She stood up from the chair and walked to where he was standing, at the threshold between the kitchen and living room. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes with the solemnity of someone trying not to laugh.

“My friend,” she said. “I think it’s time someone told you: you are not as special as you think you are.”

Was anyone, though? Could she be as special as he thought she was? He followed her gaze to their reflections in the dark television screen.

“Be that as it may!” he said. “I should get going.”

“You could stay,” she said. “I don’t think either of us is in a fit state for, you know, substantive engagement right now, and I’m, as you know all too well, slightly attached, but, I don’t know. It’s a big bed.”

Even after an oil tanker’s worth of vodka, even in the comforting dim light of the apartment he’d dreamed about more than once, he knew better. He would go home, text her in the morning. It was an investment, his decency. It would accrue interest. He didn’t understand anything about money.

“You’ve gotta get to sleep,” he said. “I bet Kyla wakes up early.”

“Ugh, she better not,” Violet said. She went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the tap. “I’m locking my door.”

She seemed to have already put her vague offer aside; it probably hadn’t had the significance he’d given it. He probably should have just stayed. That would have been a normal, friendly thing to do. Proof that he didn’t harbor some ulterior motive. What year was it that he was so concerned about propriety? If it had been the sixties, like it should have been, or even, hell, the nineties …

“Let’s do something soon,” he said. “Please?”

“For sure, for sure,” she said. “Oh wait!”

She picked up a book off the coffee table. Morgan Calder. Some Other Way of Living.

“Tell me how it ends?” she said. “Please?”

He opened the book to the pensively half-smiling author photo on the jacket. The guy still had most of his hair, but at least he was old. In ten years, he’d be really old, and Derek would only be thirty-five.

“My expectations,” he said, “are out of control.”

“If you hate it…” she said. “Well, try not to hate it.”