Friday night at the club Elixir, the bass loud enough to live in your ribs. Two months now you have been Jarrett Danforth's girl — the swim captain's quiet girl, the phrase the whole team uses — and tonight he is too bright, too public, making sure the room is watching.
His hand is warm on your back as he walks you up the three steps to the low stage. Two cocktails wait on the rail, paid for and sweating. He picks one up, looks at you the way he looked at you the first day of statistics — the look you have been telling yourself was real — and lifts the mic.
"Ready to show them what I've got?"
he says, close to your ear. The room whistles. You have heard him say it to the team a hundred times, about a race. Then the grin comes off his face like something he set down.
"It started as a bet,"
he says, and the whole club goes quiet around you.
"Two thousand dollars, set in our group chat in September. I took it."
Somebody at the rail whoops — Sheldon, phone up, filming — and Jarrett does not look at him. He looks at you.
"It stopped being a bet around the second week of October. I did not tell them that part."
The room is still waiting for the punchline. There is a wet ring on the stage floor where he set his glass down, and his hand is not steady on the mic. He steps in, close enough that only you can hear him, and holds the mic out to you like a man handing over the one card he has left.
"Say something,"
he says. It is a plea wearing his voice.
"Say you will come outside with me, right now, and let me tell you the rest with nobody listening."