“I forgot my wallet,” Livvy says. “Meet you guys there?”
“Sure,” I say. As I watch her go, I wonder if being alone with Zoe will feel different now that we’ve connected on such a deep level. I wait for my friend to give me a hug or say something about how much she enjoyed our conversation last night, but she just heads toward the dining hall like everything’s totally normal. I rack my brain for something fascinating to say.
“You guys looked really good in there,” is what I come up with.
It’s not exactly insightful, but Zoe smiles. “Oh, were you watching? How much did you see?”
“Not that much,” I say. “There was a lot of leaping and spinning. It looked exhausting.”
“It was,” she says. “I could eat, like, six sandwiches right now.”
None of this feels any different from how it would’ve felt yesterday afternoon, which is a little disappointing. I’m trying to think of a way to tell her how much last night meant to me, when she says, “Hey, where were you this morning? I woke up at eight-fifteen, and you were already gone.”
“I left early so I could get doughnuts for the lighting people.”
Zoe stops walking. “You brought doughnuts?”
“Yeah. I thought—”
She smacks me on the arm. “Brooklyn! We talked for hours last night! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me who it was!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.
Zoe claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh God,” she says. “You don’t know about the doughnuts, do you?” She sounds gleeful and horrified in equal parts, and my stomach drops like it does when someone says, We need to talk.
“I don’t know what about the doughnuts?” I ask. “Just tell me.”
“When you bring doughnuts in the morning, it means you hooked up with someone the night before. It’s like insurance. If you give someone a doughnut, they’re not allowed to ask you questions, and if they find out who it is, they have to keep it a secret. I can’t believe nobody told you.”
Everything starts to click into place. The way Douchebands reacted when I said, Why wait when doughnuts are involved? Solomon’s comment about following the rules. The way every guy who passed me in the catwalks today made a point of smiling at me. I stepped up and claimed those doughnuts like they were an accomplishment. I am officially the biggest idiot in the world. I can’t believe my family told me about all the best nooks for secret sex but didn’t bother to warn me about this.
“Oh no,” I say. “Was that in the welcome packet?”
Zoe laughs. “No, of course not. It’s not, like, an official rule. My sister told me about it.”
“And you didn’t think you should pass that along?”
“I wasn’t hiding it from you on purpose! I didn’t even remember it was a thing; nobody’s brought them to rehearsal yet. I don’t think accidental doughnut-buying is usually an issue. I mean, who randomly buys doughnuts for their crew for no reason? Nobody’s that nice.” She looks at me and smiles. “Except you, I guess.”
“And now the entire lighting crew thinks I’m a slut. Fabulous.” I sigh. “Okay. I’ll tell them tomorrow that I didn’t know and that—”
Zoe cuts me off. “No, absolutely not! First of all, hooking up with someone doesn’t make you a slut. And second of all, why do you care what they think? I’d play it up, if it were me. You should bring doughnuts again next week. It’ll make you seem mysterious.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right. Nobody’s going to believe I found multiple people to hook up with that quickly.”
She looks confused. “Of course they will. Why would you say that? You’re totally gorgeous.”
I suddenly feel very warm. Is she flirting with me? Or is she stating what she believes is a fact? Either way, I can’t quite meet her eyes.
She’s not flirting with you, I think. Get over yourself. She has a boyfriend.
“Thanks for telling me before I made an even bigger fool of myself,” I say. “People were so nice to me today that I probably would’ve started bringing them all the time. God, I’m so ridiculously naive.”
Zoe puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer. She’s still all sweaty from rehearsal, but I don’t even mind. “You’re welcome,” she says. “Stick with me, and that innocence will be gone in no time.”