The parking lot had that Costa Mesa night smell, warm asphalt and someone’s clove cigarette and the ghost of grill smoke clinging to all their clothes. Lila watched Chloe fold Kumiko into the passenger seat of a white Civic that matched Jordan’s white Civic almost exactly, which was either the funniest coincidence of the night or evidence of a conspiracy she was too drunk to prove.

"Blue-hair drives that one," Lila said, pointing. "Ten-dollar man drives the twin. You’re a matching set. That’s disgusting."

"We joked about it at karaoke," Kumiko called through the open window, already halfway to the giddy exhaustion of someone who’d eaten too much pork belly. "There’s three of them. Well. Two here. Mine’s at home."

"Get in the car, Kumiko," Chloe said.

"Bye Lila-chan! Text me your Stardew farm layout!"

"I’m not showing you my farm layout."

"You have to now, we’re friends, that’s how it works."

The window went up. Chloe pulled out with the same neutral control she did everything with, and Lila watched the taillights swing toward Newport and thought, not for the first time tonight, that the girl with the blue streak was the actual threat here. Not the tall one who fed strangers ten-dollar rides. The quiet one who watched. Lila had known girls like Chloe. They filed you. They waited.

But that wasn’t the experiment.

"You still driving me, or did that offer expire," Lila said, letting her voice slur at the edges. Not much. Just enough. She’d had three shots of soju, which for her was a warm-up, but Jordan didn’t know that. Jordan thought she was a lightweight in a corset who’d committed to the bit too hard.

"Ten dollars," Jordan said, unlocking the Civic.

"You’re really gonna keep saying that."

"Gas isn’t free."

"You said that already. It wasn’t cute the first time."

"It wasn’t supposed to be cute. It was supposed to be a fee."

She let him open the passenger door, because she wanted to see if he’d do it, and he did it without making a thing of it, the way he apparently did everything, and she folded herself into the seat with a groan that was maybe fifteen percent real. Her boots hit the floor mat. Her skirt rode up. She didn’t fix it.

Here was the thing about Lila Martinez that most guys never figured out until it was too late for them.

She was good at this.

Not the goth aesthetic, though she was good at that too, the black lipstick and the snakebites and the corset that made her ribs ache in a way she’d decided long ago was worth it. She was good at the other thing. The reading. She’d been reading men since she was fourteen and her first Discord mod tried to trade "friendship" for feet pics, and she’d been reading them ever since, every guy who offered to fix her car or carry her bag or explain her own game back to her, every single one of them running the same tired script under the same tired grin. I’m not like the others. They all said it. They all meant let me be the one who gets to.

Jordan McKnight hadn’t said it.

That was what made her chest itch. He’d fixed her alternator situation, told her it was a tow job, charged her ten bucks, and driven off without so much as a name-drop of his Instagram. And then he’d shown up tonight with two girlfriends who genuinely seemed to like each other and a terrified accountant he kept checking on and a whole booth of women who orbited him like he was some kind of gentle sun, and he’d looked at all of them with real warmth and none of the hunger, and Lila’s entire nervous system had gone that’s fake.

Because it had to be fake.

Nobody was that. Nobody went from ten-dollar-ride-guy to harem overlord without a catch, and the catch was always, always the same catch. He was a deviant. He had to be. The wholesome thing was the mask, the long con, the way the smart predators did it now, patient and clean and calling their mothers on Sundays until they got you alone.

So she’d find out. Tonight. She’d make herself vulnerable in the most obvious, drunkest, easiest way, and she’d watch what his hands did when he thought nobody could see, and then she’d know.

The engine turned over. Clean. Of course it was clean.

"Where am I going," Jordan said.

"You know where. Brookhurst. By the Cane’s. You dropped me there, your memory can’t be that bad."

"Just confirming."

She let her head loll against the window. Watched him in the reflection instead of directly, an old trick, a streamer’s trick, watch the monitor not the person. His jaw. His hands loose on the wheel at ten and two like he’d learned to drive from a manual and never unlearned it. The way he checked his mirrors before every lane change even though the road was empty.

"You always this careful," she said.

"My grandmother taught me to drive."

"She sounds real."

"She’s terrifying. Korean War vet’s widow. Thinks I’m soft." A pause. "Thought. She’s coming around."

"Because of the abs?"

"Because of the not-crying-in-my-apartment part, mostly."

That got a real laugh out of her before she could stop it, short and surprised, and she hated that. She reset. Slurred a little heavier.

"Man, I drank too much." She stretched, arched her back, and yeah, the corset creaked and her chest pushed up and out, and she felt his eyes not move, which was its own kind of tell, the too-deliberate not-looking. "I told you these things restrict my breathing. Now they restrict my judgment too. Whoops."

"You want the window down?"

"I want validation, Jordan, but I’ll take the window."

He put the window down. Warm night air rushed in and did something to her hair, and she reached over the center console and put her hand on his forearm, casual, like a drunk girl steadying herself, and she felt the muscle there flex once under her palm and then go still.

Still. Not shaking. Not turning his hand to catch hers. Not leaning in.

Interesting.

"You’re warm," she said, letting the words go soft and low, pitching them the way she pitched her stream voice when the donations were slow and she needed the whales to feel special. "That’s rude. It’s cold out."

"It’s sixty-eight degrees."

"Cold to me. I’m delicate." She dragged her fingertips down his forearm, over the vein, the way that made the last three guys she’d tested nearly drive into a curb. "You’ve got, like, a whole thing going on under here."

"Boxing," Jordan said. "You want me to slow down? You look a little green."

Not you’re beautiful. Not keep touching. He asked if she was going to throw up in his clean car.

She pulled her hand back.

Reset. Frowned at the road. This wasn’t working, or it was working too well, or he was better at the con than she’d budgeted for, and any of those was a problem because she’d committed now, she was three shots and one arm-drag deep into the bit, and she was going to see this all the way to his hands in her apartment or she was going to feel like an idiot for the rest of the week.

"Get me to my door. I’m so drunk I could fall down the stairs and split my skull open and it’d be your fault for making me get into your creepy clean car. You have to carry me."