“That’s the rich team.”
“That’s the winning team.”
“I want— I don’t know. Arsenal.”
“Arsenal.” He glances over. “Princess.”
“Shut up, Stanley.”
He grins and picks my team for me, and the match starts.
I lose inside three minutes. Badly. He scores four goals in the first half and starts narrating his own celebrations like there’s a broadcast crew in the room.
“Top corner, Linwood. Top corner. You see that?”
“You are insufferable.”
“I’m a champion in real life and digitally.”
I roll my eyes. He laughs at his stupid joke, and I smile. A genuine one.
It ends 6–1, and he’s still narrating it. At some point in the last however-many minutes, I have taken my boots off without one conscious thought about doing it. My feet are up on his couch in socks. The coffee — his coffee — wasn’t as bad as I thought, so my mug is sitting empty on the table.
It’s only when I catch the microwave clock through the kitchen doorway that I realize we’ve been playing for thirty minutes.
I set the controller down. “I have to go.”
He looks at me. “Okay.”
I add, “You suck at this game.”
He smiles as I put on my boots. I’m acutely aware that he’s watching me.
I stand. He stands. He walks me to the front door. I step out onto the porch and turn back. I don’t say anything. Neither does he. We just give each other a single nod.
I go down his steps and onto the sidewalk and three doors home. I don’t look back, but I know he’s still standing in the doorway because I didn’t hear the door shut.
I close my own front door behind me.
I lost 6–1.
I cannot remember the last time I lost at anything and didn’t care.
Chapter 15
Stanley
She walks the three doors home, and I stay on the porch until she’s inside her own door, and then I go back into my house, and it’s quiet.
Percy’s at the gym. Benson’s at Lucy’s. Blue’s at Melly’s. Rowan is wherever Rowan is.
I walk into my own living room. My controller’s on the coffee table where she left hers next to it, the two of them side by side like a little couple. She left her mug. Which means I am now in possession of an asset.
I stare at it for a moment and smile, because the universe has, for once, handed me leverage.
I pick the mug up, carry it to the kitchen, wash it, and dry it with the towel from the oven handle. This puppy is coming upstairs with me for safekeeping. I set it on my dresser like a trophy, take a photo of it, and send it to the woman who stole my stick.
Me: We have a hostage situation.
