After the charade with Flora was over, I retreated to a dark place of solitude where I studied harder than ever before. Jake and Dylan congratulated me on making it onto Flora's list of trophy boyfriends and made fun of me every chance they got. Ironically, it made me feel better. It made me think that the whole thing was just something to laugh over.

The hardest part was probably that-to admit that we weren't special after all and our love was nowhere near epic. It was just a typical high school relationship, and a cliché jock and cheerleader one, no less.

One Friday night my friends dragged me off to the bowling alley. I figured I could use some practice and blow off some steam, as Flora would call it, although I always wondered about her constant need to blow off steam as if she worked as a 911 operator.

Sydney and Lucia were there with us. They were both cheerleaders in their sophomore year. At the moment Dylan was back with Sydney for the eighteen thousandth time. He claimed he was just dating her for sex, but I knew he was way more into her than he let on.

"Whoever loses buys the winner dinner," Dylan said before the game began. He was snaking his hand under the back of Sydney's shirt, and I looked away. How they survived longer than Flora and me was a mystery.

Objectively speaking Sydney was pretty hot, but it was in a really obvious way that screamed at you, kind of like Megan Fox. Lucia had a mass of red hair and resembled a prettier version of the Scottish heroine in the Disney cartoon Brave. They were both attractive girls. I liked bowling, Jake and Dylan were my buddies, and it was Friday night. Everything spelled awesome, except it didn't.

I pictured Flora's glossy dark hair and exquisite features, her large almond eyes and delicate nose. She could be passed as a European princess, although only when she didn't talk. I missed talking to her, but by the time I decided to confront her, she had already moved on. She was clearly over me, and from then on she blatantly flaunted her new relationships in my face.

Everytime I thought of her my stomach clenched. I thought the memory with her was supposed to fade, but instead it just kept getting more vivid, until it grew fangs and claws, making me bleed in places no one else could see.

I was half contemplating all this as we bowled and Lucia had climbed to the top of the chart. It was very easy to guess she was a cheerleader by the way she skipped and yelled, not to mention she made up bowling songs and rants for all of us. Her excitement was igniting the air and I could practically hear the crackle.

She rolled the bowling ball down the lane and hit a perfect strike. "Ten points for Gryffindor!" she screamed. Her imitation was pretty spot on.

What a happy person. I had always thought of Lucia as immature and silly, but it required little brainpower being with her. I wondered how it'd be to date someone like that. Pretty and simple, without fuss.

I hated myself for thinking of her that way.

While Lucia was winning, the rest of us had a real competition and our scores were tight, with Sydney following closely behind. She had a precise but slightly weak throw, and as the game drew near to an end it was clear she was going to lose. She knew this too and she was already asking Lucia what she wanted to eat.

It was my turn to throw. The ball was heavy in my hand, like cold marble. I watched the pins at the end of the lane. I could already imagine knocking them down all at once, and I could hear the crisp sound of pins flying everywhere. I was on a roll and there was no stopping me.

I squared my shoulders and held the ball in front of my chest as I approached the foul line. I swung my arm back, and I deliberately slid the ball into the gutters.

There was a second of stunned silence, then everyone laughed.

"That's a serious lack of sportsmanship," Dylan said. "And you call yourself an athlete."

"You're desperate." Jake chuckled. He seemed very interested in the turn of events. "Since when do you need to secure a date this way?"

Lucia batted her eyelashes at me in an exaggerated cartoonish way, pretending to be bashful. "I didn't know you have a thing for me, Sean." She laughed. "You know if you want to take me to dinner, you can just ask."

"I don't want to give you the option to say no," I heard myself say. I had no idea what came over me. It was an out-of-character impulse that I couldn't explain. At that moment I just knew I needed to lose so that Lucia could distract me.

Before we started going out, I said straight to her that I didn't want anything serious. She agreed right away as if it was the most logical thing in the world, like getting in a relationship never so much as crossed her mind.

***

Hanging out with Lucia pretty much turned out to be what I expected. I liked how I didn't stress over her thoughts, and I could call her up whenever I felt like it without her nagging me. I asked her out at the very last second whenever I was free, and when she couldn't make it I didn't really care. It was just nice to have someone to go to school events with and shut my friends up when they said I was still pining for Flora.

Lucia's parents were separated. Her father worked in Austria, and Lucia lived with her mother and twin sister Leslie. They didn't have finance problems, but because Lucia spent way more than she could afford, in order to cut down on expenses she asked me to hang out at her house one evening. She kicked my ass at playing video games and then invited me to look at stars in her bedroom.

"I remember going to a planetarium on a field trip in middle school, and it was so awesome," she said. "So when I came home I turned my room into one." She ushered me to lie down on her bed and closed the blinds, then she got down next to me and turned off the light.

"This is amazing." The ceiling lit up as hundreds of fluorescent stars illuminated the room, and somewhere in the far corner I made out a stream of silver that resembled the galaxy.

"Those are pretty much in the correct scale," Lucia said. "I fixed them up with the star atlas as reference, but if you see something out of place you can correct me. I know you're some kind of science whiz or something."

"Hardly. I like math and physics, but I don't know anything about astronomy. All I can say is the Big Dipper looks about right to me. And look, you chose a particularly bright one to represent the Sirius."

"Good job! You recognize it. Looks like you paid attention in Earth Science class."

"That's all I know. But this really is impressive."

We lay there staring at the constellation in silence, and I heard the sound of silky, liquidly violin playing in the distance, running on like a peaceful river.

"That's Leslie playing the violin, in case you're wondering."

"She's good."

"Good is an understatement," Lucia corrected. "She's obsessed with it. She practices three hours each day and six hours on weekends, regardless of birthdays, vacation, exams and all that."

"I admire that kind of dedication."

"Yeah. That's why she played at Carnegie Hall."

As we chatted on and off my mind was really wandering. I was thinking why I was lying in dark looking at stars with no doubt a very appealing girl, but I had no urge to touch her. I missed Flora at that instance. If she was beside me we would be doing a lot more, even without the music and the Galaxy to set the mood.

The stars gradually lost the light they absorbed during the day. The room grew darker. We were silent and I hoped Lucia wasn't waiting for me to make a move.

I sat up and turned on the light. "Shall we go out and grab some food?"

"Sure. Star-gazing is hunger-triggering," she agreed after a second.

I watched her combing her fingers through her mass of fiery red hair and tying it into a bun, and she smiled at me. She was very cute. Also laid-back and hassle-free. I was so grateful for her company.

***

My so-called relationship with Lucia remained pretty much PG-13. She was more like a video games buddy to me. We exchanged polite good night kisses once, and it brought me right back to my first time and made me feel like a twelve-year-old again--awkward, hesitant, and I'd rather play Grand Theft Auto.

There were less sparks than a died-out cigarette on the side of the road. I thought of Flora the whole time I was kissing Lucia, and it made me feel hollow and sad which was exactly not how a kiss should be.

I asked myself sometimes if I should put off dating a while longer, even if it was with someone as agreeable as Lucia. One evening when I was over at her house, Leslie started having severe stomach cramps. I ended up being alone with her because she insisted on asking Lucia to get her meds, even though I offered to go to the pharmacy. I figured she thought her condition was her privacy so I did not probe.

I retrieved a blanket and placed it on her. "Can I get you anything else?" I asked as Leslie curled up on the sofa in a ball.

"No, it's fine. I just need some rest."

"Okay. If this happens a lot, you should probably have it checked."

"I know, I'm planning on it. I'm lucky to have Lucia take care of me."

"Yes, she's very nice," I agreed out of reflex. I didn't try very hard to decipher Lucia at all and I didn't care how nice she was, as long as she showed up looking good with a smile.

"She is. Which brings me to the question of what you're doing with her," Leslie said, completely out of the blue.

"What do you mean?"

"You two don't really have much in common and Lucia told me you don't want it to get serious. Why waste time with someone you're not into?" Her eyes were green like a pond, steady without a ripple. It was like she could see right through my pretense and know that I wished I were somewhere else.

"We're still getting to know each other." I felt like I did something wrong and was receiving a lecture. "We're just hanging out, and I'm very relaxed and happy around her."

"You're relaxed because you don't care about her."

I thought Leslie was shy, but the girl in front of me was anything but. That was probably the part where I denied her accusations and got all defensive, but I couldn't because I knew it was true. "I just got over a bad break up and I'm trying to keep things light," I said eventually.

Leslie was silent for a moment. I was suddenly nervous, like I was at a job interview and was waiting for my boss to decide if she should hire me. She lowered her head and smiled. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend you. It's just that Lucia is my sister and I don't want her to get hurt."

"It's okay, I get it. It's nice of you to look out for her."

"Yes, and you're just using her to get over your ex."

I frowned. Surely I wasn't that awful? "It sounds really bad when you put it like that. I mean, I'm sure Lucia understands."

"Maybe, but sometimes feelings can't be controlled."

"Has Lucia said something to you?"

Leslie didn't answer me directly. "She's my sister and I know her. You might think she's happy-go-lucky but she's a lot more sentimental than you can imagine, and she tends to fall very hard. If you just want to have fun, then she really isn't the one to turn to."

I turned the thought over in my head. Lucia sure didn't act like she was on the verge of falling for me. I was pretty sure she liked going out with me too, and so far the tone of our dates was cheery and unattached, pretty much ideal.

Would our harmless fling hurt Lucia eventually? I didn't even know her well enough to guess what her take on this was. "I'll think about what you said."

"Sorry to be so nosy." She smiled sheepishly, and suddenly she was shy again.

"You don't have to apologize."

"So...what happened with your ex?" Leslie didn't even let me take a breath before she asked me the question I'd like to dodge the most. "That's Flora Morgan right? You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"I don't even know where to start."

"If you want to talk about it, I'm a really good listener." Her eyes turned warmer, like a pond going through winter and making it into spring.

I didn't really want to talk about it, but Leslie kept her gaze on my face steadily. She would do very well in a staring contest, and I felt increasingly uncomfortable under those penetrating green eyes of hers. I decided to talk about it vaguely and stopped at that, but once I started talking, the silence from her propelled me to keep going. Her eyes were sucking the words right out of me and I almost couldn't stop myself.

As I kept up my monodrama, I started to trust her. I wasn't afraid of Leslie. She was just a harmless, meek sophomore, who had been very upfront during the whole interrogation, and she was outside of our circle of friends. Who was she going to tell, anyway? The most Flora and her gang would say to her was probably excuse me to get past her in the hallway.

I told her Flora cheated on me and I was nowhere near over her. I told her I cared about her more than I admitted to anyone but I kept up a cool front, since having dated Flora accounted for something worth bragging about already.

"I think I understand," she said after she let me went on for a few minutes without interrupting. "Flora sounds really fun, and you were afraid of boring her. You thought you can make up for it by going along with everything, but when she did what she did, you felt like you failed as a boyfriend. You didn't bring up the cheating because you're afraid to hear what she had to say. You are hurt and humiliated."

I didn't expect her to come back with any worthwhile comment, but she amazed me by saying everything right. Better than what I could ever put together.

She smiled before she continued. "Well, just so you know, most of the time it's not your problem. It's not because you're not good enough. When cheaters cheat sometimes it's because they're insecure themselves or they just like a new challenge. Personally I think it's more of a challenge to find a person you like and try to work out the difficulties. Running to someone else is always easier, right?"

As she spoke I realized I really needed to talk to someone and that was probably all I needed in order to move on. I could never say anything serious to the guys because all they wanted to know was how the sex was, and I didn't want to talk to Janet because her position was awkward. Leslie did not judge me and said all the things I needed to hear.

A load was lightened off my shoulder. It was as if I finally found my sanctuary.

***