The Bet I Can't Win

The book is open to page forty-one. It has been open to page forty-one for twenty minutes. I know this because the lamp on the side table is the only light in the apartment and it falls directly on the page and I have read the same paragraph four times and I can still tell you nothing about it except that it begins with the word *Nevertheless* and ends with a woman walking into a room. I have been waiting for her to do something since the third read.

She hasn't. Neither have I. Across the apartment, on the other end of the couch we agreed counted as far enough away, Daniel has his phone face-down on his knee. He is also pretending to read.

He is better at it than I am, which annoys me, which is the point, which I knew was the point when I agreed to this and agreed anyway. The bet was simple. Thirty minutes. I keep my eyes on the book.

He chooses the pattern. The pulse shifts. My jaw tightens before I decide to tighten it. That's the thing I didn't account for — the way my body responds before I've made any decision about responding, the way the want arrives already formed, not building but simply present, like it had been waiting in the fabric all evening for him to turn it on.

I press my knees together. The ponte holds everything in place, holds me in place, a steady even pressure across both thighs that is not relief and is not nothing. I turn a page. Page forty-two.

I don't read it. From the corner of my eye I can see his thumb move against his phone screen. The pattern changes — longer now, with a pause in the middle that I am not prepared for. The pause is worse than the pulse.

In the pause I become aware of exactly where I am and what I am wearing and how little the thick fabric is actually insulating me from any of this. The heat is mine. It has been mine since before he turned anything on, collecting in the space between my thighs like a decision I haven't made yet. My left hand is flat against the open page.

My right hand is in my lap, over the sweater hem, not moving. I am aware of both hands the way you are aware of something you are trying not to look at directly. I exhale. It comes out longer than I meant it to, slow and unfolding into the quiet apartment, and I hear him shift on the couch cushion and I do not look up.

I am losing the bet. I knew I would lose it. I agreed to the bet knowing I would lose it, which means losing it is a thing I chose, which means I have no one to blame for the forty-one pages I haven't read and the want sitting heavy in my lap and the way my thighs are pressing together around a decision that isn't mine tonight. The pattern shifts again.

Longer. Slower. I look down at the book. *Nevertheless*, the paragraph begins.

The woman is still walking into the room.