By the time Saturday night rolled around, Cat was ready to face Peter again. She’d seen him, in passing, enough times so that now she didn’t even really think about the dream she had every time she saw him. Now, it was at least the second thing she thought of. Progress.

Cameron seemed weirdly nostalgic by the time they’d all settled into their table at La Hacienda.

“Can you believe the semester is almost over? Wild....” He shook his head. “I mean, we just have a few full weeks left until finals.”

“Ugh, don’t say that word,” Kelsey grumbled as she stabbed at her enchilada.

“What word? Weeks?”

“No, you dumbass, finals.”

Cat looked up to Kelsey. “Midterms didn’t go well?” she guessed, frowning. She wasn’t so sure about her own, either. Kelsey just rolled her eyes. “Alright. What about for everyone else?”

“I fucking crushed it,” Cam announced, completely ignoring Kelsey’s reaction. “This was the most prepared I’ve ever been for midterms. It was pretty great!”

“That means you failed,” Kelsey said to him. “That’s what happens. You get over-confident and you fail.”

“Did you already get your results?” Cat asked with wide eyes.

“For one of them. Bombed.”

“What class?” Peter asked. He sat across from her this time.

“Don’t make fun of me, but it’s just a generalized algebra one. I suck at math.” The table let out small sounds of empathy.

“You could’ve come to me for help,” he murmured. “You know I’m a math major.”

“Still?” Cat blurted, raising a brow. “I thought you were changing to PE.” She knew it was kinesiology, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Kinesiology, and still working on that,” was his response to her before he returned to Kelsey. “I’m a registered tutor.” Cat’s attempt to annoy him didn’t pan out.

“You are?” Kelsey seemed surprised. “Why don’t you work at the Tutoring Center on campus? Probably pay better than cell phone repair....”

“They have a policy not to hire transfers. I had to be just a student first. I applied for next semester, though.”

“What about your other job?”

“Kind of hanging on by a thread there. Can’t stand it.”

“Why not?” Hannah cut in this time, genuinely curious. “You like that kind of technical stuff, the science and stuff.” Eloquent, Hannah. Peter frowned.

“Because the answer is always that someone just downloaded porn from a sketchy website, or they dunked it in the toilet and didn’t say they did. Or there’s not actually anything wrong and they just want a discount on the new model. It’s not great work.”

“Not exactly saving lives?” Cam pressed with a full mouth. She was certain he didn’t mean it that way, but Cat flinched. Saving lives.

“Not exactly fulfilling,” corrected Peter with a flat voice.

“You could be a barista,” Cat muttered. “At least you affect lives at all.”

“I guess.” Bastard wasn’t supposed to agree! That was kind of rude! She scoffed at him, but he continued. “Anyway, I’m hoping to just go through their training during winter break and do that next semester. Tutor, I mean. If I touch another phone that someone shoved down a toilet pipe, I might contract e-coli.” Might give him some humility, Cat thought sourly.

“Well,” Kelsey said through a sigh. “Let’s do that whole Thanksgiving thing. Go around and say what we’re thankful for.” Ugh, she wanted to get sappy. Cat wondered to herself what to bring up. The fact that she had friends that were willing to do a Friendsgiving was nice. That she was able to be in school to get a better education, that her family paid for her to be here. There was a lot to be thankful for....

“I want to go first!” Hannah announced loudly. She set down her fork on her nearly empty plate and sat up, arms out to address the small group. “I’m thankful that I got to increase my group of incredible friends from last year. You all make school bearable!” She initiated a toast by lifting her glass, and everyone clonked their plastic cups together with their own forms of agreements.

Cam kept his lifted. “I’m thankful that we get to really get ready for water polo competitions. Fucking finally! That’s the whole reason I’m here!”

“We’ve been practicing all semester,” Peter said, raising a brow, but Cam hushed him.

“We get into it for real now. Every other day practice. Woo! Finally!” He shook his empty glass to indicate that he wanted everyone to clink it, and as a way to get the waiter’s attention. “Refill? Yeah, great. It’s a coke. Thanks!”

Kelsey giggled. “I’m thankful--for--uhhh...for the fact that even though I bombed my math class midterm, I now have a math tutor to help me ace the final, so I won’t have to take it again!” The group gave her courtesy laughs, and Peter shook his head.

“You’re lucky I can’t charge you yet.”

“Tutoring is free through the university,” she shot back.

“Whatever. I’m thankful that this school has been like a fresh start for me.” His answer was very quick, and Cat could only imagine why. Hard year for him...maybe even harder to be thankful this close to being disowned. But after everyone clinked his glass, Cat was left with everyone’s attention.

“Hmm,” she thought aloud, glancing down to her plate. “I guess I’m just thankful that of all the places I could have been, I think here’s not that bad.”

“That sounds like a cop out,” Kelsey said with a “booo!” Cat laughed.

“Okay, fine.” That was a cop-out? Cat would give her a cop-out answer: “I’m just thankful to be alive.”

“Cop out!” Kelsey announced again, but Cam nudged her.

“How quickly you forget that Cat could’ve died this year!” he said. Cat’s smiled faded quickly. She didn’t want the conversation to turn out like this. Even Peter managed to keep it light. But Kelsey gasped as she remembered.

“Right, I’m sorry!” She glanced to Peter. “I guess in a weird way, if you chose to go to that other school that accepted you, we could have--”

“Okay, let’s not do that,” Cat interrupted with a nervous laugh. “Happy Friendsgiving!”

And, after a few laughs and jokes about how Peter was a life-saver of both Cats and math classes, the rest of the group chorused, “Happy Friendsgiving!”

Cat showed up to work the Monday before Thanksgiving with what she hoped was an acceptable fake smile. Her manager handed her the holiday hours, struggling to be sympathetic.

“You get time and a half for the whole two days you’re working by yourself,” Nadine said with a hopeful voice. “Thursday it’s just five to two, and Friday’s kind of technically a double, for the whole Black Friday thing. So it’s going to be from midnight to four, you get an hour break, and reopen from five to two.”

“Is that legal?” Cat blurted. She didn’t mean to sound so grumpy about it, but Nadine shrugged.

“You’re eighteen, right?”

“Um, nineteen, turning twenty in--”

“Then it’s legal. Time and a half! And you get Christmas break.”

“Why are we even open on Thanksgiving if the campus is closed?”

“The campus is closed, but we’re a public vendor. We don’t just serve the college,” Nadine answered.

“No one but college students come here,” Cat grumbled as she donned her apron to prepare for the morning shift. It was anticipated to be incredibly busy, and then suddenly dead come afternoon after everyone already started their travels.

“Take it up with Corporate. Saturday and Sunday, you’ll have backup with Craig to do the morning bits for you to show up a little later. Craig is usually the night manager, but he’s pulling doubles because we’re so short-staffed that weekend. You’ll have Paige and Claire to relieve you for your breaks and for the night shifts.” Cat glanced at the schedule on the counter as she tied her apron behind her waist. These hours were horrible. Good thing everyone else would be gone, because it wasn’t like she’d have any time to hang out with them, anyway.

“Time and a half,” Cat repeated quietly. Silently, she thought of Peter’s explanations for hating his job from the weekend. Well. At least cell phone companies granted their employees time off at all.

Later that morning, she was so far in her own head, that Cat hardly recognized when a familiar face popped up in her line.

“Oh! Hey, Cat!” smiled the swimmer. Last time she saw him, his hair was in a ponytail and dripping wet. Now he let the brown maine bush up around his cheeks in a classic California surfer style.

“Oh! Martin, hi!” She gave him a smile, blinking herself out of her daydreams of a worthwhile job. “How are you?”

“I’m good! How’s your head?”

“I’m all healed up. Thanks for driving that day.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Peter was the one holding your brains in your skull.” Cat’s eyes went wide.

“Um…,” was all she could manage to say. How could she respond to that? Now all she could think about was the constant pressure during the drive, the sign that Peter held a towel firmly against her the whole time. Martin flushed.

“Sorry. That was kind of.... Anyway, I’ll take a large green tea, sweetened, please.”

“A-alright,” she said, nodding as she wrote down his order.

“Have you worked here all semester?” Martin asked, attempting to veer the small talk into a less disgusting direction.

“Yeah, usually in the mornings. Mondays, Saturdays, Sundays.”

“Oh! That’s cool. I, uh, heard you connected with Nate a little while ago, but he lost you before he could get your number.” Cat’s smile faltered. Were they friends? Peter said he wasn’t friends with Nate, so she just kind of assumed none of them were.

“Yeah, uh, we must have lost each other in the crowd,” she said, shrugging. Was he fishing for that “lost connection” sort of thing for his friend? “Thanks for coming by! Your order will be up soon.” Cat glanced quickly over to Nadine, who was filling in for Jeffrey; her manager, despite all of her flaws, seemed to at least understand the universal glance that every girl knew: “help please.”

Martin started to ask, “Maybe I could pass it--”

“Excuse me,” Nadine said in her Manager Voice to Cat, “Please socialize on your own time. We have a line.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Cat gave a sorry look to Martin, who just waved and moved along.

“Ma’am?” Nadine echoed. Her brow clocked halfway up her fivehead in disapproval.

“Sorry--that might have been too much.”

But Nadine seemed to be concerned about the other implication that came with the word. “Am I old enough to look like a ma’am?”

“Aren’t you thirty?”

“Is that old now? I thought thirty was the new twenty!”

“Only thirty-year-olds say that...,” Cat muttered as she grabbed a cup for the next patron in line.

“I just saved your ass from an awkward conversation.”

Cat laughed. “Yeah--sorry. You look great. You look like a freshman.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Tuesday night, the group got together for a very quick goodbye before Cam had to leave for the airport, and before Kelsey had to hop into ridiculous traffic to try and drive the few hours it took to get home. It wasn’t very special, or even very nice. They met in the common room of Casa del Sol, simply because three of them already lived there. They didn’t have time for a full meal, and Peter stood there with his truck keys in his hands, tossing them and spinning them anxiously.

“We get it, you want to leave,” Cat blurted with crossed arms. He hadn’t been responding to her taunts lately; it was making her jittery like she was some sort of drug addict that needed a kick.

“I just don’t want to make Cam late for his flight.” The jingling stopped.

“I’m gunna miss you guys!” Kelsey cried, reaching in for a group hug. It didn’t quite work very well, because Peter and Cat stayed out of it, so she instead moved to individual hugs. “Text me pictures of what you’re eating!”

“Probably a granola bar,” Cat muttered. Peter gave her a dry laugh.

“Ramen?” That sounded like he was maybe back into taunting her again. She encouraged him by making a retching sound before she returned Kelsey’s hug.

Hannah let out a long, dramatic sigh. “You’re always welcome to come to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving, you know. Both of you.” She’d mentioned it before, but Cat shook her head.

“I’ve got work,” she repeated. Hannah didn’t need to know what hours. How humiliating would it to show up to a Thanksgiving where she knew literally one person?

“I’ve got a lot of studying to do,” Peter said. “I fell behind on everything.”

“So you guys aren’t going to celebrate at all?” Kelsey asked, pausing before her hug to Peter. “At all? No turkey and cranberry sandwiches in front of a football livestream or anything?”

“Not a fan of football,” was Peter’s answer. In reality, it hadn’t really occurred to Cat to try and celebrate it with Peter. Not seriously, anyway. that would just be kind of...weird. And any time she was alone with him, something weird happened or one of them got really angry or something--no, it wasn’t an option. But her excuse was better than not liking football.

“Alright, we gotta go. See you guys later!” Cam announced, giving Kelsey her final hug. “Hope we don’t all die in a sudden explosion from Yellowstone!”

“Aw, Cam....” Kelsey, Peter, and Cam turned to head to the door, and Cat shook her head while she went back upstairs with Hannah.

“You’ve been nicer to Peter lately,” Hannah said as they waited for the elevator.

“Not on purpose,” she said. Really, she’d been avoiding him so well, that when they were seen together, she was able to hide behind everyone else’s conversations. And he just wasn’t giving her anything to work with by ignoring her attempts to piss him off.

“Oh. I thought it might have been because of his whole...yanno. And especially around this time of year.” Hannah had a point, that perhaps it might be extra hard for Peter to go through what he was now, but...acknowledging it and using it as an excuse was just not something Cat did.

“There’s still a chance I might kill him without you guys as his meat shields.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said with a laugh. “We’re meat shields.”

“Friends, meat shields...same thing.” Hannah awarded her with a nudge as they walked through to the elevator together.