The Few People Who Actually Like Finnick Odair

“Well, I can’t leave Mags behind. She’s one of the few people who actually likes me.”

If you’re someone who knows of Finnick Odair — which is everyone — but doesn’t really know him — which is almost everyone — then you probably believe this to be a joke. Or perhaps it’s false modesty. After all, practically everyone likes Finnick. He’s fun, charming, handsome — what is there not to like?

But the truth is, when you get to know Finnick — really get to know him — he’s not always the easiest person to like. Most people in Finnick’s life — they come and go. They get swept up by fun, charming, handsome, life-of-the-party Finnick, then are disappointed when they find themselves dealing with moody, manipulative, clingy, deeply traumatized Finnick. Most of them leave as soon as they see the side of Finnick that isn’t ever shown on TV.

So here is the list of people who did stick around. These are the few people who have seen Finnick at his best and at his worst and still like him exactly as he is.

It is almost shocking how short this list is. There are eight people on it. Eight people, only five of whom are still alive.

Katia Odair

Okay, so it’s kind of sad to start this list with one’s own mother. It’s even more sad when you consider that she’s dead now. But this list simply must start with Katia Odair because she’s Finnick’s fundamental reference point for every bit of genuine care and love he’s ever experienced.

Finnick never exactly told his mother what went on every time he went to the Capitol, but she worked out the important bits anyway. They never really talked about it — a fact that Finnick sort of regrets now — but she always responded to each new scandal with unconditional love and care rather than judgment.

Perhaps Finnick remembers her with rose colored glasses to some extent — she did spend fourteen years preparing him to go into the arena before finally getting cold feet — but Finnick can’t really bring himself to blame her for that. If Katia had one flaw, it was that she never could stand up to her husband. She was too much of a people pleaser, too desperate for approval. Well… Finnick had to get it from somewhere.

It should be noted that Finnick’s father does not make this list.

Annie Cresta

Finnick has always been very popular. Long before he won the Hunger Games and became the Capitol darling he is today, people throughout District Four were already drawn to him. He was a charismatic child — cheerful, intelligent, friendly to the extreme. Having spectacularly good looks and generational athletic talent certainly didn’t hurt either. It’s safe to say that Finnick has always had a whole lot of friends.

But there are friends, and then there are real friends. This becomes clear very quickly when you’re fourteen and massively famous and admired, but you’re famous and admired for something so traumatic that you spend half your time bawling your eyes out, and it’s even worse than that because every few weeks you have to go back to the place that hurt you, and people there do things to you that wouldn’t even be okay to do to an adult, and if you mess up at all your family dies, and whenever you finally get to go home, you just shut down for weeks at a time because it’s all too much.

So yeah, who would want to be friends with a kid like that? He sounds like just a giant bummer.

Well, Annie Cresta, that’s who.

The people who know that Finnick and Annie are together always seem to praise Finnick for picking up the pieces of that damaged, crazy girl who came out of the arena. As if he’s doing some grand service by loving her. What they don’t know is that she was dealing with his crazy long before she had any crazy of her own.

Finnick’s oldest and best friend was the only one who stuck around, even through his worst, darkest days. She would sit with him even when he wouldn’t talk, hold him when he cried, and tell him that he was still a good person when he really didn’t believe it.

And sure, eventually they became lovers, but that’s not the point, you know? It should be noted that to Finnick, sex is about the most meaningless thing there is. Maybe that wasn’t always the case, but by the time you’ve been forced to go through the motions hundreds of times with people you despise, it just loses all meaning. Next to what he has with Annie, it’s so laughably insignificant.

For the record, Finnick is attracted to his wife, and they do have sex. But their relationship is so much more than that. Some people will ask when he fell in love with Annie, and the truth is that he feels in some ways that he’s always been in love with Annie. Obviously, that’s not the case; they’ve known each other since birth, and certainly the love a child feels for a friend is different than the love he feels for Annie now. But even so, Finnick really couldn’t pinpoint when he went from just loving Annie to being in love with her. It just sort of crept up on him.

For her part, Annie knows the exact moment she started to see Finnick as something more than her best friend. Finnick asked her once, and Annie confessed a little sheepishly that she’d had a crush on him years before they ever got together. Annie wanted Finnick since before he was ever a victor — ever since the day she heard Evie Grador bragging about hooking up with Finnick underneath the pier.

Finnick had laughed for about five minutes straight at her answer, and Annie had hit him. But then, when Finnick really thought about it, that answer only made him love Annie all the more. It meant that she had been willing to put aside her feelings and be a friend to him at a time that he’d needed a friend so, so much more than he’d needed a girlfriend.

Mags Flanagan

Finnick would not be alive today if it weren’t for Mags Flanagan. That could probably be said of many people on this list, but it’s especially true for Mags. From the time he got on that train to the Capitol for the first time, Mags was always his rock. She got him through the Games and all that came after.

People get a lot of things wrong about Mags. They see her as just this sweet, old grandmotherly type. Finnick knows better.

Mags may have been old, and she was certainly warm and caring, but not coddling. Never coddling. He could always trust Mags to tell it like it was; she never once told Finnick that everything was going to be okay because it would have been a lie.

She did, however, offer him hugs, advice, cookies, or drugs — all depending on what the moment called for. Finnick learned early on that Mags couldn’t save him. She was far from all-powerful, but she was wise and pragmatic. There’s a reason Mags won the Hunger Games, and she was the one who taught Finnick how to be a victor. He certainly wouldn’t have survived without her.

And then there is the last and greatest thing Mags ever did for Finnick. See, you may believe that Mags sacrificed herself to save Annie Cresta or Peeta Mellark, but make no mistake; she sacrificed herself for Finnick.

Mags cared about Annie, sure. You could even go so far as to say that she loved Annie. Mags loved all her victors to an extent, and even if Annie wasn’t ever really one of her victors the way the others were, Annie was still a victor. Moreover, Mags had already known the girl for years by the time Annie went to the Games.

The thing is, Mags never had children of her own. She couldn’t have, even if she had wanted to; the Capitol doctors had made sure of that, right after they killed the baby inside her — the baby that was proof of what the Capitol’s rapists had done to her.

In some ways, Mags always thought she had gotten off easy with this fate. Certainly easier than being one of the young victors forced to get married, have children, and then see those children reaped. Certainly easier than being Finnick, crying over a child whose evil, evil mother had insisted could only be his. Mags had told Finnick that there was no reason to believe a woman whose excessive drinking, drug use, and promiscuity were widely known. She had assured Finnick that the drugs the Capitol gave him were completely infallible.

Of course, she had actually known no such thing. That may be the one and only time Mags ever lied to Finnick. Because the truth was that neither of them would ever know. Those people would never in a million years admit to it if the president’s own great niece was indeed fathered by a district boy.

But Mags escaped all of that, and she always thought that perhaps she should be grateful. Even though she had been devastated at the loss of her baby — her baby whom she never even got to hold, but had already come to love. It was for the best that she never had children, though. It was for the best, even if over the years, she sometimes felt such a desperate yearning that it made her want to cry.

Maybe that’s why Mags gave so much of herself to the tributes she mentored, year after year. To her, it was never about them winning. It was about making a terrible situation a little less terrible for them. Often, that meant helping them believe that they could win. They still died more often than not, but at least they spent their last days on Earth not so afraid and hopeless. That’s what Mags told herself, but even so, with each child she watched die, Mags felt a little piece of herself die, too.

The ones who lived, though… sometimes those were even harder. Mags loved all her victors. Or she tried to anyway. Some of them were more accepting of her love than others. There were those whom she loved but still lost. Try as she might, Mags never could save all of them.

And then Finnick came along. Mags couldn’t say exactly why it was — maybe it was because he was so young or maybe it was because he was so vulnerable, so immediately after the Games — but regardless, Finnick was different to her than any of her other victors had been. For the last decade of her life, hardly a day went by that Mags didn’t talk to Finnick. She loved that boy desperately, and she hurt so deeply whenever he hurt. With Finnick, Mags didn’t just feel like a mentor; she felt like a mother.

Grenada Gildeon

This one is perhaps the most surprising. She is, after all, the only Capitol-born person on this list.

When Finnick first met District Four’s escort, he believed her to be just a typical Capitol citizen — ditzy and airheaded, completely uncaring of the suffering that was right in front of her. And well… he was right. Sort of.

The thing about Grenada Gildeon is that she is fundamentally a good person. She’s organized, type-A, intelligent, competent — all of which led to her landing the highly sought-after position of Hunger Games escort. And for a career district at that! Most people won’t understand what a remarkable accomplishment this is for someone of Grenada’s background, but suffice it to say, all the other escorts have last names that carry considerably more weight than Gildeon. Yes, even Trinket. Grenada is the definition of a self-made woman.

But for a woman who is fundamentally a good person to succeed in that particular career, she has to do some serious mental gymnastics. The sad truth is this — before she came to love Finnick, Grenada never really saw the children she watched die every year as real people.

It wasn’t that she disliked them or anything. She never treated them with anything but the utmost kindness, even when they did not reciprocate her kindness. To Grenada, they were more like… like favorite pets, maybe. And besides, all the kids from District Four were volunteers anyway. No one was forcing them to go into that arena. It was a great opportunity for them — an opportunity to gain wealth and fame like nothing they could even dream of without the Games.

But then one of those children actually won.

The other thing you need to know about Grenada is that she is, above all, a mother. Yes, she is a high-powered career woman, but far more important are her two children, one of whom is a boy right around Finnick’s age.

Finnick was never rude to Grenada, as so many of the other tributes had been. From the beginning, he believed — quite correctly — that Grenada could be a valuable ally. Even if that weren’t the case, Finnick really isn’t the sort of person who is ever prone to rudeness. No, he was always friendly and sweet and charming and just so young. Nonetheless, Grenada watched him go into that arena.

But that’s when something changed because, unlike all the others, Finnick actually made it out of that arena. Suddenly, Grenada found herself the person responsible for the care of a fourteen-year-old district boy.

Finnick was sweet and cooperative, and he always ate his vegetables without complaint. He would tell her that he missed his mom so much and just wanted to go home, and he couldn’t seem to stop crying. Sometimes he seemed just so much younger than fourteen — so much younger than her own boy — and it always broke her heart to remember the bright-eyed, confident Finnick she’d met before the Games. Quickly, Grenada realized — this was no favorite pet; this was a child like her own.

Before you ask — no, Grenada did not know what was being done to Finnick back then. He didn’t tell her, and yeah, it probably crossed a line into willful ignorance at some point. When she was finally forced to confront the truth, Grenada hated herself for all those fancy parties and private dinners she unthinkingly sent Finnick to — engagements which, she was told on no uncertain terms, she was not to accompany him to.

What had she been thinking? Grenada would never have allowed her own child to have dinner alone with a strange fifty-year-old man. Not even one who was very rich and important. Especially not one who was very rich and important. Did the fame of the child in question somehow blind her to common-sense rules and red flags? But in her defense, it did all seem very official.

If we’re being a little bit kinder to Grenada, then maybe she was thinking that one woman — a woman from the most middle-class of all middle-class families — could hardly hope to challenge an entire government. So her choices were this: she could stay at her job and be there for Finnick, or she could quit in protest and not be there for Finnick. The choice was easy.

Grenada’s employment contract specified that she was only required to work eight hours a day, and her boss refused to pay her overtime when the Games weren’t in session. Nonetheless, she just couldn’t bear to leave Finnick alone at the Tribute Center. He was always so lonely in those early days. Grenada would often spend sixteen or more hours at work so that she could be there for both breakfast and dinner, and even then, she would still feel bad about leaving because she knew Finnick never slept through the night. But Grenada had a family of her own, and she couldn’t keep it up. So one day, she just brought Finnick home with her.

Finnick would eventually come to be like family to Grenada. And that’s not something Capitol women say about district boys.

Cashmere Leighson

The day Finnick met Cashmere Leighson was also the day that he was the closest he has ever been to committing suicide. To this day, Finnick can’t say whether he would have actually done it, but Mags was worried after how their phone call had ended. Mags had called every phone in the Tribute Center until Cashmere had picked up and agreed to go check on Finnick.

So yeah — that was the beginning of their relationship: her talking him off the ledge.

She didn’t really do it in the traditional way. Instead, her tactic was to tell him that she thought Snow would probably kill his family if he offed himself. It sounds horrible in hindsight, but on that day, Finnick wasn’t even sure that he cared. His parents had raised him like a pig for slaughter, after all. Why did he owe them anything?

But just having someone else there — someone who actually understood — it had been enough. From that day onwards, Cashmere and Finnick became friends.

Their friendship was just casual companionship more than anything else. They would watch silly TV shows, frequent taco trucks, and get high together on the roof of the Tribute Center. There was also a period of a year or two when they were having sex, but strange as it might sound, this really wasn’t any different to them than any of the other activities they did together. They were just both very good at sex, so naturally, sex together was very good. And they were bored sometimes, so why not? They were certainly never boyfriend and girlfriend, despite what the gossip blogs would have you believe. When Finnick got together with Annie, he told Cashmere that he didn’t want to have sex anymore, and she just shrugged.

For both Finnick and Cashmere, the wonderful thing about their friendship was that they could talk to each other about anything. Not just the big, important stuff but all the minutiae. There was the stuff that Finnick thought was just stupid or a mild annoyance or maybe even kind of funny, but if he told Annie or Mags, they’d give him that sad look they got, or maybe they wouldn’t even understand what he was talking about. So Cashmere was always the person Finnick went to if he wanted to, say, complain about whoever the hell thought cheese-flavored lube was a good idea.

Finnick always gets especially sad thinking about Cashmere because she could have lived. Sometimes, he feels angry at Johanna for killing her, even though he knows it was exactly what Cashmere wanted. If only she had been willing to put her faith in the rebel plan. But Cashmere was always a shade more cynical than Finnick, and she insisted that she and Gloss both just wanted to die so that it would finally be over and their family would be safe. Cashmere told Finnick before the Quarter Quell that she would play precisely by the Capitol’s rules, and she advised him to do the same. She insisted that to do otherwise would only make things worse.

Finnick had never really believed her. Playing by the Capitol’s rules meant she would have had to kill even her own brother, and he never for a second believed she would be able to do that.

In the end, Cashmere did promise she would try her best to let Beetee and Katniss live. She did not want to interfere with the plan that she absolutely did not want to know about, she told him; she just didn’t want to be around to take the blame when it inevitably went wrong.

When the arena broke, and the Capitol took Annie, Finnick initially resigned himself to Cashmere’s way of thinking. He could have been a good little victor to the end, just like her, and Annie would have been safe.

Only no. That’s not true. Not really.

Annie wouldn’t have been safe because she was born in District Four. She wouldn’t have been safe because she’s a victor. She wouldn’t have been safe because none of them are really safe so long as Snow is in charge.

Sometimes, you just have to take a leap of faith. Finnick desperately wishes that Cashmere had taken that leap with him.

Haymitch Abernathy

Okay, here’s one Finnick never would have expected. And Haymitch… Haymitch would have laughed in your face if you told him that he would come to care about Finnick to the extent that he does. After all, Haymitch Abernathy has long since given up caring about people. Or so he tells himself.

The thing is, Haymitch honestly never expected Finnick to survive. He expected Finnick to survive the arena, of course — anyone with half a brain expected that — but he never expected Finnick to survive what came after. There was no way; the kid was fourteen, and Haymitch could already tell that Finnick felt things far too deeply, loved much too easily. And the way the Capitol was about him… Haymitch didn’t even like to think about it. In fifteen years of attending the Games — a time period that was longer than Finnick had been alive, Haymitch noted with some incredulity — Haymitch had never seen anything like it. The Capitol’s adoration, the absolute fervor around Finnick… They were going to eat the poor kid alive. Haymitch resigned himself to watching it play out. He was sure that by the next time he saw Finnick, the kid would be a hollowed-out shell of himself, ruined by drink or drugs. And that was if the kid even lived that long.

And yet, somehow, this never came to pass. Over the years, Haymitch noticed Finnick with the same detached disinterest he noticed everything else surrounding the Games — at least on the occasions when he was sober enough to notice anything at all. Naturally, the kid was very deeply messed up in a great many ways, but even so... there was still something essential, something the Capitol never quite managed to take from Finnick. The kid wasn’t broken. Finnick still cared deeply, still loved — not freely or easily anymore, but it was still there nonetheless. Haymitch realized that he had wildly underestimated Finnick. The kid was strong — certainly a lot stronger than Haymitch had ever been.

They weren’t ever friends, at least not before thirteen. Haymitch doesn’t really have friends, and Finnick certainly had far better choices in friends than some mean, old drunk. Still, Haymitch came to really respect Finnick over the years.

So that’s why it bothered Haymitch so much the day he finally saw the light go out in Finnick’s eyes. He really, really couldn’t blame the kid. Finnick had always done everything right, but even so, the Capitol just kept taking from him. It wasn’t enough for them that Finnick played his part flawlessly and without ever complaining. No, they had to drag his girl into it, too. Everyone hits their breaking point eventually.

But Haymitch could not shake the feeling that it was wrong for Finnick to be in a dingy bathroom, doing lines of crushed-up morphling pills, while his girl was outside screaming her head off. It wasn’t right. That kind of behavior was for someone weaker. Someone like Haymitch.

Finnick had survived for so long out of love. He had always been protecting the people he cared about. If Finnick couldn’t do that anymore… Well then, maybe it was time Haymitch gave the kid a new purpose.

Johanna Mason

Unlike most of the other people on this list, Johanna Mason did not like Finnick at all when they first met. Between her general loathing of careers and her revulsion at his disgusting playboy ways, she actually despised Finnick the first time she met him. She wanted to punch him right in his perfect face more and more with every word he spoke. He was nothing but devastating smiles and perfectly rehearsed pick-up lines.

Of course, there are a whole lot of things about Finnick that Johanna did not know at the time. In hindsight, she feels kind of awful for how she treated him. Finnick doesn’t blame her, though. He never did. In fact, Finnick went to considerable lengths to help Johanna even before she had done anything but hurl insults at him.

It happened during her victory tour. Johanna’s mentor, Blight, had explained to Johanna about “Capitol VIPs” and “certain expectations”, but he hadn’t explained it all that well. Snow had talked to her too about “generous sponsors” and “showing her gratitude”, and in hindsight Johanna thinks maybe she was just being purposefully obtuse about it. After all, Finnick understood just fine at only fourteen years old.

But really, it’s not like either of them ever came right out and said, “Hey Johanna, you have to let any asshole who’s rich enough rape you and act happy about it if you want the people you care about to live.” Finnick would insist later that she couldn’t possibly be expected to just intuit this, and that Blight is an idiot. Johanna believes him about the latter part, anyway.

So it happened that Johanna punched her first client — no, rapist, Johanna always corrects herself — when he tried to grope her at a party, right out in the open.

It could have been bad. It could have been really bad. But thankfully, Finnick was around to drag Johanna out of there — practically kicking and screaming, she remembers. Then, somehow, Finnick worked his magic and smoothed the whole thing over. By some miracle, the creep agreed to give her another chance in a few days' time, and Johanna got off scot-free.

Johanna understood that she couldn’t mess up again, and she was terrified. Sure, Johanna puts up a tough exterior, but at barely eighteen years of age, Johanna was so much younger and more naive than most people realize. She would have lost her virginity to a rapist if it weren’t for Finnick.

And no, before you ask — he did not fuck her. Johanna had laughed when he explained that he actually had a girlfriend, which was maybe kind of mean, but can you blame her?

Finnick had laughed, too, because really, it was funny in a very sad way. But Annie also wasn’t the real reason he wouldn’t have sex with Johanna. Annie would have understood. It would be a lie to say that she wouldn’t have minded because what woman wouldn’t have minded? But she wouldn’t have minded any more than she minded all the other people Finnick had sex with out of obligation rather than desire.

It wasn’t that Finnick would have been bothered by it either. Sex had long since ceased to have any meaning to him by that point. Besides, Johanna was a pretty girl, and fucked up circumstances aside, sex with pretty girls usually tended to be enjoyable to Finnick.

No, it was really for Johanna’s sake that Finnick had refused. Because while sex was meaningless to Finnick, the same certainly could not be said for Johanna. It’s very easy to find someone who’s nice enough and reasonably attractive and age-appropriate to fuck a girl who is both pretty and famous. It’s a whole lot harder to find someone who really understands what that girl is going through, who can be there for her and never judge her.

Finnick had friends in the Capitol — friends who were close to Johanna’s age and normal people who weren’t creeps — so he’d just taken Johanna to a party with some of them. Not a big, fancy party like all the ones she’d been to in the Capitol so far, but just a casual party in some university kid’s apartment. It wasn’t really all that different from a party that might happen back home — not that Johanna had ever really been one for parties. And then Finnick had just played the wingman, and Johanna had found herself in bed with a guy who seemed decent enough, even if he was from the Capitol. He was nice to her, and the experience was fine if unremarkable. Best of all, Johanna never had to see or think about him again if she didn’t want to.

She did think about him, though. Even though it was silly, Johanna did think about that random Capitol boy who meant nothing to her except that he was her first time. And that’s why, in time, Johanna would come to be immensely grateful that he was just some random Capitol boy and not Finnick.

Finnick would become a lifeline for Johanna. She hated the Capitol just a little bit less when she was there with Finnick because he would show her around, bring her to places that were actually fun. She had his phone number memorized, and when she needed it, he would talk to her for hours, even if it was the middle of the night.

When Johanna’s own mother called her a slut and abandoned her, Finnick listened to her cry and scream. When Johanna was freaking out because she’d kissed her best friend, and she didn’t know what to do because she couldn’t possibly be with anyone... and besides, she wasn’t even sure if she was into girls, but she thought probably she was, and she just didn’t want Jordan to hate her… Well, Finnick had listened to all that, too. He had been patient and talked her through the whole thing, one step at a time. And then there was the terrible day that Jordan died — died, because she was too good a person to just stand by and let Johanna and so many others get hurt. There had been nothing Finnick could say on that day to make Johanna feel any better.

Johanna had very seriously considered giving up after that. Let Snow kill her bitch of a mother. It wasn’t like Johanna cared about her. She told Finnick that she was done with not fighting back. It was an insult to Jordan’s memory. She was going to kill the next bastard who tried to touch her.

And that was when Johanna received the shock of a lifetime. Finnick just stared at her for a moment before saying, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear, “There are much more effective ways of fighting back, Johanna.”

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen is the final addition to this list, and much like Johanna, she did not initially like Finnick. Really, Finnick wonders why his first instinct is to flirt with people like Johanna and Katniss, people who clearly aren’t going to respond well to that.

Or no — he doesn’t wonder why. He knows why, but he still thinks it’s deeply messed up. He’s deeply messed up. He can’t really blame Katniss for hating him at first.

But Katniss came around to Finnick. More remarkably, she did so without needing to know the series of horrors that was Finnick’s life over the past decade. It’s very easy to feel bad for Finnick when you know his story, but it’s not nearly so common that someone actually bothers to get to know Finnick outside of all that and comes to like and respect him.

Finnick would have to admit, if he’s being honest, that he really didn’t want Katniss to know about that stuff. It wasn’t that he was actively trying to hide it — not at first anyway — but as time went on and she still clung to her innocent notion that Finnick was just a bit of a slut and not actually a whore, Finnick found that he really didn’t care to enlighten her. He wanted her to see him as a competent adult and not a broken child... which was sort of an uphill battle when he couldn’t even convince the doctors that he was well enough to live outside the hospital. He wanted Katniss to think that his advice was actually worth listening to, and he wanted her to laugh at the jokes that would only be horrifying to her if she knew. Most of all, Finnick saw no reason to make Katniss dwell on a fate that she herself had so narrowly escaped.

So while Finnick hadn’t ever exactly lied to Katniss, he would have to admit that he purposely withheld. For the most part, this was very easy. After all, Finnick had years of practice hiding what he was.

But Katniss wasn’t just anyone; she was a victor. And moreover, she was the Mockingjay.

Finnick always worried that Katniss would learn the truth from one of the other victors or else pick up on something during one of the meetings she attended in command. But as the weeks went on, Katniss never figured it out. It seemed Haymitch and Beetee had no desire to enlighten her as to the realities of victorhood, and if Plutarch or one of the others made a comment every now and then with certain implications, it always seemed to go right over her head.

Finnick wishes more than anything that he could have been that innocent at seventeen. Even though Katniss is hardly what most people would call innocent. She’s a victor, after all.

Then, there came the day when he had no choice but to tell everyone. And Finnick certainly wasn’t thinking about Katniss at all on that day. He had much bigger things to worry about than what Katniss thought of him. The whole country was going to see this. The whole fucking country was going to watch this and know what a pathetic, disgusting whore Finnick Odair was. But he had to do it. He had to do it if he ever wanted to see Annie again.

For the rest of that day and for several days afterwards, Finnick was still much too preoccupied to give Katniss a second thought. It was only much later that it occurred to him; Katniss knew now. She knew, and she wasn’t treating him any differently. She knew, and she still liked him.