The screens before her seem to brighten as she revealed the news to them.

All of their mouths fell open at the same time.

"You're seeing someone?" Winter finally asked, her eyes alight with happiness.

Cress ran her fingers through her hair–after three months in LA, it now rested comfortably on top of her shoulders, just brushing her collarbone when it fell forward. "I mean, we've only gone on two dates, but yeah, I'm seeing someone."

Scarlet leaned forward. Her brown eyes glittered with excitement, and Cress almost thought she saw a masking of a different, more complicated emotion beneath that, but she didn't think anything of it. All of them had plenty of things to occupy their anxieties, and Cress was doing just fine taking care of herself.

"Tell us all about him!" said Scarlet.

Cress moved back and forth in her desk chair, giddiness rising up in her. "Well, he's 17, and his name is Andrew! He has blonde hair and the prettiest green eyes. And he's so tall!" She pressed her hand over her heart. She knew she was being dramatic, but she couldn't help it. "And he's so sweet! I ran into him at the furniture store a couple of weeks ago. Like I said, he's really tall, and the lamp I wanted was on the top shelf. He recognized me from the news." She sighed. "He was a bit disappointed when I told him I lost my memory–but then he asked if I was dating Thorne, and I kind of gave him this weird look and said no. He seemed happy about it, I think."

The three girls, plus Iko, all seemed a bit uncomfortable with that. But really, only a bit.

She cleared her throat. "He asked if he could comm me later and I said yes and the rest is history."

Iko moved in front of Cinder to speak to the netcam directly. "Have you kissed yet?"

"Iko!" Cinder warned, swatting the android away.

Cress giggled. "No. I told him that I want to take things slow. I'm pretty new to this whole thing, you know."

All four of them nodded a little over-enthusiastically. It was getting harder to ignore the subtext of their glances. Though they couldn't necessarily be shared over a net connection, she knew that if they were all physically there, they would be passing glances to everyone but her. She'd seen enough net dramas to know how this sort of thing worked.

And yet, it was still possible to ignore it, and so she did. They all just needed a bit more time to understand that she was not the girl they knew, the girl she wasn't sure she ever would remember.

"He held my hand though," she said wistfully. "We have another date tonight, too. He's great. I hope you all can meet him someday."

"I'm sure we will," said Scarlet, grinning. "Not to kill the mood, but have you… remembered anything recently?"

Cress shrugged, nervously stringing her fingers through her hair. "I mean, not much more than what I told you. I think I'm starting to remember the day you guys rescued me from the satellite, but I'm not sure. The doctor thinks it may just be due to what you've been telling me about that. But there's also snapshots of a desert. And… Thorne is there, too. And he's blind and it's so hot." She sighed heavily. "Those mostly come back in dreams, though. The heat. Really, though, it's just snapshots. Like I'm looking at pictures that illustrate a story someone told me rather than actually remembering anything.

"Also…," her voice trailed off. She took a sharp breath. "The doctor mentioned that if I haven't remembered more by now, then there's a really good chance I never will."

Their expressions seemed to darken as Cress shrank back into herself. She was not looking forward to telling them that, and it's clear that it wasn't what they'd wanted to hear.

Cinder's face fell. "I guess we couldn't have discounted that possibility. It seems we have, but we shouldn't have."

"I'm sorry. I've been trying really, really hard. It's just not working." Cress pulled her feet onto the chair, resting her chin on her knees. "I really am sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry about," said Scarlet, shaking her head. "None of this is your fault."

Winter nodded. "Right! You should not blame yourself for this."

Cinder grunted. "That's good advice, but I know firsthand that that's difficult." She looked at Cress. "Just know that you will blame yourself, and you probably already do, but no one else does."

"Not even Thorne?" Cress muttered into her knees.

"Not even Thorne," said Cinder.

Scarlet cleared her throat. "Anyway, how is Kai doing? I see his approval ratings have gone up since the revolution ended."

"Oh, he's much better." Cinder chuckled. "Much less stressed without Levana around to screw things up for everyone."

The whole group laughed. Cress tried to.

Cinder looked at someone else on her screen. "How's Jacin doing?"

Winter brightened, but before she could answer, a voice came through the darkness behind her. "Jacin is great." The blonde guard-turned-First-Gentleman-of-Luna appeared next to Winter on the screen, his pale skin, lightened further by the light of the netscreen, in stark contrast to her dark. "But it's time for President Winter to go to sleep. It's the middle of the night."

Cinder beamed. "Oh, Jacin. You're as protective as ever."

"Goodnight, Selene," he said sternly.

Winter waved happily. "Well, that's my cue! Goodnight, loves. Comm me later!"

One of the screens on Cress's computer went blank.

"We always pick the most inconvenient times for Winter," she mused.

Scarlet shrugged. "She doesn't care either way. She's just happy to hear from us." She grinned and nodded her head, as if answering a question she'd asked herself. "I have to go, though. I need to get ready to make dinner. Bye, girls!"

Another screen blanked before Cinder or Cress could say anything.

Cinder blew a tuft of hair away from her face. "Well, I guess I should go, too. Have a good day, Cress. I should probably be getting to bed, too. It's pretty late."

Cress unfurled her body from the chair and reached forward to shut off the camera. "Goodnight, Cinder."

"Bye, Cress. Have a good day. I hope your date with Andrew goes well. Comm me about it."

Cress smiled, "it will, and I will. Thanks!", and shut off the netcam.

Though she had come to love her friends, Cress was more than glad that their monthly vid-meetup was over.

The idea to start having them was Winter's. When she found out that Cress's chances of remembering her past, and therefore her new friends, wasn't likely, she'd wanted to at least rebuild what they had. Cress herself thought that it had worked.

But they'd talked for three hours and she was all out of socializing energy. Or just energy in general.

With still six hours before Andrew came to pick her up, and the weekend meaning she didn't have work, Cress crawled back under her blankets and activated the netscreen that hung on the wall in front of her bed.

Saturday mornings were her favorite.

She snuggled up to the body pillow she'd purchased just for days like this and as she yawned, realized she might fall asleep.

"Portscreen, set alarm for three hours from now."

With a quick affirming ping! from her port, she went back to catching up on her favorite netdrama.

But soon, the exhaustion took over, and she was asleep.

The man stood before her with his hands stuffed in his pockets. By all the stars, she couldn't seem to figure out who he was. "Cress, I think it's time we stop avoiding the obvious."

Author's Note: Just trust me, okay?