“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Which gym do you belong to?”

“Oh, I don’t. I don’t really work out in the traditional sense. I’m headed to a pole-dancing class.”

He went instantly, adorably, pink in the cheeks. He was obviously trying to school his features into a placid look. “I...didn’t know they offered those kinds of classes.”

“Oh, sure. They’re really popular. The dance studio where I take them offers them all day. I’ll take the nine and then probably stay for the ten o’clock as well.”

Now he couldn’t stop his eyebrows from raising even higher. “There’s something slightly, um, incongruous about a 9:00 a.m. pole-dancing class, no?”

Cat burst out laughing. “Totally. It’s kind of like taking a biology course at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. Just doesn’t quite fit the aesthetic.”

Silence descended for a moment while he scratched at the back of his neck, obviously searching for something to say.

“You, uh, been doing it long?”

She leaned in, wanting to make him blush again for some reason. “Are you asking if I’m any good?” She waggled her eyebrows.

“No! God.” He did that cute thing he sometimes did when he was flustered where he dragged a hand down his face as if he were trying to wipe away any evidence of whatever embarrassed expression wanted to make a home there. “I was just making conversation.”

“To answer the question you didn’t ask, no, I’m not any good. It’s really freaking hard and I’m still pretty much trying to figure out how to slide around the pole without getting major pole burn.”

“Pole burn,” he repeated dimly. He looked a little dazed.

Deciding to cut him some slack, Cat changed the subject. “I’ve never seen you ride before.”

She often rode her bike to and from the elementary school where she worked a few neighborhoods south, and she was pretty sure she knew all the bike riders in their building because there was one big room in the basement where they all locked their bikes. She’d never seen Quentin down there before.

“I don’t really,” he confessed. “I’m doing it for work right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m working with the city on reconfiguring the bike lanes in a few key places and we needed some more hands-on experience to really be able to answer the questions we have.”

“That’s so cool!”

“In theory. In practice I’m hoarse by the time I get to work because I’ve been screaming for half an hour.”

Cat laughed again. “What, you’re not a fan of cars sideswiping you and pedestrians with strollers jumping into your path and the doors of parked cars swinging open to smash you into the pavement?”

He groaned. “I’ll be glad when I can just take the train again like a normal New Yorker. Bikers have a death wish.”

“Your roommate is the craziest biker I’ve ever seen, did you know that? I watched him cut off a semitruck on Third Ave. Like it was no big deal. Just zoom, weaving in and out of traffic.”