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She’d watched the ceremony on the little TV in the back office behind the front desk, sitting on a rolling chair with her coat in her lap while her cousin Whitney worked the desk, ducking back between guests to check on it. Right after the man at the podium said Tariq Brackens, Whitney came through the door, saw the screen, and put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no. Oh, Phal, I’m so sorry.”

Phallon had looked at the screen and bitten the inside of her cheek. She did feel bad for him. She did. But she wasn’t stupid either. A man who’d just won the Heisman would’ve had a hundred people pulling at him tonight, reporters and agents and those old men in blazers wanting pictures. A man who’d just lost it needed somebody, and nobody in this city knew him like she did.

Around ten, he’d come through the lobby doors with his parents. His mother held on to his sleeve the whole way to the elevators. His dad walked on Drew’s other side, and okay, Drew’s dad was hot. Not Drew hot. He was old, with gray coming in at the sides of his dark hair. But he was just as tall and broad through the shoulders, and he had the same jaw. She’d do him, if not for Drew.

Phallon raised her magazine and watched over the top of it while Drew kissed his mother’s cheek, hugged his dad, and got on the elevator by himself. Then his parents headed off toward the restaurant. She could’ve gone up then. She’d thought about it. But he’d have been sober, and sober Drew had a mean mouth on him when he didn’t get his way, and she hadn’t flown all the way up here to get the door shut in her face again. Besides, she knew him. A night like this, with nobody around to see, the old Drew might come out. So she’d stayed in her chair and waited.

Forty minutes later, the elevator opened, and he came straight back down. He didn’t look left or right. He walked to the far end of the bar, sat down, and said something to the bartender, and the bartender reached for the Jack.

Phallon laughed to herself.

Whitney had called her last week. “You’re never going to believe who’s staying at my hotel,” she’d said.

Whitney had been working the front desk going on four years, ever since she’d packed two suitcases and left Gadsden the summer after graduation, swearing she’d never set foot back in Alabama except for Christmas. The whole staff had been buzzing about the Heisman finalists all week. When she’d pulled up a reservation that said Kiernan, Drew, Drayton University, she’d remembered Phallon talking about her quarterback every time she called home.

“Is it the same Drew?” Whitney had always been a little slow. How many Drew Kiernans did she think played quarterback at Drayton?

Phallon had let her talk, and Whitney had told her everything. He was checking in Wednesday. His parents had a separate room, and they weren’t getting in until Friday. It was just him on the reservation.

Just him.

Phallon had sat on her bed in the sorority house with the phone cord wrapped around her finger and smiled so hard her face hurt.

So Nicole wasn’t coming. Some girlfriend. If Phallon had a man up for the Heisman, nothing in this world would’ve kept her in Alabama. But that was the difference between them, wasn’t it? Phallon showed up.

Then she’d given Whitney the story. They’d been together all fall, she said, until Drew started messing around with some Black girl and broke Phallon’s heart. And ever since, he’d been calling and calling, saying he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, saying Phallon was the best thing that ever happened to him and he’d been too stupid to see it. She hadn’t given him an answer yet. She wanted to give him one in person.

“Oh, Phal,” Whitney had said, the way she said it at the end of a sad movie. Whitney cried at weddings, even the ones for people she didn’t like. She’d eaten up every word.

It wasn’t even really lying. She and Drew had been together, whatever he called it now. And the rest of it would be true by morning.

Booking the flight had been nothing. Daddy’s American Express didn’t come with questions, and it never had. She’d told her mother she was going Christmas shopping in New York with one of her sorority sisters, and her mother had said to bring back something from Saks and not to wear white after dark in the city, because people would think she was trying too hard.

Drew lifted his glass at the bartender again.

That was four.

Phallon closed her magazine, picked up her purse, and walked to the front desk. Whitney was alone behind it, typing something, and when she looked up and saw Phallon’s face, her own fell.

“Phallon.” She glanced past her toward the bar and lowered her voice. “He’s drinking.”

“I see that.”

“You told me he doesn’t drink.”

“He doesn’t. Not anymore.” Phallon set her purse on the counter. “He just lost the Heisman on national television, Whit. He’s upset.”

“I know, but look at him. He can barely sit up on that stool.” Whitney fiddled with a pen. “Maybe tonight’s not the night. Maybe tomorrow morning, when he’s . . .”

“Tomorrow morning, he gets on a plane with his parents.”

“Then call his room and tell him you’re here. Let him come down.”

“And ruin the whole surprise?” Phallon shook her head. “He doesn’t need to sit in some bar by himself tonight. He needs me. That’s why I came.”

Whitney chewed her lip. “If my manager finds out I made a key for somebody who’s not on the reservation, I’m fired. Like, done. I can’t go back to Gadsden, Phallon.”

“Who’s going to tell him? Drew?” Phallon laughed softly. “Sweetie, Drew is going to want to send you flowers.”