The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            God, he hated himself for making her cry like that.

            Every hour or so, he considered confessing, but selfishly, he didn’t want to risk her rage when he was dying to tell her how he really felt about her.

            “Yep.” Jack listened as Hal told Chuck all about their bet and Taco Hut meetups, and he found himself riveted when she finished it with, “Then I realized that I was having a better time at our Taco Hut dates than I was having with any of the people I was seeing.”

            That was exactly how Jack felt.

            “Wow,” Chuck said. “And this is drunken hotel sex guy, right?”

            “Oh, my God,” Hallie whisper-shrieked. “Yes, but don’t say it like I have more than one occasion of drunken hotel sex to my name.”

            Jack couldn’t stop himself from laughing and adding, “Someday I’ll tell you about her desperate search for her missing bra.”

            “Jack.” Hallie rolled her eyes at him, and then shrugged. “Okay. Now I have to hear it. Tell me how ridiculous I looked from your point of view, because all I know is that I was trying to get the hell out of your room without waking you up.”

            “Holy shit, yes,” Jamie said, tiny-clapping. “I need to hear this.”

            “You sure?” he asked Hallie.

            “Go ahead,” she said, laughing. “They already know my worst.”

            “Okay. Well.” Jack looked at the freckles on the tip of Hallie’s nose and wondered how he’d ever thought of her as just cute. “I don’t know if she knew it or not, but our friend Hal here had, at some time during the night, fallen asleep on my feet. Like, my huge feet were her fucking pillow.”

            “No shit?” Chuck said.

            “Oh, my God,” Hallie groaned, already regretting that she’d asked to hear this.

            “So I felt it the second she woke up, because blood flow returned to my extremities.”

            Jamie started cackling.

            “I was about to lift my head and say something charming when she literally—literally—rolled off the end of the bed.”

            Hallie started laughing. “Oh, my God, you watched me roll?”

            “I watched you roll.”

            “Was it hot or horrifying?” Chuck asked.

            “Hilarious,” Jack said, and Hallie gave him a look. Her eyes stayed on his face as she smiled, and he added, “In a hot way.”

            “Oh, bullshit,” she said.

            “So then . . . ?” Chuck prompted.

            Jack was having a hard time not laughing. “So then she crawled over to her clothes and—”

            “Wait.” Hallie was grinning when she said, “I looked at you when I was putting on my pants, and you were sound asleep.”

            That made him laugh. “I closed my eyes pretty fast when your head swiveled in my direction.”

            She smacked him in the arm with a laugh, which made him grab her hand and sandwich it between his.

            “She must’ve realized the bra was in the bed,” he said, “because she tiptoed over and started moving her fingers on top of the sheets like she was trying to find it without jostling the bed.”

            They were all laughing. Hard.

            “And then—my angel right here—she muttered ‘fuck it’ and ran out of the room.”

            Jamie and Chuck started applauding, and Hallie just shook her head at him while wearing a grin. He felt her index finger slide over his palm—she was still playing—and he had no fucking clue how the weekend was going to shake out.

            Because she really seemed to be enjoying the game, leaning into the fake dating thing, but he was already having a hard time remembering it was a game. Every time she leaned against his arm or held his hand, he was a little shook.