“I—I—I,” Tami stutters, sure she has ruined everything. The cloud is back, his eyes a dark sea. “I just think the spring is great for new beginnings. A new season, a fresh leaf.” She keeps stammering about the opportunities of the coming year, trying to hurry backward from whatever dangerous line she just about crossed.

Something works, and when she looks up at him again, she can see he’s moved away from that angry knot. The waiter delivers the check. Tami makes a cursory reach for it, but Jason pulls the leather folder from the table. “Please, let me.” She can’t help noticing he pays with hundred-dollar bills, and as he does, a poker chip falls out onto the table. He doesn’t ask for change, but the chip—$1,000—he jams back into his pocket.

She’s probably too drunk to get behind the wheel, but she offers and he agrees—he’d ridden to the restaurant with teammates. She’s embarrassed to have such an important, such a famous, such a handsome man in her crappy old car, but then she remembers his dusty Jeep.

As he slides into the passenger seat, he grins at the duct tape on the Chevrolet’s interior panels. “Your car has seen better days.”

She smirks at him. “So have I. We can’t all drive Cadillacs.”

He harrumphs at that. “Those boats? Me and my lucky Jeep, two hundred thou and going strong.” With the alcohol, he’s loosened, reminding her of nothing so much as a giant puppy, big paws and a waggling tail. She loves it. He lets his body sink back against the seat. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. Put on your seat belt.”

“Yes, Mom.”

This sets them both snickering, and Tami reaches over the gearshift to check his lap. Her fingers grip the seat belt holster, but also brush down his thigh, the solid slab of muscle. “Very good.” They titter some more.

The road’s practically empty this late. They rush past ritzy lodges with triple-height columns and giant, red-tiled haciendas with sprawling crabgrass lawns. He finds some classic rock station and starts singing along. He’s awful, but it makes her feel the buzz and prick of want, which spreads from a thick spot in her throat, up, down, everywhere.

The song ends, and she turns the announcer down to a low hum. “I know there are a lot of women in this town trying to take advantage of athletes.” He’s watching the palm trees flick by in a fronded colonnade. The resorts on both sides are getting bigger and bigger, but each steps farther back from the edge of the road, so it looks like everything is the same, like they’re not moving at all. “I’m not.”