Hey—heard you were staying in town

You around this weekend?

Let me know. It’s been a while

I looked up from my phone, but Clark was still in the water, and none of my friends seemed have to notice I’d gotten a text. I read the message again, then started typing fast, holding my phone off to the side.

ME

Hey—I’m around

But kind of with someone now

TOPHER

Got it. Let me know when you’re free to hang again

ME

Sure. Yeah.

Will do.

I set the phone down, then turned it to silent and dropped it back in my bag, trying to figure out why this was bothering me. It wasn’t like it was that unexpected for Topher to text me—so why did it suddenly feel like another part of my life had intruded when I didn’t want it to? And I didn’t want to compare the two, but the proof of how different Clark and Topher were was right in front of me—in the very fact that Clark was hanging out with my friends.

It wasn’t like it had been great right from the beginning—and that was my fault. Normally I would have planned it better, but I was in full-on early-make-out haze and didn’t think about what it would mean for Clark to meet all my friends at once. This had never been an issue for my other boyfriends, but they’d gone to school like normal people, in regular classrooms with more than just their sister. So when I introduced Clark at the diner, Toby, Bri, Wyatt, Palmer, and Tom were all there, which in retrospect was too much, too soon. Clark barely said a word the whole night, and when he did talk, it mostly seemed to be reciting facts I’d told him about my friends back to them. It didn’t help that Tom was almost equally quiet, stunned into fanboy silence at the reality of sitting across from one of his favorite authors. So all in all, not a huge success.

And it wasn’t that Clark couldn’t talk to people—last week I’d come in from walking Bert to hear him on a conference call with his editor and publisher and something called a “marketing team” as they discussed a cover redesign. Even though I had a feeling he was the youngest person on the call by a decade, he was very much in charge, clearly running things. Which was hard to reconcile with the fact that he seemed really intimidated by my friends—especially, for some reason, Bri and Toby.

“They were kidding, right?” he asked one night as we sat outside Paradise Ice Cream, he with his with mocha almond ripple, me with my cookie dough and a pint of mint chip I was bringing home for my dad. “They don’t really want me to call them Tobri.”

“They were kidding,” I assured him as I helped myself to a bite of his ice cream.

“They do kind of seem to share one brain, though,” he said, reaching over for a spoonful of mine. “I swear, they had a conversation without ever saying anything.”

I nodded and moved my ice cream out of reach. “They do that. But they liked you. All my friends did.”

Clark nodded but didn’t seem convinced, and even when I tried to do better the next time, and not present him with five people he’d never met before, just bowling with Tom, Palmer, and Toby, he was nervous and awkward, reminding me of how he’d been in the early days with me.

I was thinking that maybe it just wouldn’t work out, but then, a few days after bowling, came what Bri later called “the beginning of a beautiful bromance.” I stopped by Clark’s to pick up Bert and found Tom and Clark on the couch in the book room, eyes fixed on the TV, which the room did, it turned out, have. (It just looked like a mirror when it wasn’t turned on.)

“Hi,” I said as I looked between them, trying to figure out how this had happened.

“Hey,” Tom said, nodding at me, like it was totally normal for him to be hanging out at Clark’s house.

“Hi there,” Clark said, standing up and giving me a quick kiss. “Here to get the beast?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I was actually a little disappointed to see Tom there, as I’d been hoping for a little prewalk kissing action. “What are you guys doing?”

“Well,” Clark said, nodding at the TV. It was paused, but I couldn’t tell what was on it—it just looked like gray and raininess. “Tom doesn’t have to rehearse today, so we’re watching the Batsmen.”

“The what?”

“All the Batman movies,” Tom clarified. “We’re still debating the plural.”

“Batmans?” Clark asked, heading back to the couch.

“Batmen,” Tom offered.

“I’ve got it,” Clark said triumphantly. “Batsman.”

Tom shook his head. “I really don’t think that sounds right.”

“Well, have fun,” I said, as I went off to find Bert. I was having better luck with him when I could sneak up on him with the leash. If he didn’t know there was a walk afoot, he didn’t have time to play the run-away-from-the-leash game. I waved at them when I left, but they were back to watching, and I wasn’t even sure they noticed. I was happy to see it, though, Clark and Tom hanging out. It seemed like a good thing.

I was less convinced when I came by the next day—I was adding Bert into a group walk for the first time—to find Tom and Clark still on the couch, both of them looking a little glassy-eyed. “Are you guys still doing this?” I asked, feeling my jaw drop open. “How many Batmen are there?”