Page 17 of The Tiger in the Sack

“I’m just saying Friday is⁠—”

“Four days from now, I know.”

“—very soon for a man with no plan.” He took a long pull of his smoothie. “Are you going to tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

Fox gave me the look. The one that said he had at least four things he could say and was selecting the least devastating option out of genuine affection for me. “Pick one, Isak.”

I flipped him off and crossed over to the living room, swung my legs over the back of the couch and dropped down onto it. Vito jumped up immediately and settled on my chest like a weighted blanket with opinions. I stared at the ceiling and patted his cute little butt.

The thing was she’d saved my number as Cat Daddy. She’d made up a name for a person she’d met and interacted with for a half an hour. Called me that, with the same energy she’d named her cat Tig Bitties. Like I was a character she’d filed away as real before she knew anything about me.

Nobody did that. Nobody met a Kingman and filed him under a name they made up. They filed him under the name he came with, the family he came from, the jersey number they already knew.

She didn’t know any of that.

She just knew a guy who’d climbed a tree for her cat.

“You know what it’s like,” I said to the ceiling. “When someone—” I stopped. Started again. “When you can tell they’re talking to the real you and not to the thing they think you are.”

Fox was quiet for a moment. Actually quiet, not strategically quiet.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know what that’s like.”

He did. Fox Daws, whose mother was Roxie Wilde, who had become more famous than any of his movies for choosing football over Hollywood because it was the one place he got judged on what he did instead of who he was related to. Fox knew exactly what it was like to stand in a room full of people who thought they knew you and feel completely alone in it.

It was why we lived here together. It was why this worked.

“She doesn’t know,” I said.

“She will.”

“I know she will. I just—” Vito pushed his head against my chin. “Not yet.”

Fox nodded. Didn’t push. He picked up his skincare thing again, resumed whatever step he’d been on when I came in, and let the silence be comfortable for a minute.

Then he said: “Dude. I got it. Bring her up here to the Thunder Ball Room.”

I lifted my head. “What? No, and no.”

“Friday. After the ride. Bring her up.” He gestured around the penthouse with the serum bottle. “Women love this place. It’s impressive without trying to be impressive. Vito’s here. You’ve got the helmet collection on the wall, which is either very cool or very serial killer and I’ve been told it depends on who you ask⁠—”

“I’m not bringing her up here.”

“Why not?”

“Because she doesn’t know I live here. She doesn’t know I own the building. She doesn’t know—” I waved a hand. “Any of it.”

“Right, right.” Fox considered this. “It’s the perfect way to do the big reveal.”

I stared at him. “We are not calling the penthouse the Thunder Ball Room.”

“It’s a Bond film,” he said. “and it has room in the name, so it sounds like a⁠—”

“I know what it is, Fox.”

“—venue, which we are, we’re a venue for⁠—”