"You absolutely do. That was a move. That was a whole move." She pointed the soju bottle at him accusingly. "You’ve got some kind of thing going on. The clean car, the too-good body, the voice that makes my molars vibrate, the two girlfriends and the smart accountant and the whole-" she waved the bottle in a circle that took in the entire booth "-this. Nobody’s this put together. Nobody goes from being a guy who charges girls ten dollars for rides to running an empire of weird women in three weeks. It’s not natural."

Jordan’s stomach did a slow cold turn.

Because she was right. She was exactly right. She’d seen it in one dinner, the same way Chloe had circled it for two weeks and Maya had circled it in the ring today, the thing under the thing, the too-fast, the too-clean, the too-lucky. Lila didn’t know what she was looking at. But she knew she was looking at something.

"Good genes," Jordan said.

"Nobody has genes that good."

"My grandmother was very disciplined."

"Your grandmother did not give you a voice that makes strangers want to confess their sins," Lila said, the soju bottle still pointed at him like a weapon she’d forgotten to lower.

Chloe was watching him again, and that was the part that made his ribs tighten. Not Lila’s drunk circling, which she’d probably forget by noon tomorrow when the hangover kicked in. Not even the way she’d clocked the too-fast transformation, because Lila clocked everything and followed through on nothing. The dangerous part was Chloe. Chloe collected data. Chloe had a mental filing cabinet with a drawer labeled THINGS JORDAN SAYS THAT DON’T QUITE TRACK, and she added to it every week, never confronting him, never pushing, just waiting until she had enough pieces to see the picture.

He met her eyes across the booth. Held them. Didn’t flinch.

She raised one eyebrow, slow and deliberate. The expression said: I’m adding this one too. Then she looked away, releasing him, letting it go for now because now wasn’t the time.

"On that note," Chloe said, standing and smoothing her skirt in one efficient motion, "we’re done. Business is handled. Saturday’s confirmed. Lila, Brooke will email you the collaboration brief and the sponsor guidelines by Wednesday, and if you have questions, you send them to Brooke, not Jordan, because Jordan skims emails and then pretends he read them."

"I read section six," Jordan said.

"You read section six because Brooke told you to read section six."

"That’s still reading."

Lila unfolded off the bench, gathered her chains and her chaos, and swayed once when she stood, more soju in her than she’d let on. "Somebody’s driving me. My car’s a corpse and my Uber guy earlier wanted to show me photos of his Pomeranian for twenty minutes. Mr. Whiskers. I did not ask about Mr. Whiskers."

"I’ll take you," Jordan said. "You’re on the way. Ten dollars."

Lila’s grin split her black lipstick wide. "There it is. There’s my ten-dollar man. God, you really are gonna charge me again."

"Gas isn’t free."

Brooke had emerged from the wall enough to start stacking the empty side dishes into a tower, the anxiety draining out of her hands now that she had a task, a small nesting thing to organize while the loud people were loud. Jordan watched her do it and felt that soft stupid thing again, the one that wasn’t attraction, or wasn’t only attraction, the one that was just wanting to make sure the quiet weird brilliant girl got home okay.

"Brooke," he said. "You good to drive?"

She looked up. Blinked. Surprised, every time, that someone checked. "I parked in the structure across the street. Level two. Row C. I remember because C is the third letter and I arrived at the third minute past the hour, which felt-" She stopped. "Yes. I’m good to drive."

"Text the group when you get home."

"I don’t have to-"

"Text the group when you get home."

Her mouth did something. Not quite a smile. Something on the way to one. "You’re very insistent."

"So I’ve been told."

Chloe paid the check before Jordan could reach for it, tapped her card and waved off his hand and gave him a look that dared him to argue about who covered dinner, and he didn’t, because he’d learned that one too, the hard way, the same way he’d learned everything.

They spilled out into the parking lot in a loose scatter. Costa Mesa at night, warm and thick with car exhaust and someone’s cigarette three spaces over. Kumiko attached herself to Jordan’s arm on the way to the cars and did not let go, and Chloe walked on his other side, not touching, but close, and Lila trailed behind narrating her own drunkenness with the commitment of a nature documentary, and Brooke peeled off toward the structure across the street with a small wave and a promise to text.

Through the restaurant’s front window, past the neon and the hostess stand, Jordan caught it.

Alexis. At her table. Bulgogi untouched in front of her. Harrison talking, phone in hand, not looking at her. And Alexis looking out the window, out at the parking lot, at the four girls and the guy who’d told her she deserved better than a merger, and the second she saw him see her she snapped her eyes back to Harrison and picked up her water glass and drank.

For her skin quality.

Jordan’s phone buzzed once in his pocket.

He didn’t check it. He knew what it said anyway. Some number, some percentage, some line of gold text keeping score of a girl he shouldn’t be thinking about, trapped behind glass with a man who catalogued her like cargo.

"You’re doing the jaw thing," Chloe said quietly, beside him.

"I know."

"That’s twice tonight I’ve caught you looking at that window."

He turned away from the glass. Looked at her instead. Blue contacts, blue streak, the freckles her camera never caught, the whole impossible fact of her walking next to him in a parking lot like she’d chosen to be there.

"I’m not looking at anything," Jordan said.

"You’re a terrible liar."

"So I’ve-"

"Been told, yeah."