There’s more, but really, I need to bask a little longer in the glow of compliments. I tap my lip. “You’re right, Banks. I do not at all require an apology for this ode to me. In fact, I ought to give you a thanks,” I say, bringing a hand to my heart. “This made my week.”

“You’re welcome,” he snarls.

I should let him off the hook now, and circulate a bit here at the party.

Yet I can’t just drop it. Everything I thought I knew about Mark Banks is suddenly in question. Is he the fun-phobic banker I thought I knew? Who is this guy who invents words to describe my hair, and has deep thoughts about my abs?

I’m pretty sure straight guys don’t refer to other dudes as superhot.

Which makes me wonder if he’s not as straight as I thought.

Maybe I can get him to clarify. I tap my phone one more time. “I do have one last question about this description—superhot wingman. That must mean there are levels of hotness. So, Banks. Tell me. Where does the scale start?”

This is when he’ll back down. Talk in circles. Run away. I’d be willing to bet my sexy new Nikon on it.

Mark takes a breath, meets my gaze head-on. “Yeah, St. James. There are definitely hotness scales for, well, lots of things. Starts at basic hot. And, to be honest, lots of things are basic hot. Like, for instance, when someone can do square roots in his or her head, that’s basic hot.”

I blink. What the hell? He’s talking math now?

Mark continues, counting off on his fingers. “Superhot comes next. That’s, like, knowing all the openings in chess, and their variations.” He lets out a low hum that kind of rumbles past his lips, like he thinks that’s the height of seduction.

I scratch my jaw, trying to figure out where he’s going with this.

“Then you have extra hot,” he continues, all smooth talker like he’s the slick trader in a movie featuring a bunch of sharks on Wall Street. Or wait, is it wolves? “And that’s understanding probabilities. Example⏤in any group of twenty-three people, there’s a fifty percent chance that two of them have the same birthday.” He taps his temple.

My brow knits. I part my lips, but words are hard to find. Because I think he just danced a whole math-word circle around me. I tap my chest. “Did you just compare me to a mathematician?”

He pushes his glasses higher up on his nose. “Stay with me, St. James. I said superhot was the person who could play chess. Extra hot is higher math. That’s the highest level of hotness.”

“I’m not even at the top of your hot scale?”

“It’s a sliding scale,” he says, lifting his juice and finishing it. “Anyway, like I said, lots of things are hot. A double play to get out of a bases-loaded jam, buying Apple stock in 1991, a chocolate molten lava cake with vanilla ice cream. Doing math for fun. I could go on. My remarks mean nothing, because many, many things are hot, and you just shouldn't trust whiskey.”