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me.”
    “Do you understand why?”
    “Yes…but…”
    “But what? You really expected her to be all, it’s cool ?”
    “But I want her to talk to me about it. What I did was wrong. I know. I should never have sent a stranger a picture. Period. Especially one with my friends in it. Believe me. I’ve thought about every way I’ve fucked up since we left the beach.” Tamara leaned forward, her forehead on the hot steering wheel. “I’m going to make this right.”
    “Talk to your therapist yet?”
    “Yes, yesterday, actually.” Tamara hadn’t left anything out, in the hopes that maybe Piper would open up in her next session. Hell, maybe they could do another one of those sit-ins, where they did an hour together.
    “You get any good insight there?”
    “Nothing new, but it was good to talk it all out. I really am going to make this right.”
    “How are you going to do that?”
    “I…don’t know yet. Stephen called me and…I fucked it up more. I tried to tell him but…I couldn’t get it out.”
    Her stomach churned. There was a very easy way to set the record straight, but that meant doing the one thing she didn’t want to do.
    Getting face to face with the object of her affections, and that meant letting him into the shit-storm that was her life. She couldn’t lie and say she didn’t want to see him. Right now she was craving his voice, and she ached from the severed connection. She’d grown to rely on him. He wasn’t just her friends-with-benefits guy; he was…the person she talked to about the girls when they were being obnoxious. The person who got the non-girly parts of herself. And…she missed him.
    What had begun as protecting her privacy and identity had crossed the line a long time ago. She cared for him to the point she was scared of losing him if he found out everything about her. Was it better this way? Or was she tormenting herself for no reason?
    “Well, you better figure it out because I do not want to have to sit between the two of you at CosCon. What about dick gif guy?”
    “Stephen. His name is Stephen.” Her stomach churned in a whole new way.
    “Sorry, you just said that, didn’t you? I’m losing my ever-loving brain, I swear. What about Stephen?”
    Tamara chose to let it go. Rashae was horrible with names and juggling enough of her own stuff to keep Tamara’s life in order, too. It wasn’t like Rashae was having a cake walk of a time right now either. Her father had just been appointed the Secretary of State. As in, of the United States. And that carried with it a whole load of responsibility and scrutiny.
    “He won’t answer my chats. I think he still wants to meet.”
    “Do you want to meet him?”
    “I…” She sighed. “Yeah. Yes, I want to meet him. I miss him and it’s crazy because I’ve never met him, but we’ve never gone this long without talking. I just…don’t know how it’s going to go. I have to at least call him back and tell him I’m not Piper. I can’t do that without telling him who I am, and…I guess…I don’t know.” Or Rashae. Or Miranda. Or anyone else in that picture—except herself.
    “This is weird. You aren’t normally all…this. Uncertain. He’s got under your skin, and he’s pushing for more. I doubt he’s totally clueless about who and what you are. He figured out Piper from the picture, he’s probably looked everyone of us up. Besides, A guy with a dick like that can’t be half bad. And if he is, that’s what a gag is for.”
    Tamara chuckled and swallowed down the butterflies.
    She had a face. And a name. And a whole life. Stephen wasn’t all that secretive about his online foot print and once she’d figured it out, she’d become his Internet stalker. She’d known he was smart. Wickedly smart in all the ways that made her weak in the knees. She just hadn’t realized how off-the-charts he was, until she really dug into him.
    What was a guy like that doing in cyber chats?
    Maybe the port-wine birthmark on his