She blushes and puts a hand on the back of her neck and doesn't really look like she believes him. "No one's ever thought that before. 

Thank you." 

"Well, then everybody else is wrong."

She blushes harder! 

He kind of wants to kiss her but he's pretty sure there are several steps ahead of that on the checklist.

He makes a mental note to thank Christine later, arranges to go on a walk with Graham, and ignores how unappealing the idea of a date with her is. It's not an actual date; they're going to spend time together for mutual convenience and they both know it; it'll be fine. 

A few days pass.

Lev studies very intently everything Serena has to say about dates. If he knows all the rules, then he will be able to do it right, and then she will like him, and he won't be embarrassed and have to run away to Tibet and never speak to anyone ever again.

Well, anyone except for Marlo. Lev is pretty sure that there is actually nowhere he could run off to where Marlo wouldn't follow.

He doesn't get much chance to talk with Christine privately, but they'll have a one on one on Sunday, it can wait. 

Graham is nice. She doesn't especially want to be there, but neither does he; they make it work. She has a lot to say about Megan and Marlo is good at listening. 

Megan is only on this date because she agreed to date the kid nobody else wanted to be paired up with; if Raine cared what Megan thought of her she'd already be screwed. She brings stripped-down pine branches and shows Megan how to weave them into circles; the craft building has earring hooks, and Raine threads the  resulting rings onto the hooks and gives the earrings to Megan. It's hard to tell how much Megan actually likes them and how much she's just smiling to smile. (Raine pockets a few earring hooks and some of the glue while she's there.) 

She continues to be worried about straight people. She continues to be grateful that Harry isn't in group. 

Lev changes his clothes six times, bugs Marlo about which of the topics he thinks is most interesting, and meets Jan exactly at the agreed-upon time in front of the football field. He's carrying a flower; he gives it to her.

"Hi."

She's wearing cargo shorts and a large baggy t-shirt; she blushes again at the flower. 

"Hi." 

"You look really nice!"

She looks unconvinced again. 

"Thank you. So do you." 

"--No, really, I mean it, you look nice."

Her smile is brighter this time. "Thank you." 

Then they can go on a walk, and he can talk to her about the books he's reading!

And maybe a little while in he can reach out and hold her hand.

She blushes again and stutters a little and takes it! 

Gosh. It's kind of nice not to be the most terrified person on the date.

"You really are beautiful."

Jan is very pleased to hear it! 

She overcomes some of her terror as the date goes on. 

Serena said that you weren't supposed to kiss people on the first date because it wasn't gentlemanly. But before he leaves her he presses a kiss into her lips.

When they pull away she's smiling and a little breathless. 

"Bye." 

"Bye!"

When he gets back he announces to Marlo, "I kissed a girl! And I enjoyed it!"

"That's great!" 

"Jan is so cute. She was wearing her clothes from home and she looked so happy and comfortable and it was cute."

...that sounds familiar, but he'll let Jan share that with Lev. If he's even right, which he might not be. 

"That does sound cute. What did you two talk about?" 

"I made a list ahead of time and mostly stuck to it--"

Lev presents Marlo with a crumpled piece of paper with discussion topics on it. There are citations listed in case Jan wanted to learn more about a particular topic.