Staying out late on Tess’s first night home leaves an aftertaste of guilt. I scrape myself out of bed before dawn the next morning and make my sister’s favorite breakfast. Ricotta pancakes with fresh blackberries and a side of crispy bacon, everything doused in syrup. She comes downstairs and eats a record-breaking eight while our parents sleep through the alarm upstairs. Which further verifies my theory that nobody is feeding college students.

I get a flash of myself in the future. I’m camped out in a shared kitchen, flipping pancakes for a crowd of pajama-clad strangers. It’s a little exciting, and a little sad because it’s the first time I’ve pictured college without W in the frame. And a little gross because: dorm kitchen.

I’ve daydreamed about going straight from high school graduation into an apprenticeship. It’s the old-school system that professional bakers used to work their way up to positions like head pastry chef or bakery owner. It’s what Alec did, and he’s offered, more than once, to connect me with his old friends in California, Tuscany, Paris. But staying here and sticking with UT means that I can work at the Proud Muffin.

Most bakers work for years or decades — to develop skills, yes, but also to find a kitchen where they fit. I don’t want to walk away from a place where I already do. It feels like dropping a winning lotto ticket on the ground and scratching another one, just to see what happens. Besides, there’s nothing that I could learn in Paris that Alec and Marisol can’t teach me right here.

“I have to get going,” I say, rushing a bite of pancake through my syrup.

“Baking?” Tess asks.

I make a vague yes noise. Taking my scones to Barton Springs in the hopes of luring a couple there so I can magically repair their relationship falls under the general category of baking.

First, I have to get through a whole day of school, though. Harley is going to meet me after last bell, which seemed like a practical plan when we first made it and now feels increasingly bizarre. I’m still getting used to seeing Harley in the various places that constitute my life.

“I wish you could stay until Mom and Dad actually get out of bed. They’re still cuddling,” she grumbles in the direction of the coffee maker. Apparently, living up north requires hot coffee. I’ve never seen her drink it before.

“Cuddling is not a crime,” I say.

“Of course not, but I’m only here for a week. Don’t you think they can put off some of the regularly scheduled PDA?” She misses the filter with her measuring spoon; coffee grounds skitter away like tiny creatures whose sole purpose is finding a corner no broom can reach.

“It’s not public if they do it in their bedroo —”

Tess holds up a stop-that-right-now hand. “You don’t still want to be like them, do you?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

With a mashing of buttons, Tess manages to start the coffee maker. It pees slowly into the pot. “Come on, Syd. You’ve always wanted a relationship like theirs, with cartoon hearts above your head at all times.”

I sit back down abruptly. So abruptly that my plate clatters and syrup flies up, flecking me all over.

I’ve never thought I had anything in common with my parents, not when it comes to what we care about in romance. They’re so straight, so powdered-sugar sweet. But it’s possible Tess is right. Since we moved to Austin, Mom and Dad have put a huge amount of time into their relationship. I’m shocked and impressed by how much they genuinely like each other. They give each other compliments all the time. They never stop finding tiny, absurd things to celebrate. They snort-laugh at each other’s jokes. They call it snorkeling.

I put my head down on the table. “Stop saying insightful things, it’s earrrrrrly.”

Tess has been home for less than a day and I’ve already snapped back into being the frustrating, whiny sidekick to her older-and-wiser-sister act. It’s not a conscious decision. It’s like making a recipe you’ve baked your way through a thousand times before; at some point, the grooves in your brain take over and you do it without thinking.

“Do you want some?” she asks, brandishing a mug at me.

“Coffee’s a liar,” I mutter, pouring a glass of ruby-clear cranberry juice instead.

“What are you talking about? Have you been drinking too much of this stuff at the bakery to stay awake? Is this what happens when you try to work a full-time job and finish high school at once?”

“My job is not the problem,” I insist. “Coffee smells one way and tastes another. That’s dishonest.”

Tess’s sudden attack on my baking ambitions feels out of place. She’s always been the first, last, and loudest to support me. But maybe it’s starting to wear on her that I’ve known what I want to do since I was in fifth grade, and she’s just starting to figure it out.

Tess loads three more pancakes on her plate, then draws chaotic syrup shapes over them.

“You have a meal plan at school, right?”

“Yeah, but nobody does this like you,” she says.

And it doesn’t matter how much we argue. When she says that, the compliment goes straight to my heart.

We’re chewing in silence when it occurs to me that I could have imbued these pancakes with some kind of feeling. I think back: the only thing I remember churning around as I whisked the batter was guilt.

Tess melts into the couch with a sigh. “I should have been here when W stomped on your ventricles.”

I shrug. “What’s done is done.”

Unless, of course, it was done by my brownies. Then it’s getting undone.

Tess looks at me sideways from her place in the folds of the couch. “You’re not as sad as I thought you’d be.”

“That’s good, right?”

Tess pulls her hair into a hasty bun. She has the exact same hair as I did, when I had hair. Soft and swishy and light brown. Forty percent, milk chocolate. I honestly don’t remember what it was like until I see hers, and then I get this funny feeling, like I’ve put my own hair on top of her head for safekeeping.

“Mom and Dad weren’t giving me details, but they were clearly worried that you were doing secret moping. They thought you and W would last forever, that you were destined and all that. They were completely unprepared. I’ve always known it would be my job to take care of you if and when the breakup occurred. That’s why I came home as fast as humanly possible. But you weren’t even here. If you were out chasing after W, I’m going to feel personally responsible.”

Waves of guilt rise up in quick, nauseating succession.

I shouldn’t have been at Harley’s last night.

I shouldn’t be able to move on this fast.

I shouldn’t have ignored my sister when I see Harley literally every day.

“Wait. Go back. You didn’t think W and I were meant to be together?”

“I don’t think anyone’s meant to be together. I think people choose to be together, and you were choosing W hard and often. I just wasn’t sure if she was choosing you back in the same way.”

“You neglected to mention any of that when we were dating.”

“I know.” She impales another piece of pancake, then just stares at it. “Most people don’t listen when I give relationship advice. It doesn’t mean I’m not brilliant.” Tess has never really dated anyone. In high school, she was always too busy being on the honor roll and consuming the entire YA room in the library downtown and playing every sport.

“Anyway, I don’t think the breakup trashed you completely,” she concludes.

“Thanks?”

“You look good, sis.” She pops the speared pancake into her mouth.

I wince at the word. It doesn’t hurt, exactly. More like the sting of lemon on a cut that I forgot about.

“How’s college?” I ask, rolling up a pancake like a scroll and dragging one end through the syrup. “You choose a major yet?”

“Ask me a less boring and yet somehow completely stressful question,” she says, balancing her coffee cup on the kangaroo pouch of her Northwestern University sweatshirt. Tess raced back to the Midwest the second she graduated from high school. Besides finding the heat here personally offensive, she’s always been more connected to the place where we were born. I’m only a few years younger, but I don’t have that same sense of being from Illinois.

Of course, some Texans think you’re not from Texas unless your grandfather’s horse’s grandfather was born here.

“Do you like the dorms?” I ask. “Are they cozy?”

She scrunches her nose.

“Make out with any co-eds yet?”

She scrunches her whole face.

I feel bad that I could never help Tess with her love life. Even if W and I didn’t last forever, at least we had some happiness first. Maybe now that Tess is swimming in a whole new dating pool, things will change.

“Listen, everybody said I was over high school boys, and I’d find someone great in college, but that’s not why I’m there. I wish people would stop bringing it up. You’re even worse than Mom and Dad. It’s practically Victorian. Next you’re going to break out the marmalade and start talking about marriage prospects.”

“I put marmalade on pancakes one time,” I say, spearing a final bite self-righteously. “It wasn’t even bad! And excuse me for being excited that I might be allowed to marry someone I love someday,” I add in a cakey mumble.

Tess puffs air out, her stomach deflating, coffee cup sinking. “Ugh. Yeah. Sorry.”

She knows that I’ve had nightmares — that I’ve literally dreamed I was walking down the aisle only to have someone shout out, mid-ceremony, that the DOMA ruling had been overturned. It gets a lot weirder from there. Usually I run in slow motion as my wedding outfit, a pair of white silk overalls, frays to pieces. My blurry spouse-to-be gets upset and takes it out on the cake. Which I made, of course, a ten-tier strawberry shortcake — real shortcake, which doesn’t stack well. The cake falls apart spectacularly, and the redacted love of my life leaves, but I’m not allowed to stop the party because everyone else is having so much fun. Then there’s an upsetting dance break: the nightmare version of the spontaneous musical number in a rom-com. At the end of the reception, most people take the wedding gifts back, but someone leaves me a baby giraffe, because even though I’m not married they can’t return it to the zoo.

I grab my backpack and scowl at my sister for reminding me of this. It’s not fun to admit, but maybe I’m a little obsessed with love because I’m afraid that, at any moment, it could be snatched away.

The school parking lot is inundated with Friday afternoon madness. Harley has to swim upstream to get to me. “This does not look like your scene,” they say, handing over the plastic container of scones in individual paper bags. They look like party favors, but instead of goodie bags, they’re breakup bags. I immediately smuggle them into my trunk.

“What? Illicit scone drops? I do these all the time.”

Harley looks around again. “I only check in at my high school once a week at this point. Being here is kind of weird. It’s making me nostalgic for a thing I never did. There should be an obscure German word for that.”

This is probably part of why I’ve always felt so comfortable around Harley. Neither of us went through the Standard All-Inclusive American Teen Experience. It’s something I’m sure I felt before I fully knew why.

“I still can’t believe you’re halfway through college,” I admit. It makes me feel a little behind on real life, as if I exist in an alternate dimension where only baked goods and broken hearts matter.

“I still can’t believe you made magical scones in my kitchen last night,” Harley counters. “But I know you did, because I came very close to eating them all and inventing some kind of lie about a magical mugging.”

We get into my car. The drive down to Barton Springs feels like it takes only a few heartbeats.

I get an impossible parking spot, right in the shade, and as much as I’d love to linger here with Harley and do really, really standard teenage things, we both leap out of the car, ready to field test our scones.

“Sorry. No food allowed past this point.”

The sweaty person running the Barton Springs ticket shack looks genuinely apologetic. And did I mention sweaty? Ordinarily I would offer them a scone, but these are reserved for the lovelorn.

“Oh. Right.”

“We’re not going to swim?” Harley asks me, looking a little lorn, too. They must really like swimming.

“We’ll go in as soon as Verónica and Araceli have their scones,” I promise.

Fortunately, the south entrance to Barton Springs is basically a big open field where people park their cars, with little kids running around flinging droplets in every direction, people on dates icing each other with generous amounts of sunblock. It’s the perfect place for a picnic. I open the scones and settle them on an impromptu picnic blanket, also known as my shirt. Then I take off my shorts.

“Um, you’re wearing a bikini,” Harley says.

“Um, yes?”

“It looks good,” Harley says with what sounds like a very dry mouth. And then they immediately add, “It looks like you.”

“Oh. Good. Genderless bathing suit isn’t really an option that most stores carry, so shopping sucked.” I try to keep my tone fluffy, but the truth is that my mom took me on an increasingly frantic mall trip that turned into an entire week of depression on my part, and apology pizza on hers. She thought I was going through a teen girl there’s-too-much-pressure-on-my-body phase. She tried so hard to help. I would just stand and stare at myself in the dressing room mirrors and I wouldn’t show her any of the options. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I hated the suits, or even that I hated how my body looked in the suits. I just couldn’t say yes. That word got farther and farther away from me; yes was there and real and life-size, and then I was hurtling away from it until I was in outer space, and there was no oxygen left, and it was cold, and I wasn’t supposed to be alive. Not in that kind of environment, at least.

“My sister found this for me,” I say. “She’s good at online shopping.”

She also knows me really well. Tess might not always be aware of queer culture, or the way my life is different from hers, but, occasionally, she saves the day just by being my sister. She remembered that I’ve always liked my midriff area. She knows that I don’t want my chest to feel like it’s about to pop out of whatever I’m wearing, hence the high-necked halter top. The bottoms are boy shorts, which I’m basically wearing every day under my clothes. And then there are the colors — royal blue with rainbow racing stripes up the side — which was just Tess daring me not to love them.

“What did you think I’d be wearing?” I ask, letting the question spill, even though it might lead to a mess.

“A one-piece, maybe?” Harley tries. “Like those sporty suits.”

“That sounds good in theory.”

There were so many things that I wanted to wear, things that sounded good in theory. But for the most part, they were designed to look good on very thin, “properly” androgynous people. I gave up on them a long time ago and decided to patchwork together other styles. When it worked, it was fun. Sometimes it felt like I was putting the weight of my entire identity on a few flimsy bits of fabric, though. Some days I could barely get dressed at all. Some days I stared at my closet like it owed me answers instead of jeans.

“What about you?” I ask.

“You mean my suit? It’s pretty basic, I guess.”

I sit back, wanting a good angle for the big reveal. Harley watches what I’m doing with a growing smirk.

“Are you waiting for me to strip, Syd?”

“Absolutely, yes.” My cheeks broil.

“I have to get changed when we go inside,” Harley says, patting their messenger bag. “My suit’s in here.”

So we stretch out and talk, letting the smell of the scones waft away. I’m not sure how long the magic will take to spread to Araceli and Verónica, wherever they are.

The good news is that even after days of spending constant time together, our conversation hasn’t run dry. When I’m halfway into a monologue about how the word y’all is a gender-neutral national treasure, Vin marches up to us. I was hoping he and Alec might show up, confirming my hypothesis about the power of these scones.

Of course, in my head, I wasn’t picturing his bathing suit. Or his chest hair.

“Syd. Harley. You’re here.”

“And you’re . . . in zebra stripes,” I say crisply.

He looks down at himself like he forgot. “These are fashion.”

“Are they, though?” Harley mutters.

“I heard I missed out on your olive oil cake,” Vin says, pretending Harley didn’t just speak. Vin is possibly the biggest fan of my bakes that include Italian ingredients, which is one of the reasons I assumed the Very Sorry Cake would call out to him. He’s a hundred percent Italian, though he would say it’s more; our people are skilled at exaggerating. I’m three-quarters: Mom’s side and half of Dad’s. Together, Vin and I developed a gianduja muffin for the bakery that would make someone who loves jarred Nutella weep, and spent hours bonding over the very specific joys of baking with Italian cheeses.

“Sorry about the cake,” I say, thinking of the miniscule monsters at Rae and Jay’s who ate my backup round. “I do have scones, though!” I hold them up, shaking the plastic container ever so slightly. I have a flashback to Girl Scouts, pushing boxes of Thin Mints at everyone I knew while silently critiquing their cardboard crumb. Girl Scouts was tough, for a variety of reasons. The girls in my troop didn’t know what to do with me, I didn’t know why I felt so out of place, and in the end, I only sold six boxes of Samoas to my mom. Samoas are actually pretty good.

“Good, good,” Vin says, echoing my thoughts as he turns over one of my scones. “Beautiful color.”

“They’re just scones,” I say, suddenly embarrassed to be offering Vin something so simple. I’ve always felt like I should impress my bosses by pushing for ever-fancier bakes with wildly elaborate presentation. But the truth is, both he and Alec love food in a way that completely lacks snobbery. Alec knows how to construct the world’s most complicated tiered cakes and tarted-up tarts, but when they opened their own place, Vin and Alec agreed on homestyle baking, where the emphasis is always on how it tastes and how it makes you feel over how it looks in a display case. It’s one of the things that makes the Proud Muffin feel so much like a big family reunion. We’ve got good, simple food, rampant gossip, endless fighting, fierce love.

“Just scones,” Vin scoffs.

He takes one and makes quick work of it. I can feel Harley reach for my fingers, squeeze. We’re waiting for the magic — for the moment when his manner shifts, his smile sparks, and he wants Alec in a whole new way.

“Hmmm.” Vin chews, thoughtful, but with a lid closed tight over whatever those thoughts actually are. His darkly stubbled chin travels up and down, up and down as his chewing slows.

Harley’s fingers are like a tourniquet around mine, keeping most of the fear in. I need this to work. It’s going to work.

“Thanks, Syd,” he says. “Harley.” He nods. “Well, I came to get in a swim before I get back to some paperwork, so . . .”

He turns to leave.

“Don’t you want one to take to Alec?” I ask, my voice sounding like the horrible croak of a grackle, the long-beaked nightmare birds that haunt the power lines in Austin and attack any stray bit of food.

“Oh.” Vin angles back to me, looking a little surprised, trying not to show it. “Actually we’re both so busy that I don’t think I’ll see him until tomorrow. And you know scones. They dry out so fast . . .”

“Not mine!” I say. “Coconut milk.”

“Ah.” Vin nods appreciatively. “Some folks are hell-bent on heavy cream, but I see how that could work.” We don’t sell scones at the bakery, to keep the spotlight on muffins. Normally I would argue him into letting me try them as a special. Today all I care about is seeing him back together with Alec, the way they’re meant to be.

Maybe my sister doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. But I do.

Vin nods at us one more time and heads toward the pool.

“Can we go swimming now?” Harley asks.

“Did you see that?” I ask. “He has no idea where Alec even is. They’re presenting a united front at the bakery, but . . .”

I watch Vin’s retreat carefully. Are the zebra shorts a sign? A way for him to state that he’s single and free to make bold, questionable choices? Those shorts could mean nothing, or everything.

“Well, the scones seem to be working, so Alec should be here soon. What kind of bathing suit do you think he wears?” Harley asks, bouncing in a cross-legged position. “Tweed? Corduroy? Houndstooth?”

We take bets, but as it turns out about ten minutes later, neither of us is right.

Alec is wearing a Speedo.

Harley and I are so mesmerized by the sudden sight of our boss striding into Barton Springs wearing a single band of fabric, unless you include his flip-flops. Which I don’t. It’s like when I saw my fourth-period teacher out on Sixth Street in her low-cut party shirt, but times a million.

“Ummmmm. Can I be the first to say that Alec can get it?” Harley whispers.

“Oh.” I emergency-tap their arm. “What if he’s here getting it?”

“Looking for someone new?” Harley asks, face crinkling like old cling wrap. “No. No. Even if they’re broken up, they’ve been together for a really long time. They’re Vin and Alec. Neither of them would be on to the next guy so fast.”

I restrain myself from mentioning that W and I have been broken up for the same amount of time, and yet I’m sitting here with Harley, on a tiny picnic blanket that is also my discarded clothing.

My head goes back to the walk-in freezer, watching through a crack in the door. I’ve tried so hard not to think about that argument, but . . .

“I heard Alec say that Vin was ‘being wooed.’” Something inside of me curls up at the memory. “I don’t know the details, but it sounded serious.”

“I guess that changes things. Maybe Alec feels like he should be . . . out there? Looking? Even moving on?” The consequences play out on Harley’s face. Vin and Alec’s relationship really could be snapping under the weight of lies and new love interests. And that could spell doom for the Proud Muffin. For all of us. “We have to get Alec the scone. Now.”

I’m not sure if we should, though. If Vin really does have feelings for someone else, Alec deserves a clean breakup, right? But if Alec didn’t want to fall back in love with Vin, he wouldn’t be here. Right?

Just like making macarons, this plan looked neat and pretty in my head, but it’s kind of a disaster in real life.

When I look up, Alec is already passing the entrance.

We run after him, sliding to a halt when a voice snaps out “Stop” from the little wooden shack. The sweaty ticket giver was nice the first time. Now they just look disgruntled. “No. Food. Inside.”

Harley and I back away, our hands up like we’re common criminals.

As soon as we’re out of sight around the side of the little shack, I turn to Harley. “We have to smuggle this in,” I whisper, pushing it at them. “You’re the one with pockets.”

“The attendant is already on to us. If I put it in my pockets, they’ll see, you know, a bulge.”

“It’s not supposed to be on the side like that, is it?” I ask, pretending to know even less than I do. “My penis education has been, uh, lacking.”

Harley folds in half, laughing. When they come back up, they say, “Traditionally it goes in the front.”

“Well, your shorts are still the roomiest thing we’ve got . . .”

“I’m not packing with a scone!” Harley whisper-shouts, and now we’re both on the grass, completely collapsed with laughter. Then Harley rolls over and look at me with a smile that feels quieter, thoughtful.

“What?” I ask.

“I just like that I can make that joke with you and feel completely comfortable. You know?”

I do. I really, really do.

“Okay,” I say, rolling up to sitting. “I think we’re going to need a different strategy.”

I pull the top of my suit forward and shove the scone in. The paper bag crinkles and scratches on the way down, but the vaguely round scone lodges in the center of my chest — and the halter makes the whole thing look more or less smooth.

Tess really did pick the perfect bathing suit.

“I’ll stay here and make sure Verónica and Araceli get theirs,” Harley calls out as I head back to the entrance for a third time.

“Thanks,” I say, giving Harley a backward thumbs-up. Normally I wouldn’t outsource any part of this.

But I trust them.

And I have to fix things with Alec, before this gets any worse.

I’ve lived in Austin for five years, but Barton Springs still looks like the enchanted heart of a city where it’s always summer.

The water is the first thing that grabs your attention, the same way it grabs the light. It’s not a stinging chlorinated color but a gemlike blue green. The bottom is natural, mossy and slick with stones, the sides rimmed with concrete. That might take away the charm for some people, but to me it seems like the perfect, polite southern nod to the city’s balance: living, breathing green rubbing right up against brick and glass.

I like all the nearby springs — Deep Eddy is more like a swimming pool, and if you have a car, you can drive half an hour out of the city to Krause Springs, where you will find not only rope swings, icy full-body refreshment, and a thick slice of country quiet but also a butterfly garden with wind chimes as big as your entire body, if you’re into that sort of thing. But Barton Springs is the first place I ever went swimming in Austin, and it’s the one I love most.

It’s also enormous: the length of at least three regular pools, and wide enough that I can’t hold my breath when I swim underwater from side to side, though W can. Which means that when I spot Alec on the other side, I scurry as fast as I can without running, which will get me kicked out faster than illicit snacks. People from all over the city and the suburbs and visitors to Austin throng on all sides, actually cool enough to coexist.

When I reach Alec, he’s reading a big tome hoisted high, basically a shield against social interaction. It’s Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Baking Bible. Of course, he’s the one person at Barton Springs reading a cookbook end to end, like a novel. He’s dog-earing every recipe he likes, which appears to be every recipe in the book. Alec is doing the exact opposite of flirting with strangers, and I’m so, so, so glad that he doesn’t have his taxi light on.

That’s what W called it. I don’t know where she came up with this, but around sophomore year she started insisting that there were two basic states when it came to love: being open to a new relationship and being spoken for. Not just technically, in the eyes of the world, but in your heart. If you were really, truly taken, your taxi light was off.

“What about polyamorous people?” I asked.

“You can fit more than one person into a taxi,” W said a little thinly, like I was being thick on purpose.

Maybe I was.

“That’s not an up-to-date metaphor,” I pressed. “People don’t use taxis. They just rideshare or take those dumb scooters everywhere.”

“Those scooters,” W said, and then we were off on a sideways rant about the scooters that flock around the city, carrying drunk college students everywhere while the rest of us try not to kill them, or ourselves.

Alec has officially noticed me watching him read. His book comes down one inch at a time, and when it becomes clear that I’m not going anywhere, he finally turns it upside down and rests it across his lap — gracefully covering the Speedo, thank you, Alec.

“Syd?” he asks, waiting for me to explain my sudden presence.

“I have something for you,” I say.

I hold out the brown paper bag. Alec’s pinched frown interrogates me without words.

“It’s not booze or anything weird,” I say. Then I remember that I’m offering him magical baked goods I made in an attempt to fix the fact that, with other magical baked goods, I unknowingly pushed his relationship to the brink of destruction.

It is something weird.

“It’s a scone,” he says with a glimmer of a smile as I pull it out of the bag. “You know, I love that you found time for these.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Oh, just . . .” He hefts the sizeable cookbook, showing off all of his marked pages. “I want to bake everything, but, strangely enough, owning a bakery can make it much, much harder. This is my one afternoon off all week, and coming here to cool off was about all I could manage.”

I’m standing there in the high beams of the sun, sweating from my neck to the back of the knees, completely stuck in place by Alec’s words.

“Enjoy the days of your life that are all about doing what you love. For people like us, this is what it all comes down to, right?” Alec holds up the scone in the world’s saddest kind of cheers.

He hides behind his book, makes a few discreet chomping sounds, and about twenty seconds later, he’s back. Alec looks a little hazy and gently dazzled, like the sun has gotten to him, but not in a bad way.

And then it’s my turn to be dazzled. I look up to find Harley’s silhouette, the sun kissing their shoulder.

It’s a pretty dramatic bathing suit reveal.

I’m fatally dry-mouthed looking at them in their compact, seamless black wetsuit, cut mid-thigh where their muscles are visibly strong from biking, sliced off at the shoulders, high-necked so that when they turn a bit I can see the curls that stick to their collar.

“Uh, hi.”

Alec can probably hear my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

“Are y’all . . . ?” Alec waves his hand, erasing his last words before I can even angst over them. He probably doesn’t want to know which of his employees are dating each other. Which is fair.

Harley and I aren’t together, not in any kind of official or tangible way. But Harley has become the person I want to talk to when my brain starts to itch, the one I save my best jokes for, the one whose bathing suit gives me a minor aneurysm. And we only met because of the Proud Muffin. In a way, Vin and Alec’s magic brought us together, as much as mine took them apart.

I swallow the guilt, but it goes down dry.

“Alec, I think I saw Vin over by the deep end,” I blurt. “Just look for the Italian zebra.”

Alec looks from me to Harley. From Harley to me. He seems to make a decision, stands up, and tucks his book beneath his arm. “Have a good day, you two.”

“Should I follow him?” I ask as soon as Alec is out of earshot. “To make sure the scones work?”

Vin and Alec find each other at the far end of the pool. “You have to let the magic do its thing, right?” Harley asks.

“Right,” I say. “Right.”

In an attempt not to cramp their style or crowd their private moment, I scan the slope with all the sunbathers on it. And I see someone else I know from the Proud Muffin.

Jessalee is over there, looking entirely too picturesque. She’s wearing a cotton two-piece in excellent condition, the kind that you can only find if you shop deep vintage. It’s the bright yellow of European butter — yes, it’s different from American butter — shot through with blue plaid. Her hair has faded from a vivid blue, pulled up tight enough to show dark blond roots. She’s writing in a notebook at top speed. She looks consumed by her own thoughts, otherwise I might wave.

“Did anyone else come by for the scones?” I ask.

“Araceli and Verónica,” Harley said. “They showed up separately, but each wandered over to ask about the incredible smell. They were each given a scone and a reminder to wait twenty minutes before swimming.”

I whip up a smile. I was secretly hoping some of our other couples would make an appearance. They must need different bakes. Even if we can get Araceli and Verónica back together, that still leaves Kit and Aadi, Martin Thomas and whoever Martin Thomas used to date, and the mysterious all-cash customer.

“So where are the other scones?” I ask.

“I left them outside.”

“Where anyone could take them?”

“I mean, they’re on top of your car, wrapped up in your T-shirt. It would be pretty weird if somebody ate them.”

“Harley.” I lower my voice to a confidential pitch, like I’m letting them in on some big secret. “Austin is a weird place.”

Keep Austin Weird might have started out as a motto on T-shirts, but now it’s emblazoned on my brain. It’s a prayer, a plea, a hope. Weird is so much of what I love about this city, and I don’t know what’s going to happen when it’s gone.

“There they are.” Harley points out two swimmers at opposite ends of the pool.

Verónica is swimming laps, her arms cutting out of the water, a neon blue swimming cap making her easy to spot as she surfaces for a breath. Araceli floats on her back in the same red fifties-style suit she wore in the photo, serene, unsmiling, big white sunglasses shading her freckled brown cheeks.

They’re completely unaware of each other, spinning in their own little orbits around a moment that I hope is becoming more and more inevitable.

Verónica finishes a lap and stops at the side of the pool. She hangs out with her arms folded over the side, shoulders in the sun and the rest of her still bobbing in the water. I can see her more clearly now.

“I made their cake,” I say, groaning into my hands. “I made their cake and now I’m the reason they won’t have another cake.”

“We just have to get them a little closer to each other,” Harley says, walking us down to the edge of the pool. “The scones will do the rest.”

If they’re still primed to fall back in love with each other.

“So how do we . . . ?”

Harley’s already answered my question by taking to the air, touching their toes, and jackknifing into the water. They come up spitting and glowing with a sort of frozen glee. The water in Barton Springs is naturally, famously cold. “Come on, Syd.”

“They really should have waited twenty minutes,” I mutter, then leap in.

Water makes its relentless way up my nose. A riot of bubbles releases as I let go of my breath. After the water seals back over me, I tuck my knees and let myself sink for just a second. I pretend that I’m just a normal, bored teenager here with friends, trying to break the heat. I let everything go: all of the relationships I have to save as soon as I surface. It’s too cold to stay down for long, though.

When I come back up, Harley is waiting to splash me.

The water explodes into rainbows, refracting as it breaks into pieces and falls cold over both of us. Our laughter breaks just like that. Bright pieces of it fall and then stop as I push a wave of water back at Harley. They dart away from me, fast as an otter. I follow, shouting and spluttering.

“Come on,” they say. “You can’t catch me.”

I really can’t. I’m an okay swimmer, but Harley has clearly done this a lot. They bob and weave through the crowded springs, glancing at me over their shoulder, grinning like it’s no big deal to do this backward.

But Harley isn’t flirting with me — or they aren’t just flirting with me. They’re being strategic, shepherding the rest of the swimmers closer and closer together, until Verónica’s laps intersect directly with the path of Araceli’s floating.

I wince, waiting for it.

The crash. The cry of “Watch it!”

Followed by the moment when Araceli flips around, trying to see who ran into her. “Is that —?” She takes off her sunglasses and gasps, like she’s been holding it in until the moment she’s sure that Verónica is the one who collided with her.

I wonder about all of their other collisions. The good ones, the bad ones, the little accidents and sleepy wake-ups when someone’s elbow wandered into someone else’s face. I want all of that.

Araceli and Verónica are softly treading water now, facing each other.

Harley sticks close as I swim up behind them and casually — very casually — listen to every single thing they’re saying.

“It’s really you.”

“Couldn’t stay away, I guess,” Verónica says, and it sounds like she might be talking about her inability to stay away from more than Barton Springs. She stares at Araceli for a long beat, then glances away.

Araceli doesn’t seem to notice that longing-soaked look, or maybe she’s just afraid to really see it. “Why would you be anywhere else, really?” she asks. “Swimming on a hot day is like . . .”

“Being awake while you’re dreaming,” Verónica finishes for her.

The light seems to go on behind Araceli’s smile. “I forgot how good you were at that.”

“At what?” Verónica asks.

“Making life sound dreamy.”

It sounds like they’re working up some sparks, but I want to hear more. The water is deep, though, and my legs get tired faster than I want to admit. I lock my arms around Harley’s neck. Just for a second.

They pull me in. My body slides against theirs in that weightless, watery way.

And I swear my legs do this without my brain telling them to. They latch around Harley’s hips. They pull me closer than the closest we’ve been so far. We’re face to face, boldly ignoring the fact that our bodies are basically fused. Each daring the other one to mention it. Harley is holding both of us up now, working hard. I can’t tell if they’re working up to something or holding it back. Either way, a total focus takes over their face. They blink hard, breathe harder.

We bob there, smiling like we’ve just figured something out. I touch a spot on Harley’s face where water has turned a dimple into a tiny well.

“This isn’t what we’re here to do,” I say.

“Then let’s go somewhere else,” Harley says hoarsely.

When I turn around, Araceli and Verónica are laughing at something one of them said, cackling really, heads back. Verónica touches Araceli’s face. They’re both glistening with water and glowing with sun as they swim around each other, around and around, a circle that never ends.

If that isn’t shiny, I don’t know what is.

“Come on,” Harley says. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” I ask.

But I know it doesn’t strictly matter. I just want to keep going new places with them.

We swim to the edge of the pool, hoist our bodies into the air. Things have changed while we were in the water. The world has lost a little bit of harshness. Even the air feels kinder, gentler.

We didn’t bring towels. I put my arms around Harley, like I’m going to somehow absorb their shivering, make them warm and dry.

“Why don’t you meet me back at the car?” Harley asks. “I want to get out of my suit.”

My feet pick up wet grass as I walk back to the south entrance. I stop as soon as I’m out, and catch my breath from all the swimming. Then I get a glimpse of zebra stripes and peer around the side of the little shack.

Vin and Alec are making out back there.

Not like grandpas.

“Oh,” I say, so happy and also slightly weirded out.

I run away with my hands over my mouth. When I look back, Harley hasn’t come out yet, so I cross the field to the car.

Where W is standing, wearing her shortest shorts with the longest cut-off strings, the ones that dangle halfway to her knees. Where W is leaning over the hood of my car, before she straightens with a jolt.

“Syd,” she says, like I’ve caught her. Like she’s guilty of something.

Besides breaking up with me and never really saying why.

“I was going to leave before you came back.” I’d forgotten the deep scratch in her voice, like she was always finding some itch I didn’t know I had.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. It sounds like an accusation. Like everyone in Austin isn’t at Barton Springs, all the time.

“Uh, swimming?” she says with one of her winning smiles. She gives them to everyone, the way I hand out warm cookies. I guess we all have things we hand out to make sure people like us when we’re afraid they won’t.

But I used to get her real smiles. The ones that slid from one corner of her lips to the other. The ones that looked like a string of Christmas lights.

She holds up a pen. “I saw your car and I thought I’d leave you a note.” W is the master of the windshield note. I used to love the little scraps of her feelings that she’d leave for me to find tucked between the wiper blade and the glass.

But there’s no note there.

“I got distracted,” she says, following my line of thought as easily as she tracks my line of sight. “This, uh, smells incredible.” She tosses something up in the air. A puck of gingery goodness she has just plucked from a butter-stained paper bag. A scone.

My scone.

“That’s not for you,” I say, words blazing out.

But none of the other couples showed, and for a lurching second, I want to give the scone to W. I’ve always wanted to say yes to her, from that first time we kissed in that sweaty middle school bedroom at someone’s long-forgotten birthday party.

“How’s the Muffin?” she asks. Before I can formulate a response that leaves out the fact I accidentally broke up my bosses, she keeps going. “I saw Gemma and Marisol the other night. They said you were doing okay.”

That depends on what you think the ingredients in okay are.

But I don’t say that.

I say, “You actually spoke to Marisol?”

“Sure.” W shrugs. Her shoulders are splashed with freckles. Her bluebell-colored tank top is old, faded by sun and every summer of us together. I wish she was wearing something new, even if it was unbearably hot. I wish I didn’t look at the bleach spot near the bottom and think about the time we tried to put a Rogue streak in her dark hair because she went through a year-long obsession with the X-Men.

I look at the scone in W’s hands. It looks even better than when I first baked it. She was drawn to it for a reason. She could fall for me all over again. If she took a bite, would we fall back together different? Better?

I close my eyes. I see the future.

It’s us, together, even if college carries her far away. It’s us on the phone until dawn, weekend road trips, every pocket of time that we can find until we’re back in the same city, picking our first crappy apartment and filling it with bright furniture. W right there when I open a bakery someday. Me right there when she has a baby someday.

Maybe all that stuff makes no sense to think about when you’re still in high school.

But I did. We did.

When I open my eyes, though? That future is sun-faded, it’s an old photograph, it’s already tucked away in a box. Until this moment, I didn’t know that an entire future could be part of your past.

“Sorry,” I say. “I really need that back.” W and I broke up due to natural causes, not magical brownies.

Besides. I wouldn’t even have that scone if it weren’t for Harley.

Harley, who just caught up to me but stopped a safe distance away. Harley, whose swimsuit is a drenched ball in their fist, whose face I can’t read, but for some reason I break out in a fresh round of goosebumps.

The feelings in these scones weren’t about W. They had nothing to do with her.

“You couldn’t bake another batch later?” she asks, not sounding pushy, just a little forlorn.

There it is again. We’re all lorn of something, but whatever I’m missing — it’s not W. I still think she’s one of the prettiest girls on the planet, and I still want to know if she’s applying early decision to NYU next year, and I still wonder what she’s doing with all of the time we used to spend together. But I don’t actually want to leave Barton Springs with her. She’s not part of my day anymore.

I hold out my hand.

And W gives the scone back.

I hold out my other hand.

And Harley takes it.

 

Harley (sorry, no substitutions)

1 epic trip to a natural spring-fed pool, Barton Springs being the obvious choice

1 to 2 hours at BookPeople

2 milkshakes at 24 Diner (roasted banana brown sugar is my favorite)

2 bikes

4 (at least) street tacos purchased from a truck (not Torchy’s, unless what you’re really looking forward to are the chips and queso you get on the side, in which case FINE)

2 orders of queso

Spend as much time as you like at the springs, swimming.

When it gets too hot for anything but AC, wander over to BookPeople. Run wild among the stacks. If you have the funds, definitely buy a book. Maybe one of Ruth Reichl’s food memoirs? Just an idea.

Cross North Lamar Boulevard. Sit in a booth at 24 Diner with your elbows on the table, talking about everything. When your roasted banana brown sugar milkshake finally comes, point out the dollop of homemade whipped cream on top, the freckles of nutmeg. Perfection is in the details.

Drink that milkshake.

Drive back to Zilker Park and take a walk along the lakeside. Be careful, though. Those black swans nesting by the shore are just as intense as they look.

As the afternoon turns Creamsicle orange, rent two bikes down by the lake.

Wobble at first. Remind yourself that you’ve done this before. Bike harder, gaining speed and confidence just in time to fall down. No, don’t worry about your bloody knee. Yes, get back on the bike.

Keep riding until your muscles ache, in the good way.

Return the rentals just as the sky turns from orange to blue. Walk to the taco truck. Order all of it.

Wait until the night cools completely and then slice everything into little memories.