"Wakey wakey," a female voice said, and all I knew was that it was before my alarm, I had talked for about an hour with Gretchen before bidding her a thousand times good night and heading to bed, and therefore by process of elimination this was Lucy. She pushed my shoulder not very warmly at all, and I opened my eyes to see her and Valdez looming over me. I checked my alarm clock—it was only 9. I guess that wasn't too early.

"What are you doing in my room? Were you here all night?" I asked Lucy, who only looked at me smugly. "Were you and Valdez—"

"You must think I have really low standards. No offense, Valdez—"

"None taken."

"—anyway, we know you have that meeting with Prof. Pineda at noon today, and a little birdie told me that you didn't have as much fun last night as you had hoped, so we thought we'd take you out to brunch. Our treat. Maybe we could debrief, give you some words of wisdom, shoot the breeze. Looks like you need it, if I'm being honest—"

"If I could just get a word in for a second. This is nice and all, but I didn't need the personal wakeup. I'm barely dressed. I'll go to brunch—I'm starving—but let me shower." I stood up, still in my pajamas, and Lucy and Valdez took a few steps back. "Could I get some privacy please?" I asked, and they turned around to face the door. Whatever. Good enough.

I hastily brushed my teeth, spitting into the garbage can, all while they watched me silently, like I was ruining their meal plans by wishing to look presentable. When I returned from my shower they were still standing there; Lucy checked her smartwatch—did she time me? I took my backpack—Prof. Pineda would certainly have a lot of paperwork for me to fill out or maybe some notes to take—and I hurriedly followed them outside, where Valdez called an Uber and shortly afterward we were at some bougie, very Californian cafe near the beach I'm sure celebrities frequented; there were succulents on every table and the menu was written on a chalkboard behind the bar. The hostess gave us a top-down glance, presumably judging if we were chic enough to deserve one of the good tables. I thought I looked a bit ragged—hipster, if I was being generous—but Valdez and Lucy sold the act. They always dressed like they were ready to pose for the camera. She turned to me:

"I know you from somewhere. Aren't you the Harry Styles foosball guy?" she asked. Not this again.

"I plead the Fifth," I laughed, and she chuckled, wordlessly leading us to one of the window tables. I craned my head behind me to look at the chalkboard, and the hostess rushed back with printed menus—rough paper, not the laminated sort like I was used to. Valdez and Lucy sat across from me.

"What's good here?" I asked Lucy, whom I trusted to be more of a gourmet.

"I think the shakshuka is excellent, or maybe the chilaquiles—"

"Chee-la-kee-les," Valdez corrected, using the proper pronunciation where Lucy had said the word the American way. "And yes, they're excellent here, though I'd also recommend the—"

"Last time I tried teaching you how to use chopsticks properly you said I was embarrassing you, so how about you do things your way and I do things my way?" Lucy said, exasperatedly.

"I think I'll go for the French toast," I counter-offered. At least that was a name I could pronounce correctly.

"Sounds good to you, Valdez, or would you rather he call it pain perdu?" Lucy asked.

"You think you're so clever, but I've seen you trying out new outfits in Project Narcissus: you're as superficial as the rest of us—"

"Oh please, you're the one who collects girls like Pokémon cards, and somehow I'm the one who's always the butt of every joke. You always say I'm not your type like that's an excuse to be misogynist and racist. It's not funny and it's never been funny—"

I had to interrupt before Valdez did. "So are we ready to order?" I flagged down a waiter before waiting for their response, and Valdez and Lucy played along; I still went for the French toast, Lucy the chilaquiles (pronouncing it authentically, but spitefully), and Valdez ordered eggs Benedict. A tried-and-true classic.

"So before you two start going at it again, aren't any of you going to ask how I'm doing? How I feel? Wasn't brunch supposed to be about me?" I asked as directly as I could to the two of them, and they stopped staring each other down and turned back toward me.

Valdez spoke first: "You're still worked up about that? Cassandra was boring—she kept trying to talk my head off—and I don't even think she was—"

"She was my girlfriend! Only for a few days, but we were official. I cared about her. And yes I may have done some things that weren't in her best interest, or in our best interest, but I still cared. Maybe I'll look back and realize she was no better than the rest of them. But it hasn't even been a day. Let me have my five stages of grief in peace," I pleaded. They looked unmoved.

"She was friendly," Lucy observed. "She tried her best."

"She meant well," Valdez added.

"But she was a bit boring," Lucy admitted. "I thought her crochet animals were cute, but I didn't need her to show me the entire zoo. The dugong was really the highlight, and it went downhill from—"

"The dugong was fine—I thought the red panda was cuter—but the chameleon was overambitious. She tried her best, though—"

"You're missing the point! I didn't care about Cassandra because of that, I cared because she was more than a list of things and traits. She was a whole person—an imperfect person, but a natural person. Her flaws were authentic. And she embraced them: she never denied that she was any of the things that made herself who she was. If you want to criticize her, let those who are without sin cast the first stones. Sometimes I think you two have grown so invested in your schemes that you've forgotten how to be human," I said.

"That sounds boring. I prefer my way," Valdez said, and Lucy nodded. "Speaking of your old flame, she's made a Reddit post about you. Now aren't you famous. Apparently you 'lied about saving a girl from armed kidnappers.' Look for yourself—I'm not making this up." I looked at Valdez's phone, where Cassandra had presented a fair list of evidence, beginning with my confession—a natural place to start—and ending with the fact that there were no eyewitnesses to corroborate what naturally must have been a loud and dramatic conflict, plus a few appeals to pathos with how heartbroken she felt at my betrayal. A reasonably persuasive argument. I'd give her a B for rhetoric.

"And a shame nobody believes her," Valdez continued. "She's 'envious of her ex because he got to meet Harry Styles and she didn't'—I never realized he was this hot, and Lucy's going to slap me if I ask her opinion—she 'can't stand that a mean person would do nice things'—need I read on? My point, and I promise all my meandering is getting to a point, is that Cassandra doesn't hold any feelings for you anymore. Maybe this is just a phase that she'll get over, like you said, and she'll mellow out a bit. But you aren't going to win her back through repentance. You aren't Gatsby and she isn't Daisy. It's—"

"That's actually a good comparison, Valdez. I'm surprised you've read enough books to remember that," Lucy chimed in, sticking out her tongue at Valdez when he looked about to snap.

"I'll forgive that interruption because it was a compliment, even if backhanded. I'm just an econ major, what do I know? But let me tell you, Chris, bro to bro, how I see it. Cassandra was literally your first Eros match: if I had to guess, at least a hundred more reached out to you, let alone all those who were too shy to make the first move. Cassandra isn't special because she's any more human than us—we're all human. She was just the first. And she won't be the last."

Valdez was right. I was Gatsby, chasing that green light into the recesses of the Pacific, and as much as it pained me to compare myself to him like every other student who'd taken an AP English class, that was me. Cassandra was an upwelling of the emotion that seized me as soon as I had the chance to seize myself: I projected onto her all I wanted to see, and saw nothing I wished to conceal. She was human. They weren't wrong. But if Valdez was right and we were all human, authentic to our own selves even if said selves were twisted mockeries of what civilization held dear, Cassandra was just Cassandra Peterson. Nothing more, nothing less. A reflection of nothing but myself and herself.

Before I could philosophize more, the food arrived. It looked like the fancy meals Project Narcissus would generate—if I wanted a plate of French toast with caviar and gold leaf it would have given me caviar and gold leaf, but what was in front of me was the archetype of "fancy French toast," inputted into the program exactly as such. It was a bit of a discomfiting thought viewing reality in terms of the artificial, but this was why Valdez and Lucy liked this place, and why everyone else on Instagram liked it so much. The strawberry-rhubarb compote and the delicate dusting of powdered sugar made the plate photogenic; the French toast was the color of a rich, luscious, unhealthy organic egg yolk, and such vividly orange eggs had probably gone into the French toast. The goose that had laid the golden egg. Dang, I was doing it again.

"Looks great!" Lucy declared, and she leaned over the table to take a picture of our food. "What? Everyone here's taking pictures of their food," she said, and I looked around to verify even though I knew she was right.

"Who said anything about it?" Valdez asked.

"Sorry, I was preempting Chris's complaint that this was contributing to the moral vapidity of society," Lucy commented, trying to convince us through her tone that this was a well-timed comic retort.

"OK, so maybe I have been a bit gloomy today—"

"You've been very gloomy today," Valdez said, his lips smeared with Hollandaise.

"Even more so than usual, which is quite impressive," Lucy added. "I'm tired of talking about sad things. What should we do after Chris's meeting? Chris, what do you want to do? I have an idea, but I'll let you go first."

"Is 'take a nap' an acceptable answer? I could really use one."

"Of course not! Carpe diem—seize the day! Live life to its fullest! Do you want to hear my idea?"

"Go for it, Lucy," I sighed.

"There's a place that does jet skiing lessons in Malibu. As soon as I saw your story I became envious, and by means which I won't disclose someone owes me a few free lessons. You've spent this week making up wild things you think are so cool as to be impossible—because you've internalized that you're some dork who's going to live the rest of his life teaching college students insipid poetry. The only thing more fun than pretending to have fun is having fun," Lucy said, and she beamed with newly discovered joy. I wondered how long she was holding onto that idea, waiting for me to lose all other hope, only to come in and save the day once more. A chili flake was stuck between her front teeth and it bothered me.

"You have something stuck in your teeth by the way—in the middle there. But I'm in," I said.

"Is there room for a fourth? There's this girl I met last night I want to take out for a warm-up," Valdez laughed.

"A warm-up for what, Valdez? What are you planning on—"

"He means that, Chris. And we can have dinner by the ocean afterward. The four of us. Happy. Guilt-free," Lucy promised. I nodded, and that was enough affirmation for her.

In a way, I felt Lucy and Valdez had my best interests as their top priority, even if they bickered with each other as much as they teased me. They were behaving unusually compassionately that morning: Valdez had found the power within himself to give life advice without the ultimate motive of self-praise, and Lucy had finally found us worthy of her voice. They fed off each other, like two puppies chasing each other's tails; they prided themselves on possessing virtues the other lacked, and this shared vanity made them more alike than different. Maybe this brunch was as much to cleanse their souls as it was to cleanse mine.

"We should head back—you know how much Prof. Pineda dislikes tardiness," Valdez said.

"She never cares when I'm late. Heck, I was late for my one-week meeting, but I just sent her an email and she was cool with it. No thunderbolt came from the heavens to smite me."

"She doesn't care because she likes you more," Valdez retorted, "and because she refuses to see the merit in my—"

"Do you two ever shut up?" I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly: someone at the table in front of us gave all three of us a cutting look. "Sorry. That was uncalled for. We should head back. I'm not going to take any chances. I've taken enough already."

With all that needed to be said having been said, we took our last bites, hastily paid the bill, and took an Uber back to civilization. Huntsman Hall. The alpha and omega. The beginning and the end.