Cat had even less time to get dressed after work. To make matters worse, Hannah was in the room while she was finding something to wear, so she had to somehow make it look like she wasn’t trying to look as cute as she was.

“Is it cold out?” Cat asked as she faced her closet in her robe. She loved dresses, always looked good in them. Who didn’t look good in dresses? Even men did. Scottish men understood that, too. But did she need tights? Would that look like she was trying to hard?

Hannah looked up from her laptop, shrugging.

“I dunno. You were the one that was just outside.” Right. Cat let out a thoughtful sound, but her roommate shut her laptop with a snap. “Anyway, uh, do you think you could be ready in ten minutes?” Ten minutes? Looking as good as she did was a process! Almost blindly, Cat snatched a baby blue dress off a hanger and turned around, heart suddenly aflutter.

“Sorry! I didn’t know we had a reservation,” she said hurriedly, “I would’ve skipped showering….”

“No, no, not a reservation,” Hannah reassured while Cat stepped into her dress. “Just we want to make sure we have plenty of time. We normally leave like an hour and a half ago, but you were working, so we pushed it out.”

“Oh. Thank you.” But as she threw her robe on her bed and reached for her hairbrush, she still looked to Hannah with questions in her eyes. Why rush? Was she just hangry?

“Peter’s got work in two hours….” Oh. Cat answered her original question by shaking her head yes, though it would be difficult to do hair and makeup in ten minutes. Hair would have to wait.

Cat was ready in fifteen minutes, though still braiding small locks of her hair on her way to the parking lot where they met Kelsey and Peter. Kelsey’s beat-up Honda was idling, and Peter held a set of keys in his hands in front of a white truck. Of course he had a truck. All dickheads had trucks.

As she started to pull her hair into a bun, the four of them exchanged pleasantries and waited for Cam for just another minute. And, with girls on one car and guys in another, they drove to La Hacienda without any conflict. Yet.

At first, Hannah commented, “That wasn’t so bad. Maybe you two can be adults.” She twisted around the front seat to stick her tongue out at Cat, who made a face.

“I love Mexican food more than I hate Peter,” she said, shrugging. The girls giggled for a bit, then spent the rest of the short drive making fun of Cam’s weird cargo-shorts.

The restaurant was packed; parking was difficult, but eventually the five of them reunited and got in line for a table. Cat found it easiest to just pretend like Peter wasn’t there. She didn’t look at him, didn’t respond to anything he said. She couldn’t even confidently say what color shirt he wore. No one seemed to notice that she was doing overtly, and Peter didn’t bring it up, so she got away with it until they were seated into a large booth. Peter claimed one end, Kelsey scooted in beside him, then Cam and Hannah, leaving Catherine on the opposite of Peter.

The host that sat them at the table took their drink orders and disappeared quickly, leaving everyone to catch up on their weeks.

Kelsey went first, describing how obnoxious her econ teacher was, how there was this girl in the class that kept leaving early and then asking her if there was homework. Cam lamented about a cute guy in his bio class that wouldn’t pay attention to his advances. Peter took his turn then, completely stealing Cat’s gaze. She noticed, for the first time, that he wore his regular button-up and slacks. Why was she surprised? She could have guessed that. Maybe she was more surprised he was actively staring her down.

Peter sighed. “My week was fine until I got a passive-aggressive email about an upcoming deadline for a debate.” Cat blinked at him, shaking her head.

“I didn’t send that.”

“I know. The professor did. To both of us.” While she hesitated, he continued, “We have to submit our preliminary arguments.”

“Oh. I didn’t see that yet.”

“Clearly.” He rolled his eyes, but before Cat could snap at him, Hannah sat up, bursting with excitement. She slammed her hands on the table to gather everyone’s attention.

“Did you guys hear about the party tonight that Sigma Sigma is throwing?”

“That the blue house across the street from campus?” asked Cam.

“Yeah! I wanted to go….” She scanned the group, starting with Cat, who shook her head.

“I really shouldn’t. I’ve got work at five thirty tomorrow.”

“Boo. Peter?”

“If I’m not too tired after work.” Though he didn’t sound convinced.

“I’ll go, too!” Kelsey jumped after Peter’s response. “I just have to leave early.” While Cat looked at her, almost surprised by the sudden outburst, Cam declined in favor of some sort of group meeting tomorrow morning.

“Awesome! It’s their warm-up party to get ready for Halloween,” Hannah explained. But, before she could get too far into it, a brunette waitress with a tray returned with their drinks, and passed them out. Notably, though, without the water that Cat requested.

"Disculpa!” Cat waved to her before she could leave. The short brunette paused, hovering by the table. ”Me traes un agua, por favor?”

The girl blinked. “What?”

"Me traes...un agua, por favor?” Catherine repeated, a little louder.

“Um...could you speak English?” the waitress asked. Cat blinked in surprise, hesitating to nod. This was the first time she’d ever been to a Mexican restaurant and the waiter or waitress didn’t know at least the basics of Spanish. “Auga” and “por favor” were pretty well known words. Anyone that lived in the area for at least a year would gather Cat was asking for water.

The waitress continued, “I don’t speak Spanish yet, it’s my first day. I bet I’ll be a pro in no time, though! They say Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn.” The peppy girl grinned widely, obviously very excited, but every word she said left Cat with a poor taste in her mouth. What the waitress said wasn’t explicitly insulting, but it was just patronizing enough to be obviously rude.

“Right,” Cat said, recoiling a little bit. “Might not be as easy as you think.” It was still an additional language to learn. The grammar didn’t directly translate, the alphabet wasn’t even identical.

“Oh! You do speak English! Why don’t you just speak English?” the waitress said with a laugh, pointing with her pen. “Your English is perfect!” Oh boy. No. Nooooope.

Cat forced a smile, then said, ”Tienes dientes de un burro.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Wishing you luck on the rest of your first day!” Cat lied with a big smile. “We’re good here.”

“Oh! Thanks!”

Peter stared at her as the girl walked away, judging, glaring, his piercing green eyes boring straight into her. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

Cameron sat up. “Said what? You understood that?”

Peter glanced at him for just a moment, mashing his lips together in thought. Cat watched his dimples dot his expression before he turned back to Cat and said, “Tienes dientes de un burro, y te pestas como uno tambien.”

Cat’s jaw dropped at his smugness. ”No manches! Si yo soy el burro, pues tu eres la cerrote que deje allado."

“This is somehow worse than when you guys insult each other in English,” muttered Kelsey, who deflated behind her giant lemonade.

“What are you saying?” Hannah pointed between the two with her straw.

“She told the waitress she had donkey teeth,” Peter said flatly.

Hannah let out a quick laugh. “And you said Cat had donkey teeth and…?”

Cat interrupted her to answer. “Smelled like one, so I called him a shit on the side of the road. Because that’s what he is. Leftover shit.”

“Do we have to separate you two now?”

“No,” the two answered in unison. Though Cat might have been a little faster on the draw, there. Not that it was a competition.

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Kelsey sighed, seemingly disinterested in scolding anyone, and turned to Peter. “I had no idea you spoke Spanish. Did you take it in high school?” Apparently, Cat’s sudden amusement was not as subtle of an expression as she thought. Cam and Hannah were already staring at her, but now Kelsey seemed to think she’d grown two heads.

“Hey!” Cat announced, rolling her shoulders back. “I’ve got a question. What’s his first name?” She pointed to Peter, and looked to the rest of their friends in the booth. Peter sighed heavily and looked to the ceiling, as if praying.

“Is that a serious question?” Hannah asked, laughing as she set down her tea. “Peter.”

“Nope!” Cat corrected, all while staring at him and waiting for him to respond.

“Your name’s not Peter?” Kelsey’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, and Cam seemed to be deep in thought.

“It’s Gerard,” Cam answered, though quietly. “Right? Peter’s your middle name?”

"Jerard,” Peter corrected through a sigh. “The ‘j’ is like an English ‘h’.”

“Oh, you’re Spanish!” Kelsey recognized.

“I was--”

Cat jumped up a little, pointing. “Yeah, and he’s a liar!”

“I did not lie--”

“Lying by omission.”

Kelsey interrupted their impending argument. “How did you find this out?”

“Not from hearing my name in roll call,” he muttered.

“Shut up. He eavesdropped on a conversation I had with my mom.”

“I did not eavesdrop! You were standing right next to me!”

“You knew that--” Before Cat could continue, Peter pulled his phone out of his pocket, halting all movement at the table. His grimace weighed down his shoulders, and before anyone could ask what was up, he slid out of the booth and said, “Gotta take this.” He was already walking away when he answered.

“That was weird,” Kelsey noted.

Hannah shrugged it off. “So, Cat, if I get in kind of late, I’ll try my best not to wake you up.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” She smiled to her roommate. “Do you know when the Halloween party is? I’ll get the next day off. I love Halloween.”

“I noticed you hung those little bats in your window,” Cam pointed out in amusement.

“That’s so cute,” said Kelsey. “I think I heard it’s that Friday before. Since Halloween is on, like a Tuesday or something. No costumes or anything, just Halloween-themed games and drinks.”

“That sounds like fun,” Cat said, grinning. “Bummer about the costumes. But yeah, I’ll see if I can swap my shifts around.”

“And I’ll let you know if the place ends up sucking tonight,” her roomie promised her.

“I mean….” Cat pulled out her phone, shrugging. “I could just see on Talkative.” The table laughed at her.

“I knew you’d love it. How many reactions do you have?” Kelsey leaned forward, pulling out her own phone. Cat shrugged.

“I didn’t keep track.”

“No, it’s in your profile.”

“Oh. I have a profile?” She took out her phone and switched to the app. Kelsey face-palmed, but Cam and Hannah just laughed at her.

“You dingus. Duh. How else do you message people?” Cat’s silence prompted more laughter. “I guess we didn’t really show you. But you click on your name, see your profile, you can edit it, put in one of those little avatars they have--I think they even have a cat one--and see your likes and messages and whatnot.”

Cat kept her lips pursed as she stared at her redheaded friend. “Messages,” she repeated. Finally, she glanced down to her phone and clicked on her name in the app, and to her immense horror, saw three unread messages. “Oh.”

“Oh, Cat!” Hannah cried through laughter. “You’re such an old lady!” While Cam and Kelsey found other ways to make fun of Cat and how much of an “old lady” she was, from typing super slow and not knowing how phones worked, she clicked on the unread messages.

One was a welcome message from Talkative, with hyperlinks to a forum for technical help (She’d have to check that out later), one was an emoji of an eggplant from a user named PlayaHatinGame, and the final one, which made her heart skip a beat, was from PumpkinKing.

She clicked on it, all the while ignoring the banshee-like laughter from her friends. It read, “PandaSex69 ruins everything. Except, well, Panda populations.” Ha!

Oh, good lord. This message was from Monday? From when she first got the app? Cat sighed.

“Alright, I’ma go pee before they take our order. If they take it before I’m back, I’ll just have the carne asada with rice and refried beans.” She slid from her spot in the booth, and glanced back to Hannah, who repeated her order: “Carne, rice, beans.”

Then, after orienting herself to the glowing “Banos” sign, she made her way in that direction. Slowly, though, because right underneath that sign was a tall blond gesturing in anger to a wall. Peter’s phone call wasn’t going well, obviously.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, eyes shut. “Intention should matter!” Cat lifted her feet less on her approach to prevent her flip flops from slapping. Peter spun away from her to start to pace one direction, and she took this opportunity to dash into the women’s restroom without being seen. It was a swinging door, so she was able to go inside and still hear Peter yell at whomever it was on the phone.

“No, just arrange--let me talk to him. Just a ten-minute conversation. You can arrange that, right?” Cat leaned against the wall of the women’s restroom. The two stalls were unoccupied, she was the only one here, but her curiosity got the best of her. Instead of moving to do what she came here for, she remained rooted by the door hinges to listen. One of the hanging lights flickered, as if scolding her. She fought the urge to glare at it. “Fine, you can be there, Dad’s lawyer can be there. Whatever, I don’t care. I haven’t seen Oscar in a year! He can’t--he’s holding him hostage. He can’t disinherit him for reaching out to me, but he’s trying. That’s--what, is that kidnapping or something? Extortion?”

Woah, was this the legal stuff that Cam was referring to? Did Peter have a kid? Cat, for a very brief moment, considered that maybe she shouldn’t have tried so eagerly to listen in. The light over the sink winked at her.

“Come on, it’s his birthday tomorrow. A phone call…. Can you put in the request? With all the information out there? I mean, information like--you can’t disinherit a minor. Oscar’s side is safe for at least another year--” Like pieces of a puzzle, the picture started to get a little clearer. Someone was being held back from Peter for threat of...disinheritance? Must be nice to have an inheritance to fight over. And if this Oscar was a minor for just another year, he must have been a brother. “Yes, just a...formal request…. Yes….” Peter sighed. “Yes, I understand that. Look, I’m getting along fine. It’s not about that anymore…. No, I’ve been getting along just fine on my own…. If you can make the argument that I can see--or even just talk to--my brother on his birthday, you can strengthen your argument for the definition of a parent…. Christ, fine, half-brother.”

Cat caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror over the sink and frowned to herself. The pale yellow lighting gave her weird shadows on her face, shadows that highlighted the twinge of shame in her expression. She was so mad for Peter eavesdropping, and here she was…. She shoved away from the wall to head to the stall to take care of her own business, but her mind still focused heavily on what she’d overheard. Cam’s advice, sage as always, rang in her ears. Peter used to have money. He used to think he was Latino, too. He used to have a little brother he could talk to whenever he wanted. But something last year ended everything, took away his security, took away his family….

Well. Regardless of all his hardship, it didn’t excuse him from being an absolute prick all the time, Cat decided. So instead of letting herself dive into what ifs and driving herself mad with theories, she tucked away this new information about Peter into the very dark recesses of her mind and opted to dive back into Talkative, where she replied to PumpkinKing.

Pumpkin, as she started to think of him in her mind, had replied by the time Kelsey drove her, Hannah, and Cam back to campus after lunch. And from there sprouted a bizarre mixture of lighthearted insults with a slight peppering of digging for information. It turned out Pumpkin identified as a guy who thought that “InsultCatapult” was clever, and he was just interested in striking conversation, and looking for inspiration on how to sneak a roast of PandaSex69 in his next posting of Roast My Subject. There seemed to be a sort of rivalry going on that she was more than happy to fuel, especially with the amount of laughing emojis roasting both of them in the thread got her.

Cat struggled to get any homework done, and opted to go to bed early once Hannah had dolled up and left for the party around nine. Despite being tired, she kept checking her phone for replies and reactions to her latest posts. Good lord, how did people balance this sort of thing? Though the influx of laughing emojis that continued to add to her profile gave her this odd, satisfying burn, she couldn’t help but think that this was all a terrible addiction she should cut before it got too bad.

Thankfully, PupmkinKing had a regular sleep schedule, it seemed, and stopped replying at around ten, thus allowing Cat to set her phone down on her nightstand for longer than five minutes at a time. And, eventually, she fell asleep.

But not for long.

First it was giggling that pulled her out of her dreams. Then it was the sound of the door opening, and the loudest “Shhh!” to ever grace her ears. Hannah was back. Drunk. But, she wasn’t crying, like she’d claimed would be the case. Cat sighed and pulled her pillow over her head, mostly to try and block out the noise.

“Use your legs!” whispered whomever accompanied Hannah. Oh, god. Hannah wasn’t going to try and hook up with someone while she was right there, was she? To mitigate the risk, Cat took her pillow off her face and turned to her roommate. The intruders were blissfully unaware of her presence.

Hannah’s hair was completely covering her face, which may have been the reason why she completely leaned on Peter of all people, who quietly laughed at her and shoved her at the bed.

“I--hic!--I need help,” Hannah mumbled. She reached out with her free arm to eventually grasp her mattress. Thankfully, Peter slipped out from under her other arm, though at first a little too fast, and had to run into Hannah’s desk chair for support to stop from toppling over. It looked like he was trying to leave. Or maybe he was just that drunk and couldn’t figure out which way was forward.

“Hang out for a bit?” Hannah whispered to him. She finally threw her hair to one side by raking her fingers through her locks, obviously attempting to tame her hair in some sort of smooth fashion. Hang out, Cat thought sarcastically. She rolled her eyes at the way Hannah leaned against her bed, now in some sort of pinup pose. Peter steadied himself.

“Um--I should go.” He gestured behind himself to the open door, where the light from the hallway creeped in just enough to give Cat far too much sight on this scene. Peter’s shirt was partially unbuttoned, completely untucked from his slacks. Hannah’s doing. But, it looked like he wasn’t into it, so maybe--

“Shh!” Hannah was successfully quiet at hushing him this time, and took a step closer. Her hand grabbed forward, clutching his crisp, white collar. “Just for a little bit. I’m not tryin’ uh date you or anythin’.”

Cat remained very still in her bed, hoping this would resolve itself before she had to lob her pillow across the room.

“I’m literally seeing one of your friends,” Peter whispered. Cat’s eyebrows shot up as she watched him pull her hand off of his shirt. Peter was seeing someone? Who?

“She’s not tryin’ to be with you either,” Hannah slurred. “You got too much going on. C’mon, just for a little bit….”

“What?” Ouch. Seemed to be news to him.

Hannah hiccuped again. “She said ya got stuffs or whatever. Baggage. S’m’thing about can’t fill cups with an empty pitcher. And you’re all empty.”

"Empty?” He didn’t sound insulted, but she could see the way his shoulders dropped, the way his brows furrowed. “She said--she told you…?”

“That you’re great where it counts.” Again Hannah reached forward to him, but this time instead of stopping her, Peter took a full step backward. “Man, you didn’t think--hic!-- that was going somewhere…? Shit….”

“Yeah.” Cat could hardly hear him, but from Hannah’s sudden panic, it was enough to make Cat flinch. “I’ma...I’m gunna go.”

“Shiiiiiit.” Hannah slammed her head onto her bed, and Peter, with a bit more of a steady step, shuffled his way out of their room and shut the door.

Yikes….