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“Are you kidding me? You were pumped for that job!”

“You seriously expected me to just ditch you? For fish?” Her eyes narrow.

“We would have worked something out.” I shake my head. “You shouldn’t have done this. This is the last thing I wanted.”

“It wasn’t even that much money.”

“It was more than your parents were paying. And youwantedit. That’s what it’s about.”

She reaches for my sandwich. “I want a lot of things. Like you say, toss a tinfoil ball on the floor and I’ll be happy for a good hour.” She smiles like she just won, but Ruby has always had thiswarm, kind smile that makes it hard for her to look as tough as she wishes she did.

I do say that—as a joke. Now it just seems shitty. “Can I do something? Talk to your boss and explain? I have some clout as a member of a conference-championship-winning team.”

“Ugh. Stop, you’re making me nauseous,” she jokes. “I don’t want you to do anything but let me take care of you. If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t be here. Now shut up, I want to watch this.” She turns her attention to the TV, clearly ready to move on.

I look at her sitting there nonchalantly, upending her summer plans for me and wanting nothing in return. I lean over and graze her cheek with a brief kiss. “I don’t deserve you.”

She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. “True.”

We dig into the food—Ruby knocked it out of the park again—and are basically licking crumbs off our plates when I remember what she said earlier.

“So where do you need to be tonight?”

“Oh! I have a job interview.”

“Look at you on the rebound. Where?”

“Cameo’s,” she says defiantly.

“Ruby!”

“Calm down,Richard, I’m not dancing. It’s just a cocktail waitress position.”

“At a strip club.”

“And? Since when are you such a puritan?”

“I just know how fucking gross men are. I don’t want to see you treated like that.”

“Well, you won’t because you won’t be there, right? So you won’t see a thing.”

No, I won’t,I think with an unexpected sense of jealousy. I look away from her, trying not to wonder what she’ll have to wear to work in that dump. Ruby has a great body, tall and fit with just the right amount of jiggle. No chance they won’t expecther to show it off. I glare at the TV. How did things turn out this way?

We sit there, both of us staring at the TV without watching. Then her hand finds mine and squeezes, her skin warm and soft. “We do these things for each other. Don’t we?”

“What? Give up the jobs we want to work at a strip club?”

“Get our eyebrow sliced open on a wooden post.”

I sigh. She always knows how to soften me. “And knock Danny Melville on his ass on the playground.”

“And beat up toxic exes.”

“I just don’t want you to be harassed at work every day because of me.”

“I’ll quit if I’m uncomfortable. It’s temporary.”

I pick up the remote again and flip to another channel. A documentary on marine lifeis playing. I flip it again. “Fish suck.”