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"You made a list?" He stares at me. Then, very slowly, he starts to laugh. "Of course you made a list. He's Owen Hale. He probably laminated it."

"It's not laminated. It's on hotel notepaper."

"Oh my God." He puts his hands over his face. He laughs harder. "Oh my God. The two of you."

Then he stops laughing. He takes his hands off his face and grabs me and hugs me, right there on the sidewalk, hard enough to crush the folder.

"Nashville," he says into my shoulder. "I'm still mad at him about Nashville."

"So am I."

"Good." He lets go. He looks at me. "The statement was good, though."

"The statement was good."

"I heard what was said," Sorel quotes. "That's a man who's scared out of his mind and doing it anyway."

I don't say anything. He's right.

"No more lying to me," he says. "That's my rule. Put it on your list."

"Okay."

"Promise."

"I promise," I say, and for the first time in two months, it's not a lie.

Owen's in his kitchen when I get to his place, making chicken and rice. The fern's on the windowsill. The Christmas lights are on. He's wearing an apron that says KISS THE COOK, which I bought him as a joke and which he has, apparently, decided to wear without irony.

"Hi," he says, and smiles at me, the whole real one.

I put the folder on the counter.

"What's this?"

"Frostline wants me," I say. "The sports drink. Three years. National campaign."

His eyebrows go up. "Rémy, that's huge."

"Look at the number."

He opens it. He looks. He whistles, low.

"Look at section nine," I say.

He flips pages. I watch him find it. I watch him read it. I watch his face not change at all.

"Okay," he says. "That's pretty standard."

"It's not standard. Marc says they added the language. Romantic. Captured in photographs. They wrote it for me."

He reads it again. He puts the folder down.

"It's a lot of money," he says.

"I know it's a lot of money."

"You should take it."