The food came in courses. I let her order what she wanted and didn’t make a thing of it when she ordered the most expensive entrée on the menu. She watched me to see if I would flinch at the price.

I didn’t. I noted that she noted that I didn’t. I should also make sure I never used dictation to write novels, otherwise these repetitions would happen. And they suck.

She was very smart, I realized about ten minutes into the appetizer. Very smart. Smart in a way that university wasn’t going to keep up with.

The polite smile came back when she caught herself thinking too hard, and underneath it she was running calculations about me at a speed I respected, even as I was running faster ones about her.

She asked what I did. I gave her the truth-flavored version: web novelist, recently come into family-adjacent capital. She asked about the watch. I told her honestly that I didn’t know how much it cost because I hadn’t bought it. She tilted her head and the calculations behind her eyes adjusted.

"Family-adjacent capital."

"Family-adjacent."

"That’s a very not-answering-it answer."

"I know."

"Mm."

I leaned forward, lowering my voice. "Lia."

"Yes."

"Are you having fun?"

She paused as her smile wavered, but it soon came back and wavered again.

"...I’m working very hard to have fun, yes."

I smiled. "That’s an honest answer. Thank you."

"You’re welcome."

"Why are you working so hard?" she asked in genuine curiosity.

The smile tried to come back and didn’t make it. She looked down at her plate.

"...That’s a later-in-the-evening question."

"Then it can wait. Eat your scallops, Lia."

She ate her scallops. Across the table, Tarek and Sienna were leaning toward each other like people did when they had decided, mutually and without saying so, that the night was going to end somewhere private.

...

We finished. Tarek made a show of reaching for the bill, his hand slowing the closer it got to the leather folder, and I waved it off. The black card from Mira settled into the folder without an issue.

"I’ll get you back," Tarek said quickly.

"You absolutely will not."

"...Yeah, you’re right. Thank you, brother."

He took Sienna’s hand and they left. Sienna gave Lia a single quick look, Lia gave Sienna a single quick nod, and that was the entire silent-friend-language exchange that confirmed I am okay, leave with your guy. They were practiced at this.

Then it was the two of us at the table.

Lia looked at me, took a slow breath, and reset her smile. "Well."

"Well." I stood. "Walk you to the car."

"Your car?"

"My car. I’m not putting you in a cab in this part of the city at this hour. Doesn’t mean we’re going anywhere. But you’re getting in the car so I can take you wherever you want to be taken."

She nodded once and stood up.

...

The valet brought the car around. It was, to my mild surprise, a Vellanti this time, not the Auriga, a smaller two-door I didn’t recognize, dark gray, with the kind of finish that absorbed light. ’Mira just keeps these around like spare umbrellas.’ I held the passenger door.

Lia stopped before getting in.

The smile she had been carrying all evening cracked, just for a second. Her shoulders went down half an inch. The hand at her side opened and closed once.

She looked up at me with the eyes that had been telling the real story all night.

"I’m sorry. I just need a second."

"Take it." I didn’t mind waiting.

"Okay."

She didn’t take it. She stood there breathing for a moment, and then she got into the car, and she pulled the seatbelt on and sat very still while I walked around and got in on the driver’s side.

I didn’t start the engine.

I turned in the seat and looked at her properly.

"Lia."

"...Yes."

"You can be honest with me. Whatever this is, whatever you’re doing, you can drop it. I’m not going to be upset. I’m not going to walk you back inside and abandon you. I’m not going to change my mind about you. Just talk to me."

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, the smile was gone, and the polished version of Lia was gone, and what was left was a very tired twenty-year-old in a school uniform sitting in someone else’s expensive car.

"...I really want you."

"I know."

"I do." She was quick, a little defensive. "I’m not... that part isn’t fake. I’ve been looking at you all night. You’re... I don’t know what you are, you’re not what I expected, you’re kind, and you’re hot, and you’re not stupid, which is not the combination I was prepared for, and I—" She caught herself. Took a breath. "Okay. That part is real. But there’s also... yeah. There’s also a part that’s not."

"Tell me."

She looked at her hands.

"My family doesn’t have money. My scholarship covers most of it, but there’s a gap. And the gap has a number, and the number has been growing every semester, and I have almost a year and a half left, and I’ve been telling myself I’d figure it out. Sienna told me Tarek’s friend was going to be... generous. She said make him like you. So I... I came here planning to make you like me. I was going to flirt, I was going to go home with you, and then I was going to figure out how to ask you for help with the gap. Or, more honest version, I was going to try to make you want to help with the gap so I wouldn’t have to ask."

She paused but didn’t look up.

"I was planning to make you my sugar daddy. That was the plan. I’m not going to dress it up."

I expected it. "I appreciate that."

"And I was scared because the last guy I... the last time I tried to do something like this, the guy was... not nice about it. Things never went anywhere with him. So I have a, um. A reputation thing in my head about rich men. Which is unfair, but it’s... it’s there. I’m sorry."

She finally looked at me.

"That’s the truth. That’s the whole truth. I’m sorry I tried to play you. I do still want you. Both things are true. I don’t know how to do this part."

I sat with that for a long moment.

I thought, briefly, about Mira’s vegetables-and-one-night-stand framing on the phone. I thought about the part of Lia’s face that had been afraid all night. I thought about the part that had been real.

I thought about the part of myself that had recently, in the last two weeks, become several different kinds of person including, apparently, someone who could be a sugar daddy if he chose to.

I leaned an arm on the steering wheel and looked at her.

"Lia."

"Yes."

"Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll be your sugar daddy. The financial part, yes. The gap, books, whatever you need to graduate, I’ll handle. That part is done. You don’t have to sleep with me to get that. That offer stands whether or not anything happens between us tonight."

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"...Wait."

I smiled at her. "It’s done. The financial thing is settled. You can leave this car right now, take the gap with you, and never see me again, and I would still cover it, because I have the means and I don’t want someone like you to twist yourself up like that."

She stared at me. "...Are you serious?"

"I am. I am also—" I tilted my head. "—a little surprised at myself. But yes."

She kept staring. Then, slowly, she shook her head. "No."

"...No?" I got confused.

"No. I... no. I’m not... I’m not just going to take that and run. That’s... that’s not what I want. I came here planning to do something, and you’ve taken the transaction part out of it, and now I have to actually decide what I want, and what I want is—" She breathed out, frustrated. "—what I wanted anyway. Underneath the plan. I want you. I have wanted you since you sat down at the table and called my dream specific. I’m twenty years old, I’ve never... I’ve never done this with anyone and you just... you took the worst version of this off the table, and the version that’s left is the one I came here for in the first place."

I watched her face. The smile was nowhere to be seen. What was left was raw and honest and a little defiant and a lot tired.

"Lia."

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" I still asked.

She nodded with resolution in her eyes. "I’m sure. I... I want you to be my sugar daddy and I want to sleep with you. Both things. And I don’t want to wait."

I nodded once, slowly.

"Then we’re going to a hotel. Not your dorm, not my house, somewhere neutral. Somewhere good. You’re going to relax. We’re going to take it slow. And if at any point tonight you want to stop, you stop, and the financial thing is still done. None of that depends on tonight. Are we clear?"

Her eyes were a little wet. "...We’re clear."

"Good."

I started the car.

She let out a long, shaky breath that turned, at the end, into something close to a laugh.

"...Lukas."

"Yeah."

She said, finally showing a genuine smile, "For the record. You are so completely not what I expected."

"I get that a lot."

"Mm." She settled back into the seat, the tension finally leaving her shoulders for the first time all night. "Drive."

I pulled out of Forni’s and pointed the car downtown.