Mira took her own advice and started hopping up the stairs two at a time. Jake tried to guess what sort of drugs she was on, or if her normal state was hyperactive. Based on the handful of times he’d seen her in the elevator, or bored and antisocial during company events (not to mention last night’s dinner), he was leaning toward narcotics.

By the time he’d struggled to the halfway point of the staircase, he noticed that Mira had already finished the climb.

“Let’s go,” she said, clapping her hands in encouragement. “Don’t tell me you’ve been skipping out on leg day at the gym.”

“I always do leg day!” he gasped, finally reaching the summit.

She tried not to laugh. “I can see that.”

“Tell me,” he said, huffing and puffing, “what kind of super genes are you made of?”

She casually stretched her legs. “My genes are standard issue, but I hired a personal trainer a little while ago, to make sure I’d fit into my . . .” She trailed off and looked away.

“Fit into your what?”

“My jeans,” she said quickly. “I bought a bunch of jeans last year, back when they were uhh . . . buy one, get two free.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, bent over and clutching his knees. “There’s a place that was selling jeans for buy one, get two free? Isn’t that illegal for women’s fashion? Don’t the markups make the clothes seem cool?” He had a sudden flashback to a second date in Soho, when a girl he’d met on Bumble had dragged him around shopping for a whole afternoon. He distinctly recalled her picking out a plain gray T-shirt that was somehow priced at seventy freaking dollars. The thought of that T-shirt and the stilted conversation made him shudder.

“I didn’t buy the jeans at a typical women’s clothing store,” she explained, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

He finally caught his breath. “No? Out of the back of a van then?”

“A flea market.”

Jake had a sneaking suspicion she was lying, but he didn’t know why, and he didn’t want to press it. “You’ve got to hand it to flea markets; they always have the best sales.”

“Mmhmm; I love a good flea market deal.”

Despite having given Mira an out, a part of him harbored a sick curiosity for seeing where her lies would go. And that was the part that won. “What happened then? You bought the jeans in a size too small, and then you needed a personal trainer so it wouldn’t be a wasted purchase?”

“No.” She frowned and muttered something under her breath. “What happened was . . . I got hooked on the cronuts they sell at that bakery on Spring Street, and the next thing I knew, I had like this”—she gestured to her hips—“dump-truck ass.” She shook her head at the thought of this alleged memory. “I mean I could’ve pulled it off, but for the jeans . . . it was a lot.”