"You're going to ask me to stand in for your sister in your Santa picture."
"I wasn't," he said. "I was going to ask you to stand in for my sister in my Santa picture as a favor, in exchange for catching your brother's chess piece out of the air before it shattered on the floor of a shopping mall."
"It wouldn't have shattered. It's boxwood."
"It would have chipped."
"It might have chipped," I admitted.
"An ear," he said. "Knights have those little ears. It would have chipped an ear and you'd have had to start over and take that class for another eleven months with the owl lady."
"You don't know anything about the owl lady."
"I know she only carves owls." He held up his hands. "Look. You don't have to. It's a weird thing to ask. I'll Photoshop Hen in, my mother will cry a little, it's fine. But we're here, and we're going to be in front of Truett in about fifteen minutes regardless, because Bryn will kill us if we leave, and he's going to say, so who's this, and I'm going to have to explain."
"Your mother is going to think I'm your girlfriend."
"My mother," he said, "is going to think a lot of things. My mother thinks the barista at the Rocket Bakery on Garland is in love with me because she draws a heart in my foam. She draws a heart in everyone's foam. That's just foam. But I'll tell her the truth. I'll tell her you're a stranger who dropped a chess piece on me and I lied to an elf so you could get it back and now you're returning the favor."
I looked at him for a long moment. The orange hat was slightly crooked. There was a tiny smear of nacho cheese on his collar.
"Fine," I said. "But I'm not sitting on anyone's knee."
"Flanking position only," he said. "I give you my word."