“I say this man’s a cheat and a liar!” Justin is having a good old time; he holds his glass high as he calls it out. “Let’s all raise a glass to this genius, who has stolen a hundred-dollar bill right out of my hands. He’s left me with nothing. Look—” He pulls the wet pocket of his trunks inside out, but it is not quite empty after all—a last, damp twenty flutters toward the floor and Justin catches it with a snap of the wrist. He spins to Maeve, the bill in hand.

“I’ll pay you twenty dollars right now to slap that grin off his face.”

Sim steps in. He is grinning, it’s true.

“You wouldn’t.” He’s talking to Maeve, not Justin.

They’re using her, she knows, as a kind of amusement. Justin flickers the bill in his fingers.

“You’d make me immensely happy,” he says, sparkling.

“You’d make me immensely sad,” Sim says. But he suddenly turns to Dan. “She’ll never do it, she’s very nice. Haven’t you seen how perfectly nice she is? Can’t even get a drink in her.”

Dan stiffens, like a man expecting a fight.

But Sim only looks back to Maeve, a new slyness to his smile: “Can we, worker bee?”

There’s a beat, his eyes locked on hers, Justin’s goading smile, and the weird, hostile stance on Dan behind him. Sadie raises an eyebrow—a dare.

She doesn’t want to be the one to look away this time, demure.

Maeve takes the money and smacks him. Open hand. Clean across the face.

The sound of it.

There’s a shock of silence, the room gone electric—

(A rush of fear in her throat; for just a flash, it’s Iain standing there, Iain whom she’s hit; what Iain would have done in return—)

—and then the moment breaks, the high, bright explosion of Anna’s laugh, pure glee, leading them all on. The place erupts.

Maeve standing there, a flood of adrenaline down her limbs, right down into the sting of her palm. She takes a breath, surfacing. She can feel the line of her bra against her bare skin. Sim hasn’t moved and won’t take his eyes off her.

Then he shakes his head, shakes it off, offers a long wolf whistle. A good sport.

“Let me get you some ice for that hand,” he says.

Is this why it happens?

Not guilt, but because she’s galvanized. The current between them is lit. Skin to skin. She wants more of him.

The rest of the night feels like a blur, everything eclipsed by the lingering burn of her palm, a dull ache right up into her shoulder. Sim holding a cold highball glass to his cheek. The drunks get drunker.

At the end of it, she walks him home, their footsteps echoing in the back stairwell.