Page 18 of The Tiger in the Sack

“No. Vetoed. Permanently and retroactively.” I put my head back down. Vito resumed his position on my sternum. “Add it to your list of ridiculous and unneeded names for our place. Why you think it needs a name is beyond me.”

“You’ll get it eventually.”

“I won’t.”

“The Thunder Ball Room is objectively⁠—”

“Daws.”

He capped the serum. “Fine. But you still don’t have a plan for Friday.”

“I’m aware.”

“She thinks she’s going on a motorcycle ride with a mystery man.”

“She is.”

“At some point on Friday the mystery man is going to have to either take the helmet off or come up with a very convincing reason not to, because I hate to tell you this, but this is not the way.”

“Shut. Up.”

“I’m just laying out the variables.”

“I know the variables.”

“Cool.” He picked up his smoothie. “Then what’s the plan?”

Vito looked up at me. In the dim light of the penthouse his eyes were very green and very unimpressed. He’d been there. He’d seen how this started. He had opinions.

“I don’t have a plan,” I said.

“No plan.”

“Not yet.”

“Friday.”

“I know it’s Friday.”

“Four days, buddy.”

“I swear to god⁠—”

“I’m just saying.” He raised both hands. “The Thunder Ball Room is available if you need it.”

I threw a couch pillow at him.

He caught it without looking, because he was Fox Daws and his reflexes were genuinely irritatingly amazing, and he pointed at me on his way to his bedroom.

“Four days,” he said. “Figure it out.”

The door clicked shut.

I lay on the couch in the dark with my cat on my chest and my phone in my hand and Friday coming like a freight train I had flagged down myself and her contact sat in my phone under a name that meant I already knew she was different before I was ready to admit it to anyone, including myself.

Cheerleader in a Tree.

My phone buzzed again and I picked it up, already smiling. But that only lasted a second.