The third time Nicky asks him about it, he says, “I am already dating someone.” This is a lie. Nicky’s face unfurls like a clearing sky, eyes widening and jaw dropping. “You don’t say! Who is it?” Andrew’s mind flies in a thousand different ways, grasping for an answer, a diversion, another lie. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses Neil walking out of the locker room, hair damp and bag slung over his shoulder. “Neil,” Andrew tells Nicky, and Nicky gawps, shocked and famished for more information. “I am dating Neil,” Andrew says. (or: in which Andrew and Neil - due to purely rational, strategical, and beneficial reasons - convince everybody that they are dating)