It's a date.

As you eat today's bowl of ramen, be thinking of tomorrow's bowl of ramen. Hunger does not care about your cholesterol level or blood pressure. Animals take food as it comes; sentient beings may plan. When you shop for ingredients, think of the meals you will make, what you will need, and calculate the costs accordingly.
—1,001 Ways to Cook Ramen

Neither Jordan nor Jenny made a move to relieve Mel's situation. He knew, intellectually, that either one would probably be happy to take care of the matter if he asked. All he needed was a condom and he could bend one of them over the bed or the couch and—Mel shied away from the thought. It wasn't that he was immune to the fantasy, or that they hadn't given consent, but he still wasn't comfortable with just using them.

It felt too unilateral. Too much like what Antonio had done. Mel didn't mind being used, enjoyed reciprocal relations, but he worried that if he started down that path, it might be a slippery slope.

I don't want to be an entitled asshole begging for sex or forcing myself on them, Mel thought to himself, as he closed his eyes in between two of his girlfriends and tried to ignore the throbbing need barely contained by his fundoshi. I want them to want me.

"Pssst."

He caught a glimpse of her in the cracked bathroom mirror. A figure in the institutional white nightgown the older teen girls wore. Slim. Tall. A white shadow, caught only in reflections.

The drip of the sink was louder in Mel's ears this time. The cold bathroom tile felt slick beneath his feet, toes already going numb. Even the air tasted wet, his breath a grey fog as he moved towards that final stall.

The obscene graffiti had grown like mold. Stick-figure sex positions, as stylized as hieroglyphs, an erotic alphabet that Mel didn't know how to read, weirdly reminiscent of some of the alien characters on the extraterrestrial food dispenser at the Cosmic Fill-Up. The hole in the wall had grown no bigger, but the suction was stronger. Mel could feel it tugging at his clothes.

"Psssssst . . ."

The hiss sounded less human. More persistent. Mel pulled his underwear down, already standing at attention, but it bobbed, as if being drawn toward the hole. A terrible suspicion built in Mel's brain. Slowly, he bent his knees to bring his eye down level with the hole in the wall.

Beyond the wall was not the empty yard where the orphans sometimes played. Stars wheeled in the deep blackness, and a scrap of white fluttered, just at the edge of his vision. A cool hand touched the back of his neck and gripped, lightly but irresistibly. Pressing him forward, toward the void. Mel's hands shot out, palms pressed against the wall.

The cans clanked. Mel sat up as Rache darkened the doorway to the bedroom—but she was clothed, dressed to go out, brown cardigan and jeans, and had a cup of coffee in her hand.

"Hey," she whispered. "Walk?"

Mel crawled out from the foot of the bed, trying not to wake Jordan and Jenny. Rache sipped her coffee as she watched Mel dress, not minding his brief moment in the bathroom. When he emerged, she had rinsed the coffee cup out in the sink, and they stepped silently out into the corridor and took the stairs down to ground level.

"What did you do to me last night?" she said, as her hand found his.

"Um. Just tried to make you feel good, like they showed in the video," Mel said, glad for the cool morning breeze that helped wake him up a little.

Rache stared at him as if he was going to say something else.

"I couldn't stop," she said. "It was like—the mood, the atmosphere got me more excited than I've ever been. I wasn't scared at the time, but watching them, feeling them cum, it did something to me. I couldn't control myself. I would have let you do anything to me. Then I did. That's never happened to me before. It was like—it was like that time on the bus, only that time, I couldn't—penetration itself doesn't really do it, you know? I need more. But you had your tongue and fingers, and then Jordie was sucking on my tits and I—it didn't stop. I'd crest the wave. It barely dipped, and I'd feel the next wave rise up inside of me, my whole body clenching up, and your tongue just kept going, and I'd keep—"

Her hand was clutching his painfully.

"I mean, you hear about multiple climaxes, but when you're actually in one, it's different. Like when you're trapped in a laugh fit, and your face hurts, you can't breathe, but you also can't stop. Body on autopilot," she said. "And when I woke up this morning, my abs hurt like I'd been cramping or doing sit-ups."

Mel glanced at the back of her neck. There was no bandage there now; the little pink line was scabbed up and healing. No light shone out through the skin. Maybe because they were away from any brain slug hosts.

"I think it might be the pearl," Mel confessed. "I couldn't see it exactly, but sometimes when it's—active, I guess?—it glows. I can see it through your skin when it does. I think being so close to Jordan and Jenny when they were like that—I think they can feel each other, and you were getting some of that. Made you more receptive when I went down on you. I mean, I don't think I'm that good on my own. Still learning and all that."

Rache snorted. "Don't sell yourself short. You ate this pussy real good."

Yet she dropped into a troubled silence until they arrived at the path.

"Do you think it helped?" she asked. "I mean, this was the first day in a while I didn't wake up to find myself in your bedroom, thirsting after your dick."

"I don't know," Mel said honestly. "If you think it did, we could try again tonight."

Rache sighed. "I don't want to be a slut. I shouldn't be begging my boyfriend for sex every night."

Mel grinned. They had to disentangle their hands at a narrower part of the path, and he slid his arm around her waist, hand on her hip.

"First off, you're not a slut. There's nothing wrong with sex, especially at our age. We're supposed to be horny. And for the record, I'm happy to do my best to meet your sexual needs. That's part of the reason we're all together, right? We want to be able to share these experiences with each other. To do so safely. Experiment. Have fun," he said.

She put her arm around his shoulder.

"And what if I want . . . more than just you eating me out?" she said quietly. "I mean, I can't be satisfied with just penetration, but I do like penetration. Just saying."

Mel's mouth was suddenly dry. "With a condom—"

"Yeah, of course," she broke in. "But maybe tonight?"

"Of course," Mel promised. "It's a date."

She was too tall to lay her head on his shoulder, but as they entered the darkest part of the woods, her head bonked softly against his.

"When you say 'experiment,'" she said. "You mean we can try things?"

"Sure," Mel said.

"So if I ask you to spank me, or pull my hair, or . . ." she hesitated. "Anal?"

Mel was very glad she could not see his face at that moment.

"If you want. I've never done any of that before," he admitted.

Rachel gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Well, I'm not saying I have either. But . . . we'll talk about it, okay?"

"Okay."

Jenny and Jordan were up by the time they returned. Rachel kissed all three of them goodbye, heading back to her own apartment with her coffee cup as the trio began their exercises. The call came on the landline phone, as Jenny and Jordan were in the bathroom shaving.

"I need you to come into work today," Ha-Yoon said.

"Just me, or all three of us?" he asked.

"All three. None of the other brain slugs can make it this morning. I got a text about 'slug flu,' and they're all taking paid time off," the manager said.

"Right," Mel said. "Okay, we'll get dressed and be there when we can."

Mel explained; his girlfriends nodded, not showing any expression even when he mentioned slug flu. When they were all showered and dressed, Mel watched the two brain slug hosts break a raw egg into their mouths before they left for work.

The air was warmer than it had been an hour before, Spring finally beginning to show its face.

"Rache said she slept well last night," he told them as they walked down the sidewalk, hand in hand, Mel right behind them. When they paused at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change, Mel broached the subject: "She thinks maybe I helped. So she wants to try having sex tonight. Should I buy condoms, or do we have any left?"

Their brain slugs turned almost perfectly translucent, like they were blown out of the lightest green glass. Then Jordan turned her head and held up two fingers.

"So we have two. Okay. That'll be more than enough, right?"

Jordan made the ASL sign for "No." Then the light changed.

The first thing Jordan did, before she even checked in, was to take a 6-pack of condoms off the rack and buy them. Ha-Yoon, who was manning the register and seemed to be running the whole station by herself, smiled as she checked Jordan out.

"Expecting action?" the manager said after Mel signed in. Her smile was smug, and the gold stars in her eyes seemed to twinkle.

"They said they had two left," he said. "I wasn't sure why that isn't enough."

"Because there are three of them," Ha-Yoon said, her smile growing broader. "And you're eighteen. You should be able to go all night."

Mel remembered a couple of the draining, all-night sessions he'd had since meeting his roommates.

"I can," he confirmed, running a hand through brown hair that was definitely getting too grown out. "But you don't think they expect me to—with all of them?"

Ha-Yoon chuckled. "If I wasn't on a birth control implant, I would definitely need my lovers to glove up. But yes, I think you should be prepared to satisfy your girlfriends at any time, and treat them equitably. Like a gentleman."

"Right," Mel said.

He was restocking the aisles when Molly walked in. Today, her hair was tied back, and she wore her leather jacket over a woman's business suit in dark grey, wearing black flats instead of heels. She saw Jordan behind the counter and approached, a question on her lips, when she looked to her right and saw Mel.

Ha-Yoon looked over Mel's shoulder and raised an eyebrow. Mel gave a little sigh inside his soul, though he straightened up and smiled and waved as she approached. He was unable to read the expression on her face. Sort of worried around the eyes, maybe upset, but not angry. At least, he didn't think it was anger. Just intense.

"Hey. Molly, this is my manager, Ha-Yoon. Boss, this is Molly Maguire," he said.

"The half-sister," Ha-Yoon said, sticking out a hand.

Molly looked her in the eye as she shook the hand. It felt to Mel like a cat intruding on another's territory, and neither wanting to fight about it but acknowledging each other's presence. He had seen that happen more than once, on the way to and from school. The kind of tentative fight-or-flight-ready gentle inquiring sniff, followed by dedicatedly ignoring the other.

"Can I borrow Mel for a few moments?" Molly asked. "We need to talk."

Ha-Yoon's smile was self-satisfied.

"Receipt paper needs to be changed on charging station 3," she said. "That'll keep you away from any listeners."

Mel grabbed the receipt roll from the storage room, and Molly followed him outside. He saw a small Ford Protoss, pale yellow with blue power-lines, like something that had been driven straight out of a World of Starcraft game, parked outside. Vintage. It beeped as they passed it, and Molly muttered, "Oh, sugar," and tapped something on her phone. The car locked itself again.

"What's up?" Mel asked as they got to charging station 3.

"Why did you send me that photo of ma mère?" Molly asked, and all the tension in her face seemed to crystallize, so that Mel felt the full weight of her attention

"I check my email at the library. I got your message," Mel said. "Including the attachments, the stuff you sent about my parents you'd found online. The library has access to more databases than I did in high school—newspapers, genealogy. I was trying to look up information about you, but the name was giving too many bad hits, so I focused on your mother. That photo struck me as odd, because it's from 2036, and you were born in 2035. I thought maybe it was an old photo, but—"

"It isn't," Molly said. He crossed her arms under her breasts. The blouse she was wearing wasn't tight, but when she crossed her arms, it drew the white fabric taut, and Mel had to swiftly look up and try not to be aware of the outline of Molly's bra through the white fabric, or the way that the buttons subtly strained. She was definitely more gifted than Rachel, Jordan, and Jenny.

"That's the problem. It's December 2036. She shouldn't have been pregnant in 2036. But she looks grosse enceinte. Six, maybe seven months," Molly pouted, her lower lip sticking out. "And she never told me."

"Maybe she had a good reason?" Mel said, turning back to the mechanism and removing the old, spent roll, inserting the fresh one. "I mean, if she was—if she lost the baby—I knew kids in the orphanage who had lost siblings. It's a wound that doesn't heal."

"Maybe," Molly allowed, though she didn't sound convinced. "But it makes me wonder what else she hasn't told me."

"Everyone has secrets," Mel said, as he closed and locked the charging station.

"Even you?" Molly asked.

Mel turned and looked at his probably-half-sister. He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, trying to decide how to answer.

"I have never lied to you. There are things I haven't told you. Private parts of my life, stories that aren't all mine to tell, things I'm embarrassed about," he said. "You know I have a sex life with my girlfriends. You haven't asked for details about that, and I haven't offered them, beyond the bare necessities. I don't know if they'd like me talking about our private life that way. And I haven't tried to pry into yours. I know this whole situation—meeting a sibling you didn't know you had—is weird for you. It's weird for me too. I don't—I don't want to strain our relationship by prying too deep, too fast, or by scaring you off with parts of my life that might shock or disgust you."

For a moment, Molly's brown eyes grew soft as if she was about to cry. Then they grew hard and narrowed.

"You really think your sex life can shock me!? I'm an adult, you know! I'm older than you!" she said.

Mel winced at her tone. It wasn't the angry tone; it was the hurt-and-angry tone.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it like that. I just—I just thought you wouldn't want to hear that kind of stuff. I mean, it's weird to me, and I'm living through it."

"Well, maybe I want to hear about it," Molly said. "Maybe I care about what those three sirènes are doing to my Mievillé!"

Mel sighed inwardly again. This was not how he had expected this conversation to go. Yet it wasn't like his private life was all that private. Ha-Yoon, Amelia, and plenty of other aliens knew about it. A part of him knew he would regret what he was about to say, but he had been honest with other people so far—and he wasn't prepared to lie to his own sister.

"Okay," Mel said. "Fine. I'll tell you whatever you want to know. No hidden secrets, no little white lies. Alright?"

"Bien," Molly said, and stuck out a pink-palmed hand. "And I won't hold anything back either. Deal?"

Mel clasped her hand. She pulled him forward, wrapping him in a hug. Awkwardly, he hugged her back. They held it for a long moment, then released each other and walked back towards her Protoss.

"We'll talk. Later. You have work. And I think we'll both have questions for ma mère. Vendredi," she said.

Mel's high school French came back.

"Friday," he agreed. "Where am I meeting you?"

She sucked in her lower lip. "You like fried chicken?"

Mel blinked.

"Are there people that don't like fried chicken?"

Molly seemed to relax at that. She smiled.

"Poulet Frit Kentucky. I'll pick you up at your apartment after work," Molly said. "Okay?"

"Okay," Mel said. "It's a date."

The words had slipped out, an echo of what he'd said to Rachel this morning. Molly's eyes went wide, showing the whites. He couldn't tell if she was blushing, but she looked like maybe she was, and he just couldn't see it with her darker skin.

"Ou-oui!" Molly stammered. "See you then."

Mel waved goodbye as she pulled out, then stepped back inside the Cosmic Fill-Up. There was a moment of peace. Then Ha-Yoon sauntered over. He had never quite been able to picture what a saunter was, but seeing her deliberately casual movement, the way she seemed to be walking without a care as to where her feet took her, and the calm, measured patience of a street cat that had spotted a particularly fat and stupid pigeon, cemented the word in Mel's brain.

"Soooo?" she asked.

"Her mother is flying in. Wants to have dinner with the two of us. Friday after work," Mel said.

"Ooh, meeting the MILF already?" his manager said.

Mel couldn't describe the face he was making. He knew what MILF meant. Every orphan who had been in the second-floor boys' room at the orphanage knew what MILF meant. It had been spelled out in three-inch-high letters, literally carved into the solid wood panel just above the door: someone had written

MOM

I'D

LIKE TO

FUCK

Beneath it, in slightly smaller letters and a different hand, a young wit had written:

MY MOM'S DEAD

Which was the kind of humor Mel had come to expect at the orphanage.

Four people were just enough to man the Cosmic Fill-Up even during rush hour, provided no one took their lunch hour or breaks at the same time, and someone was almost constantly on the swifter. Mel didn't mind it, really—it meant extra money—but it did mean he was on his feet most of the day and had to scarf down his rice bowl instead of enjoying a leisurely lunch with his girlfriends.

A familiar face popped in during the afternoon. Amelia wore a kind of oversized blue knit rastacap and a pale blue hoodie with matching sweatpants. Li'l Mel was in his sling, utterly sound asleep. She smiled when she saw Mel, who was pushing the swifter underneath the coffee station.

"So, I sent an email. They say it's okay with them if it's okay with you. So, we could do it Wednesday? My place. We shoot a little video and then a nice home-cooked meal," Amelia said.

Jordan, who was checking out a customer, didn't even look at Mel. She just held out her left hand with a thumb's up gesture.

"Ah, yeah," Mel said. "That sounds great. Where do we meet you?"

"Corner of 6th and 9th. I've got the apartment above the bookstore. Just go round the alley and take the stairs," she said, face split into a wide smile. "You are not going to regret it!"

She grabbed a gallon of milk and was out the door before Li'l Mel had time to wake.

In a few days, Mel realized. There's going to be another video about my dick on the internet. I really hope that doesn't become a trend.

He chewed that thought for a moment. Between Rachel tonight and Amelia on Wednesday—which Jordan (and therefore Jenny) already approved of and/or apparently knew about—he realized that Jordan was correct. They had needed more condoms.

Mel hoped they would be enough.