"Are you still ignoring him?" Luna asks. She flops down onto the sofa in the living room in her mother's house and tucks her feet underneath her, pulling one of the many brightly-colored throws off the back of the sofa and snuggling up with it.

After what happened at school, I definitely wasn't going back to South Hollow for the holidays – and I wanted to get as far away from campus as possible. When Luna and Jez invited me to their home, I jumped at the opportunity.

I shove my phone back into my pocket. "Which him would you be referring to? Are you talking about the professor I got caught screwing or are you talking about the conservative preacher father I just found out has been hooking up with my fake fiancé? Because both of them have attempted to contact me and I haven't responded to either of them."

Luna gives me a look. "You know I'm not talking about your father, even though I am dying to know what's going to happen with all of that. I mean, I know you're really pissed off at him, but aren't you the least bit curious if your father will come out of the closet?"

I choke. "That's not going to happen."

"You don't think love will triumph in the end?"

"Is Little Miss Cynical actually asking me that question for real?" I ask. "My father will choose his personal standing in South Hollow over anything else in life. You know the sad thing, though? He's such a hateful person, but Justin clearly loves him. Someone loves him, despite all of his flaws, but he's not going to care."

"Your father has texted you, though."

"Trust me, he wasn't texting to apologize," I tell her. "He wants to defend himself and plug the leak, I'm sure of it. He just doesn't want me letting any of the gossipy old ladies in South Hollow know what happened."

"Is it possible you're not giving him enough credit? He might realize he loves Justin and come clean to everyone."

"If that's the case, that would truly be a Christmas miracle," I say, rolling my eyes. "Why are you so suddenly positive and optimistic about life?"

"Well, I try to be optimistic once a year, just for practice," Luna tells me. "Usually I confine it to April Fool's Day, but this year I figured I'd go for Christmas just to throw things off. I don't like people getting too comfortable."

"I'm not sure you're in danger of people ever being too comfortable around you," I tease.

"That's what makes me an exciting friend."

I snort. "Whatever. You just lost the competition for Most Exciting Friend. Your illustrious roommate was publicly outed fucking her creative writing professor on his desk in his office and had a very loud and heated argument with her preacher father and her fake fiancé about said scandalous affair – and discovered her father's equally scandalous affair with a deacon in his church."

"Shit, I know. Who would have thought that Little Miss Goody Two Shoes would cause all this drama by the end of one semester?"

"I have been at the center of a lot of drama, haven't I?"

"The most," Luna agrees.

I pick up a decorative pillow from the sofa and chuck it across the room at her. Luna protests, putting her hands up. "Hey, I'm not judging! Well, I mean, I am – but I'm judging you inside."

"You're a bitch."

Luna laughs. "Why didn't you tell me about it earlier? I mean, I suspected, but I didn't want to pry. It does kind of hurt my feelings a little that you didn't trust me enough to tell me – you know, just to make this conversation all about me and my feelings."

"I didn't want to make you complicit."

Luna raises her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, have we met before? Did you think I had a moral objection to being complicit in scandalous behavior?"

I sigh. "I don't know. Maybe I did think you'd judge me."

Luna rolls her eyes. "Maybe your New Year's resolution should be to stop assuming the worst in people."

"Okay, Little Miss Cynical."

"Maybe it should be to just not assume the worst in me."

"Deal," I tell her. "If it helps, I do feel like a jackass for assuming you'd judge me for hooking up with Gabe – especially since you brought me home for the holidays and everything."

"Good," Luna says, crossing her arms.

"You're glad I feel like a jackass?"

"I am. It'll help you to remember not to make any more assumptions like that."

"I've learned my lesson, Mom," I joke. "Promise."

"Now what are we going to do about the professor situation?"

"We??"

"Hey, you brought me into your drama, so now I'm involved. Sorry, that's just the way it works."

"What are you going to do about it?" Jez asks as she walks into the room and sits down in an armchair.

"There's nothing for me to do about anything," I tell them. "I'm going to finish Christmas break, return to school in humiliation, and resign myself to being that girl who screwed that professor for the rest of my college career – or maybe I won't even go back to school at all because I can't face the shame. I'll drop out and get a job bartending –"

"You're not old enough to bartend," Luna points out.

"Fine. Waitressing."

Luna shakes her head. "You don't have the coordination skills required to waitress."

"I do, too!"

"Maybe you could get into the pot business with my mom," Luna suggests helpfully. "Or sell sex toys with my aunt."

"I don't understand why this is so humiliating," Jez interrupts.

"Did you miss the part where people walked in on me screwing my professor on his desk?" I ask.

Jez gives me a dismissive wave. "When I was in college, everyone was screwing their professors. I slept with my women's studies professor."

"You had a male women's studies professor?"

"She was twenty years older than me," Jez says wistfully. "We had a blissful semester together – and a threesome with my Buddhism professor."

"You didn't even go to college!" Luna exclaims.

"I went for one semester," Jez tells her. "It was too much for me and I dropped out."

"See? You dropped out after sleeping with your professor!" I point out.

"That wasn't because of humiliation," Jez says. "The partying was just too much. I was doing a lot of drugs."

Luna snorts. "Was??"

"Funny," Jez retorts. "All I ever wanted my whole life was a daughter with excess amounts of sarcasm."

"Glad to hear I haven't disappointed you," Luna quips.

"Screwing your professor is just not that big of a deal," Jez assures me. "It's certainly not a big enough deal to consider quitting school."

"No one's going to be talking about it after break anyway," Luna adds with a shrug. "People have short attention spans. They'll forget all about it."

"We caused a big scene," I remind them.

"College is all about causing big scenes," Jez says. "The more important question to answer is whether or not you're going to keep seeing the professor."

"Yeah, seriously. That's what you need to figure out," Luna chimes in.

"I don't know. I need time to think about it," I say. "We weren't exactly dating. I mean, I don't think we were. I don't even know what we were. Hooking up, maybe. I didn't even know he was married."

"He's married??" Jez asks. "Oh, fuck that. Why didn't you girls tell me? We can still drive back up there and key his car."

I can't help but laugh at Jez's inappropriate enthusiasm, but Luna rolls her eyes. "I'll just point out that my hippie, non-violence-advocating mother is suggesting that we drive across multiple state lines to go destroy someone's property."

"He's not married," I correct quickly. "He was married before. Apparently that's why the department assistant barged in. Something about his ex-wife needing money."

Jez snorts. "Don't ex-wives always need money? Ex-wives aren't a big deal. They're a dime a dozen, especially at his age. Not that he's old, mind you. I'd be more concerned if he hadn't been married before. That's when you know they've got commitment issues. Or they're into weird sex shit. Luna showed me a photo of the professor online, you know. He's very good-looking, definitely seems like he'd be an excellent lover."

Luna makes a gagging sound. "This is just what I wanted for Christmas – to hear my mother utter the word 'lover'."

"Your father was an excellent lover," Jez muses.

"You don't even know who my father was!"

"Calm your tits! You didn't let me finish!" Jez exclaims. "I don't know where you got this propensity for interrupting."

"Yeah, I have no idea where I learned that," Luna mutters.

"I was going to qualify my statement by saying that all of your possible fathers were excellent lovers."

Luna chortles and turns to me. "You think your life is drama? I was conceived in an orgy."

"Oh, orgy makes it sound so tawdry," Jez protests.

"Want me to say gang-bang?" Luna asks. "You had sex with, like, ten different men in one night, Mom."

I choke on a laugh. Luna and her mother have the most functional dysfunctional parent-child relationship ever, but they both seem to be perfectly comfortable with it.

"It was a different time," Jez exclaims. "Free love and all that."

"Oh my God, Mom!" Luna laughs. "It was the late nineties, not the sixties!"

"I was living on a commune! There were a lot of drugs involved."

Luna looks at me. "Maybe don't take my mother's advice when it comes to hooking up with people."

"Maybe don't take my advice," Jez agrees, laughing. "I might not have ever settled down, but I've had a hell of a lot of fun. I also raised a pretty great kid."

Luna rolls her eyes and lets out a mock-exasperated sigh. "You were a pretty okay mother yourself."

"I did straighten up once I found out I was pregnant," Jez points out. "And I didn't even raise you in the commune."

"Aw, thanks, Mom. Aren't you glad you came home with me for the holidays, Purity?"

"Actually, yes," I say, laughing. Luna and Jez might be totally crazy, but they love each other so hard. Their home is warm and chaotic and filled with the kind of laughter and love that I've never been around.

"You never answered the question," Luna says.

"What was the question?"

"Are you going to text him back?" she asks.

"That's not the important question," Jez interrupts. "The important question is do you want to be with him?"

"Oooh," Luna agrees. "Yeah. Do you like him?"

"Do you love him?" Jez corrects.

"I've never even dated anyone," I answer sheepishly. "I'd never even had sex with anyone before."

The pair of them just stare at me.

"He's twenty years older than me. He's old enough to be my father. Seriously, they were neighbors growing up. He's literally the same age as my father! And he's my professor –"

Luna makes a buzzing sound. "Incorrect. The semester is over."

"Fine. He's a professor, and I'm a student, and –"

Luna turns to Jez. "You knew she was in love with him, didn't you?"

Jez shrugs. "It's written all over her."

"It's just a fling," I tell them. "We've been having sex. I mean, sure, it's been really great sex. Mind-blowing sex, to tell you the truth. But you can't just fall for someone in a matter of months, and I'm eighteen years old, and that's really stupid, isn't it?"

Luna puts her hand over her heart. "Awww."

"Don't say aw like that," I protest. "Neither of you are listening to all of the reasons I just told you I can't be in love."

Luna wrinkles her nose. "I just think it's so cute that you think you have a choice in the matter."

Jez shrugs. "Love isn't always convenient, and it doesn't always happen the way you expect it to, Purity."

Everyone is silent for a moment, before Luna turns to her mother. "Wow. That's really profound, Mom."

"Isn't it?" Jez asks. "I thought so, too. I saw it embroidered on a pillow."