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Rule One: No feelings.

Rule Two: Nobody finds out.

Rule Three: No sleeping over. (Sleeping is a feeling.)

Rule Four: No pet names.

Rule Five: This ends when the tournament ends, and we both act normal.

I was very proud of them. They were tidy. They were reasonable. They sounded, when I said them out loud in the mirror, like the rules of a man in complete control of his life.

Maksim broke Rule Four in under an hour.

“ Solnyshko, “ he said, on the stairs outside 214, with a look of extreme innocence, as I fumbled for my key.

“What did you call me?”

“Nothing.”

“You said something. Solny-something. “

“It is a Russian word for the weather.”

“It is not. “

“It means…” He appeared to consider. “A pleasant atmospheric condition.”

“It’s a pet name, isn’t it.”

“It is very much not a pet name.”

“It means something. I can hear it.”

“It means little sun,” said Maksim, at last, with terrible calm. “You may report me to the committee.”

I stood there with my mouth open. He looked at me with those steady gray eyes, and I could feel my entire face heating like a toaster.

“That’s Rule Four,” I said weakly.

“I did not agree to the rules.”

“You said deal! “

“I agreed to the arrangement. I did not agree to the rules. I was not shown them.” He unlocked the door and held it open. “Also, you ate the list.”

“How do you know I ate the list?”

“You had a coaster in your pocket. You have no coaster now. Also, there is a crumb of cardboard on your lip.”

I wiped my mouth. He watched with polite interest.

I hate him, I thought, and walked in past him and threw myself on the bed. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to marry him. I’m going to kill him.

Wait. I did not think that last part. Forget I said it.

The next five days were the best five days of my life, and I want it noted that I did not enjoy them.

I mean it. I was a professional, and I was very casual. We met in the evenings after practice in Room 214, and it was always the same. He’d greet me at the door with something small, like a bakery box or a bottle of that sparkling water I like or a stupid magnet he’d found at the gift shop shaped like a moose. Then we’d talk, actually talk, for hours, lying on the big carved bed with our shoes off, about nothing. I told him about my mother’s famously terrible lasagna and the time I punched a mascot and Jenny at six, who’d once bitten a clown at a birthday party and been asked to leave. He listened with his whole face, and he laughed at the wrong times in the wrong places, a rusty, pleased sound like a door that hadn’t opened in years.