I yawn, mutter out a response, and when the momentary giddiness from the bathroom fully fizzles away, I fall straight to sleep.

I wake up to a crunch.

Then a ruffling sound, like somebody digging into a bag of chips.

Then another crunch.

I jab my hand at the floor, feeling for my phone, and when I find it I use the screen to light up the source of the noise: It's Mabel, sitting upright in her sleeping bag, looking down at me like a deer in the headlights. There's a giant bag of M&M's in between her legs, and I'm not talking about a standard, giant bag of M&M's, I mean the really fucking massive ones that you pass on the shelf at Walmart and think, why the hell would I ever need that quantity of M&M's?

"You okay there?"

She nods. "Just thinking."

I sit up and face her, fold my legs. I set my phone on the floor and use its flashlight as a dim lamp. "About anything in particular?"

She chews thoughtfully, though I never knew that was a possible emotion to express while chewing. She holds out the bag of candy to me and I shake my head. "About Jason. I want to see him. Is that normal?"

"Probably. You were together for a long time."

"Yeah." She stares at the floor and continues to push candy through her lips like a slot machine.

"Do you want to see him enough to... like, go and visit him in prison?"

"No," she says, her eyebrows dropping. "I don't think so. What would I even say to him?"

"I can think of a few things."

She looks up at me with a sad smile. "Sorry I kinda ruined your night."

"You didn't. I told you I wanted to leave."

"What about the girl you were talking to?"

"I have her number," I say, waggling my eyebrows.

"Well, go you," she says, kicking my foot. "What's her name?"

"It was Katie, actually. The girl I told you about the other night."

"Shut up. The same girl?"

"The same girl. She's staying in Gravity Falls with her parents until college starts up again."

"And you're going on a date?"

"It would seem that way, yeah."

"Well, consider me jealous. She was beautiful," Mabel says, snuggling back into her sleeping bag like that statement meant nothing.

Something swims around in my stomach as I glare down at her. "What, you mean you... found her attractive?"

Her eyes light up with concern. "Sorry, is that weird for you?"

"No, it's fine, but... I didn't realize you were still into girls."

"Oh. Yeah, I am."

I'm fairly sure that this is the fastest my heart has ever beaten at four o'clock in the morning. That admission changes everything. That means my teenage dream of coupling up with Mabel Pines just became an actual, palpable possibility. And that's frightening, because with a fiancé out of the picture and now this, there isn't a whole lot stopping me from repeating my old mistakes, except for the thin barricade of that sleeping bag. I blink hard in attempt to cleanse my mind. "Why didn't you tell me? We could have talked about lesbian struggles. Or... bisexual struggles. LGBT struggles."

She pulls the bag up to her chin and grins. "I thought it was kinda obvious."

"That you were bi? How was that obvious? You've been dating a boy for four friggin' years."

"Yes, but do I need to remind you that you and I were quite intimate before that?"

"No, do I need to remind you that you told me repeatedly how confused you were about your sexuality and then proceeded to run off with a dude?"

She winces. "I forgot about that part."

"Yeah." I smirk. "So tell me... did you enjoy kissing Wendy?"

She pulls the sleeping bag even further up her face, smothering her grin, twelve years old all over again.

"You did, didn't you? You bitch. I've always been curious about her."

"She was good at it, yeah," Mabel says. "But I got a mouthful of smoke. It was like eating a cigarette."

I scrunch up my face, the fantasy suddenly much less appealing. "Where the hell is she, anyway?"

Mabel rolls over, retrieves her phone, and passes it to me. "She sent us that about twenty minutes ago."

have you guys ever rode those mechnaical bull things? thats what this guy is like LOL

"Jesus Christ," I say.

"Excuse me while I fetch up my M&M's."

I pass her phone back and stay sat upright, rocking back and forth. I'm too curious to go back to sleep. "So do you like guys more, or girls?"

"I don't know," she sighs. "I like them both equally. It's about the person, not the parts."

"Yeah but, you must have a preference."

She hunches her shoulders. "Not me."

"Okay, okay, how about this: That guy you were talking to tonight, or Wendy."

Mabel rolls her eyes, but sinks into thought anyway. After a moment she says, "Wendy."

"Okay, the guy you were talking to tonight, or Nina?"

"How's that fair? I don't know Nina well at all."

"So? You don't know the guy at all, either."

"Right, and I know Wendy pretty well, so maybe that's why I picked her."

"Okay, so let's make it fair - think of a boy from back home that you do know well."

She sighs, but I know she loves playing games like this. It's just rare that she's on the receiving end of the interrogation. "Sean," she says.

"Sean, or Wendy?"

"Wendy."

"Sean, or... Naomi?"

"Sean. Definitely."

"Sean or me?"

Her eyes flick to me. I hold perfectly still as the seconds crawl by, waiting for the answer that will either crush me or inflate my ego. "You," she says.

I break out into a smile. "Wendy, or me?"

The flashlight reflects off of her irises. I focus on that. "How is that relevant?"

"It isn't."

Seeing that I refuse to avert my eyes, she answers the question. "You."

A nervous laugh escapes me and Mabel smiles. "I have a date."

"I know."

Something, but nothing in particular, brings me back to reality. I'm not in some dream-like bubble where nothing has consequences, I'm in my friend's apartment, in Portland, on planet Earth, playing shamelessly flirtatious games with a fragile girl who should be totally off-limits. "That's all I needed to know," I say, turning off the light on my phone and settling back into my own bed. "Two to one for girls."

"That doesn't mean anything," she says.

"Sure it does. You prefer women."

"You didn't pick a big enough sample size!"

While at first I'm content with the results of my inquisition, as the silence drones on, eventually replaced by Mabel's sleepy shallow breaths, my mind floats back to that dangerous place - my teenage dream, and how it sounds more feasible now than ever.

I stay awake until the first light of dawn invades the windows of Nina's apartment.