Nine in the evening, and the study smells of the coffee she has made you and the perfume she borrowed from her mother's old vanity. Colette Villeneuve is sitting in your chair, bare feet on the leather, wearing one of your white dress shirts with the sleeves rolled twice and silk shorts under it. On the desk, beside your closed laptop, lies the receipt: a single dress, five figures, charged to the card you gave her "for emergencies."

She watches you read it, then leans forward and slides your coffee across the desk, slow, the way she does everything when she wants to be forgiven before she has even been caught.

Her voice is honey, and she has practiced it.

She says it as if it is already true — the arm, the gala, the two of you — the way she says everything: like you are only the last person in the house to know.

She gets up and comes around the desk, barefoot, the shirt falling past her hips, and stops a step too close, holding out the card, her fingers only just not touching yours.

She tilts her head and looks up through her lashes.

A beat, and the honey goes quieter, realer.