“Yes,” I said, we all said, “drinks would be good.”

He took our drink orders while staring at Nathaniel, which meant he didn’t write anything down, which led me to wonder if we’d actually get what we ordered, but we were all merciful and let him flee the table for somewhere safe from Nathaniel’s charm.

Jason turned to me and Micah. “Can he flirt with the waiter?”

“No,” we said in unison. Micah said, “Please don’t, because we’ll either get great service or terrible service, and we need to get Anita back to work.”

Then, of course, it being me, I felt compelled to ask, “Do you want to flirt with the waiter?”

“Before I was with the two of you I would have, but I know it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Which is why I asked for him,” Jason said.

I looked at Micah, and we had a moment of what I thought was understanding, but being the girl I couldn’t trust to silent communication. I had to say something. “Do we take some of the fun out of things for Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel answered, “No, I would never trade being able to flirt with strangers for living at our house with you guys. When I could flirt with whoever I wanted, I wasn’t very happy; now I’m happy.”

I kissed him, gently, since I was wearing bright lipstick. His mouth came away with a faint hint of red. Jason said, “Waiter is coming this way; if you want to play with him, you can’t be hanging all over Nathaniel.”

I didn’t argue with Jason, because if anyone knew the rules for teasing people, it was him. By the time the waiter got to us, we were just sitting there. He had our drink orders correct, which meant we might get good service after all.

He took our orders while looking at Nathaniel as if the rest of us didn’t exist. He spoke to us, even wrote down what we said, but he never looked at anyone else. Nathaniel didn’t do anything but just looked pleasantly at him. It had taken me a while to figure out that was flirting, too.