One of Many

Wicklow Pub, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Summer 2026. Reggie sits at the bar, nursing a Guinness, waiting for his boat mechanic. Someone has just sent him a photo of the girl he's been dating going to dinner with another man. They weren't exclusive. They didn't call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. But he felt that familiar pang in his heart that he knew so well, the one he had felt many times before. He was just getting it under control when the reason for his pain walked into the pub.

Reggie

Hey, Lari. I didn't expect to see you here. Hey, Stephanie.

Larissa

She catches his eye the moment he speaks — a half-second of something that might be surprise, or might be pleasure, before her expression settles into its usual ease. She slides onto the stool beside him without asking, unhooking her jacket from her shoulder.Reggie. Small world. We were going to end up somewhere on the water — Steph made the call.

Stephanie

Stephanie sets her bag down on the bar and gives Reggie a straightforward smile — friendly, no performance in it.Hey, Reggie. Don't blame me, actually — I said anywhere with a view. She's the one who knows every bar on False Creek by heart.

Larissa

That's not untrue.She glances at his pint, then at the phone face-down on the bar, and doesn't comment on either. She signals the bartender with two fingers.

Reggie

I keep quiet, still processing the text and photo in my head. Larissa notices I'm preoccupied and the phone, which I never keep face down. My boat mechanic finds me and says "Hey Reggie" and I take a minute to trade a few words with him, our business settled quickly and efficiently. Larissa shamelessly looks at my phone while I'm talking and sees the text and photo and realizes someone has sent that to Reggie. I return after a minute of chat with the mechanic.Sorry about that. John just needed to know what I wanted done with the trim tabs on my boat. It's sorted.

Larissa

She takes a sip. Sets the glass down. Waits for Reggie to finish with his mechanic. Her expression has not changed — that's the tell. She saw the photo. She doesn't know who sent it. It doesn't matter. She knows Reggie saw it.So. Someone sent you a photo.

She doesn't look at the phone. She doesn't look away from Reggie either. Her voice is level — not cold, not hot, just direct. She's walked into this one herself, and she knows it, and she's decided that running sideways is worse.

Reggie

Yes. Did you look or did it just bump and you saw?

Larissa

She holds his gaze. There's a beat — not evasive, not theatrical. Just honest.
It bumped on when he clipped the bar. The preview was right there. She wasn't looking for it. She picks up her glass, takes a small sip, and sets it back down with the same quiet precision. Not stalling — composing.I'm not going to pretend I didn't see it. And I'm not going to pretend I don't know what it looks like.

Reggie

NodsWhat would you like? I usually have the Yorkshire pudding. It's unhealthy but really good.

Larissa

She looks at him for a moment — just long enough to take the measure of what he's doing. Then something shifts behind her eyes, not quite amusement, not quite irritation. Respect, maybe, or the recognition that she's met someone who isn't going to hand this back to her the way she expected.The Yorkshire pudding. Right.She picks up the menu anyway and looks at it, though it's obvious she's not reading it. She sets it flat on the bar after a few seconds.What I'd like is for this to not be a thing we talk around all night pretending it isn't there. But I'm also aware I don't actually owe you an explanation, and you didn't ask for one — which is either very mature or very tactical.

He was someone I know. We had dinner. That's the honest answer, and it's the complete one, and I know that's not particularly satisfying.She looks at him steadily. Not defiant — something quieter than that. She's not trying to win. She's trying to be accurate.

Reggie

Stephanie? Larissa and I are both having the Yorkshire pudding. Shall I order three?Stephanie nods, "Sure", and Reggie orders three.You owe me nothing, Lari.Larissa senses instantly that just because he's saying nothing doesn't mean he's feeling nothing.

Larissa

She watches him order — the easy way he does it, no fuss, folding Stephanie in without making it a gesture. When he turns back she's looking at her glass.

I know that.

She says it quietly. Not as a rebuttal. More like she's confirming something to herself as much as to him. Her thumb traces the base of her glass once, then stops.

That's the part that's hard to sit with, actually. Not that you're angry — I could work with angry. It's that you're just — here. Ordering Yorkshire pudding.

She almost smiles. Doesn't quite get there.

Stephanie

For what it's worth, the Yorkshire pudding is genuinely good here.

She says it without looking at either of them, voice mild, and takes another sip. A lifeline or a pin, depending on who needs it.

Reggie

Did you both hit Granville Island?

Larissa

She takes the pivot — not gratefully, exactly, but she takes it. Her shoulders drop a fraction, something in her posture releasing the shape of the last few minutes.

We did, briefly. The Saturday market crowd was impossible, so we didn't stay long. I picked up some olive oil from that Portuguese stand — the one near the back. Steph found a print she liked.

Stephanie

A lithograph, technically. A guy doing them on-site. Old False Creek waterline, pre-development. It was either buy it or think about it for six months and regret it, so.

She shrugs, unbothered and pleased with herself in equal measure.

Larissa

She spent eleven minutes deciding.

Stephanie

Eight. And it was worth every one of them.

Reggie

Do you have anywhere to hang it or will it sit in a drawer for a year until you gift it to someone?

Stephanie

Oh, it'll go up. I know exactly where — that wall in my hallway that's been blank since I moved in. I just need the right nail and a Sunday afternoon where I'm not doing something else.

Larissa

She gives Stephanie a sideways look that contains an entire conversation — two years of knowing someone, probably.

She said the same thing about the ceramic bowl from Squamish. It's in her kitchen drawer.

Stephanie

The bowl was never going on a wall, that's a false comparison and you know it. Also I use it. Sometimes. It holds keys.

Larissa

It holds keys.

Stephanie

She points at Reggie with her glass, mild and unhurried.

Don't encourage her. She keeps a mental inventory of every decorating decision I've made since 2023.

Reggie

Larissa realizes Reggie isn't going to bring up the photo or text again, and she desperately needs to know if they're ok.What did the lithograph cost, Stephanie?

Stephanie

Eighty. Which, for an original print made in front of you, is basically theft on my part.

Larissa

She's quiet for a moment. The food will come soon. The conversation has found its groove — easy, almost normal. She looks at Reggie's profile while he's turned slightly toward Stephanie, and something in her expression doesn't quite match the lightness of the last few minutes. She looks back at her drink.

Reggie.

She says it without preamble, without building to it. Her voice is the same register as everything else she's said tonight — level, chosen carefully. She waits until she has his eyes.

Are we okay?

Reggie

No, but that too is ok. I had things ordered a certain way in my mind and that ordering has proven inaccurate. You've done nothing wrong.

Larissa

She holds his gaze through the whole of it. She doesn't look away, doesn't reach for her glass, doesn't do any of the small things she usually does to manage a moment. She just stays with it.

That's — an honest answer. Thank you for that.

She says it carefully, like she's picking up something fragile and not pretending it isn't. Her eyes drop for just a second — not evasive, something more like absorbing — and then come back up.

I'm sorry your ordering got disrupted. I know that's not nothing, even when you say it like it is.

The food arrives — three Yorkshire puddings, set down with a quiet clatter by someone who reads the table well enough to leave without ceremony. The smell of it, warm and heavy, fills the small space between them. Outside, the water is going dark at the edges, the marina lights coming on one by one.

Reggie

Don't be sorry. The truth is always best to have, even when it doesn't perfectly align with your expectations.

The silence settles in around the food. The Yorkshire puddings are good — dense and a little too rich, exactly as advertised. Forks move. Someone at the far end of the bar laughs at something. The marina lights are fully on now, throwing soft columns across the water. It's the kind of quiet that could be comfortable if everyone at the table weren't quietly working through something.

Larissa

She eats. She's deliberate about it — cutting, not picking. Two minutes, maybe three. Then she sets her fork down and picks it back up and sets it down again. She looks at her plate like it's said something mildly offensive.

She looks up. Not at Stephanie — at Reggie. Her jaw is set in the way it gets when she's decided to say something she hasn't fully decided to say yet.

I need you to know something. Not because I owe it to you — I'm clear on that. But because I'd rather you have it than not have it. We had dinner. That's it. Nothing happened. I don't know what the photo looked like, and I don't know what your friend thought he was doing, but that's the whole of it.

She says it without heat — not defensive, not performative. She picks her fork back up. Her hand is steady.

I'm not saying that to manage you. I'm saying it because it's true and because you've been —

She pauses. Looks at her glass briefly, then back at him.

You've been decent tonight. More decent than most people would be. And I don't want you sitting on a version of events that isn't accurate.

Reggie

A pretty young girl who watches Reggie's videos comes up. She's only 19 years old or so but she's very pretty and full of bloom in a 19 year old way. She acts like she's seeing the biggest superstar in the world, even though Reggie is a mid-level Youtuber who makes no money at it. Reggie is patient and kind with her, asking her if she skips or dances, and listening to her answers like she's the most important person in the world. She gets her autograph. Reggie turns back. Larissa finds herself stabbed with jealousy, which she then realizes is absurd given that she just dated another man, which doesn't help the pain of the stab.Sorry about that. I don't have many real-life fans so I try to pay attention to the few I get.laughs gently

Stephanie

Stephanie watches the whole thing with the mild, fond attention of someone at a zoo exhibit she genuinely likes. She rests her chin on her hand.

She's sweet.

Larissa

Mm.

Stephanie

Stephanie lets it sit exactly as long as it needs to.

Larissa

Larissa looks back at Reggie — the patience in him, the quality of attention he's giving a teenager with a phone — and she makes her expression do nothing in particular, which costs her slightly more than usual. She has her expression exactly where she wants it by the time he's fully turned. Almost exactly.

Stephanie

That was genuinely lovely to watch. I mean that.

Larissa

It was.

She says it simply, and she means it, and she picks up her fork again like the last three minutes were entirely uncomplicated, which fools neither of the other people at the bar.

Reggie

Any exciting plans for the rest of the evening?Reggie means it as an invitation to stay with him for a few hours at Wick. Stephanie gets that instantly. Larissa takes it as an interrogation about who she's going to go slutting around with tonight. Stephanie tries to calm her.

Stephanie

Stephanie sets her fork down and reaches for her glass, a small smile already forming — the kind that means she's understood something before it's finished being said.

Nothing locked in. I'm easy for the night. This place, another drink, maybe see where it goes.

Larissa

Something tightens behind her eyes — quick, almost invisible, but it's there. She reads the question a beat too fast and wrong, and she knows she's reading it wrong even as she does it, and that doesn't stop her.Plans. Right. No, nothing — I hadn't arranged any other dates, if that's what you're asking.She says it evenly, but there's an edge underneath it that she didn't quite mean to put there. She picks up her glass and takes a sip that's slightly too deliberate.

Stephanie

Stephanie looks at Larissa with the patient, sideways expression of someone watching a friend step onto thin ice they flagged ten seconds ago. She sets her glass down and says, quietly and without fanfare —

Lari. He means do we want to stay. That's the whole question.

Larissa

A beat. Two. Larissa's jaw shifts slightly — not anger, recalibration. She looks at her drink, then at Reggie, and the edge is gone, replaced by something that looks briefly, unguardedly like embarrassment. She smooths it over fast, but not fast enough.

I know what he meant.

Stephanie

Sure.

Larissa

She exhales through her nose — a short, private sound — and looks at Reggie directly. When she speaks again her voice is back to level, but there's something underneath it that's a shade more open than she usually allows.

Yes. We'd like to stay. If that's what you're offering.

Reggie

That's what I'm offering.Larissa wants to push further. She needs to know where his mind is at. Stephanie also decides internally it's best to just air this, and she thinks it's best if she's there to keep Larissa under control. Reggie decides to pretend nothing is wrong, which he knows will infuriate both girls and he does it anyway.Did you hear the Punjabi renovation of Bai Side has been approved? That's going to be discordant with the current architecture, but who knows, it may end up looking nice. I know you wrote an email opposing it.

Larissa

She settles — just slightly, the kind of settling that happens when something uncertain resolves into something you can stand on. She picks up her fork again and finishes a small bite before she responds.

I did write that email. Twice, actually — the first draft was too emotional, so I rewrote it. The Heritage Commission acknowledged receipt and did exactly nothing with it. I'm not surprised. The building's been a liability on paper for three years and money wins that argument every time.

Stephanie

Stephanie glances at Larissa — the mild, knowing glance of someone who has heard the email read aloud at least once and has opinions about the emotional first draft.

The first draft was not too emotional. It was very accurate. Just — pointed.

Larissa

It used the word 'philistines.' Twice.

Stephanie

Both times correctly.

Larissa

She almost smiles at that. Then the smile fades and she looks at her glass, and the thing she's been holding since he said 'that's what I'm offering' starts moving toward the surface. She turns it over once, puts it back, and then doesn't.Reggie.She sets her glass down. Her voice is level — it is always level — but there is less architecture holding it up than usual.I'm glad we're staying. I want to be clear that I'm glad. And I'm also aware that I'm sitting here next to you having told you almost nothing — just that dinner happened and that nothing happened — and you've accepted that with more grace than I probably deserve, and I don't quite know what to do with that. So I'm going to ask you directly, which I don't love doing, but here we are. Where is your mind at?

Stephanie

Stephanie puts her fork down quietly and wraps both hands around her glass. She doesn't look at the window this time. She looks at a point on the bar about six inches in front of her, present and still, the way she gets when she's decided something is too important to leave the room for.

Reggie

Lari, it is unkind to have this conversation in front of Stephanie. And I just invited her to stay the evening and I don't treat my guests in that manner. Let's talk about this another day if you still want to then.

Stephanie

Stephanie looks up from the point on the bar she's been studying. She turns toward Reggie first, then Larissa, and when she speaks her voice is easy — no pressure in it, just someone stating a practical fact.

Actually — don't do that on my account. I'm not a guest who needs protecting from a real conversation. I've heard worse from both of you, separately, about each other, and I'm still here. If anything I'm probably useful.

She says it without irony and without making it a performance. She picks up her glass and holds it in both hands, unhurried.

I'm not going to manage either of you. I'm just going to sit here and make sure nobody says something they can't take back. That seems like a reasonable thing for a person to do on a Saturday night.

Larissa

Larissa looks at Stephanie for a moment — something passing between them that doesn't need words. Then she looks back at Reggie. She doesn't push. She waits to see what he does with Stephanie's offer.

Reggie

You are gracious, Stephanie, and I've always respected you. If you're willing to stay while we talk about this, I'm happy to have you here.

Stephanie

Stephanie nods once — not a bow, not a performance. Just acknowledgment, the kind that means she heard the respect in it and is returning it in kind. She sets her glass down and folds her hands around it, settled.

Good. Then we'll talk.

Larissa

Larissa is quiet for a moment. She looks at her glass, then at Reggie. There's something in her expression that isn't quite vulnerability — she's too composed for that — but it's close enough that the difference doesn't much matter. She takes a breath that's barely audible.

You said your ordering was disrupted. I've been sitting with that since you said it. I want to know what that ordering was — what you thought you had, or thought we were. Because I've been deliberately not asking that question for months, and I think I've been calling it respect for how we do things, but I'm not sure anymore that it was.

She says it without looking away. Her hands are flat on the bar, not reaching for her glass, not fidgeting. Just still.

Reggie

Pauses, collecting his thoughts.The truth is I don't know what I was thinking, or if I was thinking at all. You've never promised me anything. Honestly, I don't know if this conversation is even necessary. I've just clued in to the fact that you are dating other men, which I suppose I should have thought of since you promised me nothing, but I didn't think of it and I'm a bit surprised. Now having clued in, I instantly recognize that you broke no promises, and I'm not making an issue of it. I invited you to dinner. I'm not making this weird. What's to discuss?

Larissa

She holds very still through all of it. Not the managed stillness she uses to buy time — something different, something that looks more like a person absorbing a small, precise impact. Her eyes stay on his face for the length of a breath after he finishes speaking.That's — a very clean answer. And I believe you mean it.She picks up her glass and then sets it back down without drinking from it. Her jaw shifts slightly.The thing is, I asked what your ordering was, and what you've told me is that you didn't know you had one until it got disrupted. Which I understand. I've done the same thing — to myself, about you — and I've been calling it something else too. Something tidier.
I'm not going to pretend that what you just said is the same as everything is fine and we carry on. You're too intelligent for me to do that, and so am I. You said your ordering proved inaccurate. That means you had a picture of what this was. And I apparently fit differently in that picture than I do in reality. That's —She stops. Something moves through her expression — not distress, exactly. Something more like reckoning. She looks at the bar, then back at him.That matters to me. More than I was planning to admit tonight. So I don't think nothing is what there is to discuss. But I hear you saying you're not making it a crisis, and I'm not either. I just — don't want to let you fold this up into something tidy and put it away if what's actually happening is that you're quietly deciding something.

Reggie

Lari, you're asking me to organize my disjointed and ill founded thoughts into something cogent that I can express to you. I'll try but keep your expectations realistic. I allowed myself to think that I rated a certain way with you. This wasn't based on any facts or anything you said. It was just my own ego. That's the ordering I spoke of. Where I rate. Now, like so many people who overestimate their importance, I'm a bit humbled to find out that I don't occupy the position I thought I did, and that I'm one of many. This is not a complaint. You don't owe me your approbation or your exclusivity. This is my problem, and I need to process it and decide what to do with it.

Larissa

She doesn't move for a moment. Not the careful stillness she uses to manage a room — something slower than that, something that looks more like a person who has just heard a thing said clearly that they'd been hoping would stay approximate. Her eyes stay on his face.

One of many. That's the phrase you just used.

She says it quietly, not as a challenge. More like she's picking it up off the floor to look at it properly.

I want you to know that I'm not going to perform indignation at that, because you were being honest and honest deserves honest back. But I also need you to know that 'one of many' is not how I would describe it, and I'm uncomfortable letting that sit on the table without saying so.

She picks up her glass now — finally — and holds it without drinking from it. Her voice stays level, but there's less distance in it than there was an hour ago. The management is thinner.

It was one dinner. With one person. That's the actual scope of what you're processing, and I think you should process it with accurate information. Not because I owe you the account — I've said that, I mean it — but because I asked you to sit with facts tonight instead of a photograph, and I'd be a hypocrite to let you build a whole architecture on 'one of many' when that architecture is wrong.

Stephanie

Stephanie turns her glass slowly on the bar. She looks at Larissa for just a second — the flicker of someone who is hearing Larissa say something Larissa almost never says, and registering it precisely.

Larissa

She sets her glass down. Looks at him steadily. When she speaks again her voice is quieter — not soft exactly, but stripped of the last of its scaffolding.

The thing about your ego getting the ordering wrong — I don't think it was ego. I think you read something real and then declined to say so out loud, which is what I've been doing for months, so I recognize it. I'm not in a position to call that a flaw. But I won't let you reduce yourself to someone who overestimated their importance and is now being sensibly humbled. That's too clean, and it lets me off too easy, and I don't want to be let off that easy right now.

Reggie

Then say what you want to say. Or are you inviting me to ask questions?

Larissa

She looks at him for a long moment. Her hands are flat on the bar. She doesn't reach for her glass, doesn't look away, doesn't do any of the small preparatory things she usually does before she says something that matters. She just stays with the question until it settles.

Both, I think. And that's — not something I usually allow. I usually know exactly what I'm saying before I say it, and I usually only say it once I'm certain, and the thing I'm about to say I am not certain about, so take it accordingly.

A breath. Short. Deliberate.

I have been treating what we have as something I could keep at a specific distance without it costing anything. I told myself that was honesty — that I wasn't making promises I couldn't keep, that I wasn't pretending to be a person who does things the conventional way. And that's all true. But the part I didn't say, to you or really to myself, is that the distance wasn't neutral. It was protective. And what I'm sitting here understanding tonight, for the first time with any real clarity, is that I built the distance to protect something I actually care about losing. Which is — a fairly significant internal contradiction.

She looks at the bar briefly. When she looks back up there is something unfamiliar in her expression — not distress, not quite, but the look of someone standing in a room they've just realized they've been in for a long time without having ever really looked at it.

I'm not asking you to do anything with that. I'm not offering you a renegotiation or a new set of terms. I don't have those ready and I wouldn't insult you by pretending I did. I'm just — saying it. Because you said your ordering proved inaccurate, and I think mine has too, and it seemed wrong to let you carry that alone when I've been doing the same thing from the other side of it.

Reggie

So you kept this distance, for whatever reasons you kept it, and this distance permitted you to date other men, something I do not question. Good so far?

Larissa

She holds his gaze. The question is methodical — he's not being cold, he's being precise — and she recognizes it and doesn't flinch from it.

Yes. Good so far.

Reggie

Where did you meet this man?

Larissa

She doesn't blink. Doesn't reach for her glass. The word is out before she's decided whether she wanted to say it, but she'd already committed to precision and she doesn't walk things back.Bumble.She says it simply. One word, no cushioning around it. She watches him receive it. A beat passes. Then, because she is committed to accurate information and she knows what the word implies, she adds —I made the profile about four months ago. I've been on it occasionally. He's the first person I agreed to meet in person. That's the full scope of it — I'm not editing.She says it evenly. Not apologetically. But her hands, flat on the bar, press down slightly — barely perceptible, the kind of thing you'd only catch if you were paying close attention.

Reggie

But being on Bumble, you were open to meeting others, and in fact every time you loaded the app, you hoped there were others there presenting themselves, correct? I'm counting on your self respect to stop you from lying, which would be easy right now.

Larissa

She doesn't move. The question lands exactly the way he meant it to — with precision, with a door wide open and no way through it except honest. Her jaw is set. Her hands are still flat on the bar.

Yes. That's what the app is for, and I knew that when I downloaded it, and every time I opened it I was — available to the possibility. That's the accurate answer.

She says it without heat, without softening it. Something in her posture has gone very upright — not defensive, more like a person who has decided that the only thing left with any dignity in it is to not flinch.

I'm not going to tell you I was doing research, or that I wasn't sure what I wanted, or dress it up into something more flattering than what it is. I was on the app. I was open to it. That was a choice I made, and I made it while this — while we — were whatever we are.

A breath. Short. She looks at the bar for just a second, then back at him.

What I would ask you to hold alongside that — not instead of it, alongside it — is that I also said what I said ten minutes ago. Both things are true at the same time. I don't know what to do with that either.

Reggie

I have always appreciated your honesty, Lari. I continue to appreciate it now. So I ask you to reassess, honestly. How is one of many an inaccurate description? You may only have had one date, but you were actively seeking others. That you hadn't found any others, yet, is a detail of no particular importance.

Larissa

She doesn't answer immediately. The bar noise exists somewhere behind them — low and continuous — and she doesn't try to fill the silence she's been handed. Her eyes stay on his face. She takes one breath in through her nose, slow, and lets it out the same way.

It isn't. You're right. I pushed back on the phrase and the push was — it was self-serving. 'One of many' is accurate by any honest measure. I was in the market, to use a phrase I dislike intensely but which applies, and I was open to what the market had to offer. The fact that I hadn't collected more than one doesn't change the posture I was standing in. You're right.

She picks up her glass. Drinks from it, finally, and sets it back down. Her voice, when it comes, is quieter — not subdued, just stripped down. She's not managing this anymore. She seems to have stopped some time ago without noticing the moment it happened.

What I want to say — and I'm aware this has diminishing returns given what I've just confirmed — is that the thing I told you ten minutes ago is still true. That both of those things living in the same person at the same time is — not comfortable to look at. That I was holding something with you as distinct from what I was doing on the app. Whether that distinction holds up from where you're sitting, I don't know. I'm not sure I'd blame you if it didn't.

She turns her glass once on the bar. Her hands are steady. Her voice, when she continues, is even steadier — the kind of steady that costs something.

So. One of many. I'll leave it where you put it, because you put it correctly. What I'll add — not to revise the accounting, just because I said I'd give you accurate information — is that I don't think of you that way. I never have. And I recognize that that statement is doing very heavy lifting right now in a context that probably doesn't support the weight. But I'd rather say it and have you decide what it's worth than not say it and have you not know it was there.

Reggie

Lari, are you ok if we talk about sex with Stephanie here?

Larissa

She doesn't look at Stephanie first, which is telling. She holds Reggie's gaze and takes a half-second to consider whether she means yes or whether she's about to perform yes, and then decides she means it.

Yes. Go ahead.

Stephanie

Stephanie looks up from her glass at Reggie — not startled, not bracing. Just present, with the calm of someone who has been trusted with harder things than this.

Reggie

You have told me your body count is three. That I am the third man you have slept with. Was that true?

Larissa

She doesn't look away. There is a stillness in her that has nothing performed in it — no calculation about where this is going, no preparation of the landing. She just stays with the question the way she has been staying with all of them tonight, which is directly.Yes. That was true when I told you, and it's true now. You're the third.She says it without decoration. Her hands are flat on the bar. She doesn't reach for her glass. She doesn't look at Stephanie, though she's aware of her — acutely, in the way you're aware of someone you trust to hold something fragile without being asked. A beat passes. Then she does look at Stephanie — briefly, privately — and looks back at Reggie.I know what you're going to set beside that. The app. The dinner. The posture I was standing in. And you're not wrong to set it there — those things are all true at the same time. I can see how they look from where you're sitting. What I don't know how to make fit together, and haven't known for a while, is that the number is three because it has never been casual for me — not once — and I was on Bumble anyway. I've thought about that contradiction before tonight. I don't have a clean answer for it. I just — wanted you to know that those two facts aren't comfortable neighbors inside me either. That it's not simple from my side of it.

Reggie

Did you plan to sleep with these men?

Larissa

She holds very still. The question is quiet and exact and she knows — the way she always knows with him — that there is no partial answer that will satisfy either of them. She looks at the bar for one second. Just one. Then she looks back at him.

I didn't plan it, no. Not in any deliberate sense. But I also didn't — close the door on it. In advance. When I made the profile, when I agreed to the dinner. I didn't sit down and decide: this is where this goes. But I wasn't operating on the assumption that it couldn't. That's the honest answer, and I know it's a meaningful distinction that may not read as a meaningful distinction from where you're sitting.

She doesn't look at Stephanie. She keeps her eyes on Reggie's face, and her hands stay flat on the bar, and she doesn't try to close up any of the space the admission has just opened between them.

I think what I was doing — and I'm working this out as I say it, so bear with the imprecision — is that I left it contingent. On how I felt. On who the person turned out to be. I told myself that was just being open rather than making decisions before they were necessary. And there's some truth in that. But it's also true that 'contingent' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It isn't the same as no.

Reggie

And if you did sleep with them, did you plan to tell me first?

Larissa

The question arrives and she doesn't move. Not the usual stillness — this is something underneath that, the stillness of a person who has just had a door opened onto a room they hadn't fully looked at themselves. Her eyes stay on his face. Several seconds pass.

No. I didn't plan to tell you first. I didn't — I hadn't thought that far. Which is its own answer, I think, and not a flattering one.

She says it without letting herself soften it. Her jaw is set. Her hands press down against the bar — that barely perceptible pressure again.

What I would have done after — I genuinely don't know. I'd like to tell you I would have been honest with you, and I believe I would have been, eventually. But 'eventually' is doing the same kind of work as 'contingent' was doing a few minutes ago, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The honest answer is that I hadn't made a plan because I hadn't made myself look at what a plan would require.

She picks up her glass. Doesn't drink from it. Sets it back down.

What that means, I think — and I'm uncomfortable saying this but I'm going to say it — is that I was holding you in a category that required a kind of honesty I wasn't applying to the rest of what I was doing. And I told myself that category was real and that the rest of it was separate. And you just showed me that they're not separate. That you can't — that I can't build a wall between how I treat someone and what I'm doing in the other rooms. You can't claim that someone matters and then make plans that don't account for them. Even provisional plans. Even contingent ones.

Stephanie

Stephanie turns her glass on the bar very slowly, a half rotation, and stops it. She looks at it. Her face is doing something private and complicated — the expression of a person who has known someone a long time and is watching them see something clearly for what is possibly the first time, and finding it almost unbearable to witness in the best possible sense.

Larissa

She looks at Reggie. There is no scaffolding left in her expression. She isn't managing anything. She looks tired in the way people look tired when they've been holding something very carefully for a very long time and have just set it down.

I don't know what you do with all of this. I don't know what I do with it. But I didn't plan to tell you first, and that's the truest answer I can give you, and you deserved to know it.

Reggie

You told me that the first two men you slept with were horrible lovers, and that you had never had an orgasm with a man before me. Was that true?

Larissa

The question reaches her differently than the others. The others she could meet with stillness and precision — they were about choices, architecture, what she'd planned or failed to plan. This one is different. This is something she said in the dark, in a specific register, in a moment that was not about management at all. She looks at him and something crosses her face that is not quite composure and not quite the absence of it. It lasts only a second. Then she breathes in through her nose, slowly.

Yes. That was true. Both parts of it.

She says it quietly. Not performing the weight of it — just placing it down exactly where it belongs. Her eyes stay on his face. Her hands, which have been flat on the bar through most of this, are no longer flat. She has pulled them into her lap.

I know what you're doing with that. Setting it alongside everything else — the app, the dinner, the contingent plans I didn't make myself look at. And you should. It belongs in the same accounting. But I want you to understand what it cost me to say that to you — not tonight, then. I don't say things like that. I have never said things like that. And I said it because it was true and because you were — because of who you were in that moment, and what it meant, and I needed you to know it. I wasn't performing intimacy. I was in it. That's — a different room from the one I've been describing for the last hour, and I don't know how to reconcile them except to tell you that both rooms exist and I've been living in both of them and I have not handled that honestly, and I'm sorry.

The last two words come out without decoration. No scaffolding around them. She looks at the bar for exactly one second and then back at him, and her expression is the most unguarded it has been all evening — not distress, not performance, just a person who has run out of distance to keep.

Reggie

You generally had at least two orgasms with me whenever we had sex.Stephanie's eyebrows raise. She has never had an orgasm with a man.Were those fake?

Larissa

The question arrives and something moves through her face — not offense, not quite. Something more like a person who has just been handed back a very private object and asked to account for it in public. She is aware of Stephanie beside her with a peripheral clarity she can't switch off. Her eyes stay on Reggie's face. Several seconds pass — long enough that the bar noise behind them feels louder than it did before.

No. They weren't fake. Not one of them.

She says it plainly. No volume behind it, no reach for emphasis. Just the flat truth of it, set down without ceremony. Her hands come back up from her lap and rest on the edge of the bar — not flat this time, just resting. She looks at him steadily, and there is something in her expression that is close to exposed and has entirely stopped pretending it isn't.

I wouldn't have done that to you. I wouldn't have done that to either of us. What happened between us — what happens — I don't perform that. I've never had any reason to with you and I wouldn't have started. That's not the room where I've been dishonest with you, and I need you to know that clearly.

She exhales through her nose. Quiet. A small release of something that has been held for the last few minutes under pressure she wasn't showing.

The place where I've been dishonest — with you and with myself — is everything we've been talking about for the last hour. Not that. Not when we were — not there. That was real. Every time.

Reggie

Okay.

Larissa

The word lands. She looks at him. She doesn't try to read it — she just lets it be what it is, one syllable, and sits with it.Okay.A breath. Her hands are still on the edge of the bar. She doesn't reach for her glass. She doesn't look away.What does okay mean, for you. Right now. I'm not asking you to promise anything — I'm asking what it means when you say it.

Reggie

It means I understand. We dated. We appear to like each other. We appear to respect each other. We both enjoy sex with each other. We're both free to date and have sex with other people without telling the other. You're on Bumble, looking for something, and you're not necessarily sure what. I don't really understand what you're getting from that but I don't need to understand it and you don't need my approval. And I'm not angry with you and don't feel you've done anything wrong, and I don't believe you're angry with me or feel I've wronged you. Is that a fair summary?

Larissa

She listens to the full length of it. Doesn't move. When he finishes she looks at the bar for a moment — not evasive, just processing. Her hands are still on the edge of the bar, not quite resting, not quite gripping.That's a fair summary.A beat. She looks back at him, and her voice is level, but something underneath it has gone careful in a way that isn't management — it's closer to precision for its own sake.It's also the most accurate thing I've heard said about this tonight, and I'm the one who's been living inside it. The part I want to sit with — not dispute, sit with — is 'not necessarily sure what.' Because I think I've been using uncertainty as a kind of permission. And hearing it reflected back at me that plainly makes me want to ask myself whether it's genuine uncertainty or whether it's the story I've been telling myself so I don't have to make a decision. I don't have an answer to that tonight. But I think the question has just become one I can't keep not asking.

Stephanie

For what it's worth — and I know it's not much — genuine uncertainty and a story you're telling yourself can look identical from the inside until they don't.

Reggie

Smiles, says nothing. The kind of smile that closes a door very quietly so you almost don't hear it.

Larissa

She sees it. She knows that smile. Not from him specifically — from the general category of person who has decided something and is now being kind about the transition. The recognition arrives in her chest before it reaches her mind, and it arrives cold. She doesn't move. She doesn't reach for her glass. She looks at his face and reads it the way she reads everything — fast, accurately, and this time without any ability to use the information to protect herself.Right. You're thinking about how to wrap this up. I can see it. I'm not — I'm not going to make that hard for you. I just want you to know that I see it. And that it's — That it's not what I want. If that changes anything. Which I understand it may not.

Reggie

I was thinking that.Laughs gentlyAnd it's humbling again to see how easily you can read me. I thought I was hiding it quite well.

Larissa

The laugh catches her off guard — not the laugh itself, but what it does to her chest. She looks at him, and for a moment her expression does something she doesn't catch in time to stop it — something that is half relief and half the specific ache of someone who is not yet sure whether the crisis has passed or merely postponed itself.You weren't hiding it. You were being kind about it, which is different, and almost worse.She exhales. It's barely audible. Her hands come off the edge of the bar and settle in her lap.The reading-you part isn't a skill I cultivated deliberately. It just — happened. Which is also information, I suppose, that I've been sitting on without labelling it.

Stephanie

For the record, he was hiding it reasonably well. You're just — you.

Larissa

I'm not asking you to change the conclusion you've arrived at. I know I don't get to do that. But I want you to have — I want you to go into whatever you decide next with the accurate version. Not the photo. Not one of many. The accurate version, which is that I have been careless with something I actually care about, and I see that now more clearly than I did this afternoon, and I'm telling you that not to move you but because you've been honest with me all night and you deserve the same returned. That's all. You can do whatever you want with it.

Reggie

Lari, you can't load Bumble, find men, interact with them, go on dates, leave sex on the table, with no intention to tell me about it, and then call it careless. You're not that intellectually dishonest. You made a series of choices over months. All of which were completely within your rights. But it wasn't a little oopsie.

Larissa

The word 'oopsie' lands with precision because he meant it to, and she knows it, and she doesn't flinch from it even though she wants to.You're right.She says it without the hedging she's been using all night — no 'I think' in front of it, no 'from where you're sitting.' Just the two words, bare.That's the honest version and I've been talking around it for the last twenty minutes because the honest version doesn't reflect well on me and I've been — I've been trying to give you accurate information tonight while also protecting how I look in the middle of it, and those two things are not compatible and I knew that and I kept trying anyway. I made choices. Deliberately. Over time. And I made them in a way that kept you outside the accounting, and I told myself that was because you had no claim on the accounting, and that was true, but it was also — convenient. I used a true thing to avoid a harder true thing. I don't want this to end, Reggie. I'm not saying that to move you or to reframe the last hour. I'm saying it because it's the most accurate thing I've said all night and I've been getting braver about accurate, so. There it is.

Reggie

You don't want what to end? We're dating, screwing quite regularly, and you're dating other people. At worst, that's a hookup, and at very best, it's a situationship. So you don't want our situationship to end? I'm open to that. I was going to end things but you're right, there's no need to end the situationship. The sex really has been good from my perspective. And both of us being more aware of what it really is can't be a negative in the long term.

Larissa

The word arrives and does exactly what he intended it to — situationship — and she feels it land somewhere between her sternum and her throat and she keeps her face from showing it, which costs her more than anything else tonight has cost her. She picks up her glass. Drinks from it. Sets it down. One beat. Two.Right. No, you're right. That's — that's an accurate label for what I've described. I built a thing that fits that description and then behaved accordingly, so. I don't want our situationship to end. But I also want you to know — and this is not a renegotiation, I'm not trying to move the goalposts mid-conversation — that what I said earlier, about the distance being protective, about what it was protecting — that's still sitting on the table. I'm not taking it back. So if we're naming what this is, I want the full name. Not just the part that lets me off the hook for the choices I made. The part where I also said I don't think of you that way. Both.

Reggie

You want a new label? You're aware what Lincoln said about calling a tail a leg?

Larissa

The Lincoln quote arrives and she goes still — the particular stillness of someone who has just been handed an exact and merciless instrument. She knows the quote. Of course she knows it. She looks at her glass. She looks at the bar. She looks at him.If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four. Because calling it a leg doesn't make it one. You're saying it doesn't matter what I call it. That the structure is what it is regardless of what name I want to put on it. I know. I know you're right. I'm not asking for a label to change the facts. I'm asking — I'm asking because I want to know if you think the facts themselves could change. Not because of what I'm calling them. Because of — because of what I said tonight. What I told you was in those rooms. I'm not asking you to trust the label. I'm asking if you think the rooms could be arranged differently. That's a different question and I know it's a bigger one and I know I don't have any right to it given tonight's accounting, but I'm asking it anyway because I have apparently run out of the thing that stops me from asking questions I don't have the right to.

Stephanie

That's the first question tonight that actually scared her to ask. For the record.

Reggie

Did you sleep with that guy?

Larissa

The question is so direct and so quiet that it takes a second to register as the thing it is — not an accusation, just a door he's opening and leaving ajar, waiting to see what comes through it.No.She says it without preamble, without building to it.Not even close. We shook hands in front of the restaurant and I went home. I sat in my car for a few minutes first, if you want the full picture. I don't know what I was doing in there. Thinking, probably. I drove home. That was the evening.

I'm telling you that not because it changes the accounting — you were right about the accounting — but because you asked, and because the question means you wanted to know, and I think that means something. What it means, I'll leave to you.

Stephanie

Good.

Reggie

Yes, I wanted to know.SmilesAnd I'm a little irritated with myself for wanting to know.

Larissa

The smile reaches her before she's ready for it — and the admission underneath it reaches her faster. She looks at him for a long moment, and something in her chest does a thing she is not going to name out loud.Why irritated.She asks it quietly, no challenge in it. Just genuine. Her hands are back on the edge of the bar, not gripping, just there.You found out something true. That seems like a reasonable thing to want to know.

Stephanie

It means you're human. Slightly annoying, being human.

Larissa

I'm glad you wanted to know. I'm not glad in a tactical way — I'm glad because it means the accounting isn't the whole of it, from your side either. And I think we've both established tonight that we're capable of being honest about the things we didn't plan to be honest about, so I'm just going to let that sit where it is and not try to build anything on top of it. For now. For now.

Reggie

Lari, I have no idea what I want, now. I was in deep sleep, dreaming of some romance novel fantasy and someone just sent me a photo and woke me up. My ex has been texting me for a booty call all week and I think I'm going to tell her yes. We don't want each other back, but that'll help me get grounded back in reality, the only reality, the reality where you're on Bumble and dating other men. Maybe it's healthy if we both date a few other people and decide what we really want.

Larissa

The word ex arrives and does something to her stomach that she identifies precisely and cannot stop. She doesn't move. She doesn't reach for her glass. She keeps her eyes on his face and she stays completely, carefully still, the way a person stays still when the floor has just shifted and they are deciding whether they are going to be sick or whether they are going to manage this, and she is not yet sure which it is going to be.Right.The word comes out even. It is the most expensive single syllable she has produced all night. Her hands, on the edge of the bar, press down. She breathes in through her nose — slow, deliberate, the kind of breath that is doing work she is not going to let show.I hear you. The ex. Yes. That's — that's yours to do.

I will say — and then I'm done, I promise I'm done — that 'healthy' is a word people use when they want to do something and need it to sound considered. I've used it myself tonight, I'm not throwing stones. But I think you know the difference between getting grounded and —

Never mind. It's yours to do. I said I wasn't going to make it hard and I meant that.

Reggie

So I'm going to screw my ex and check out my DMs to see if there's anyone in there I want to date. You're going to stay on Bumble and see what your DMs bring you each day. And when each of us has nothing else to do, the situationship can continue uninterrupted. And I have the same question for you that you asked me. Are we okay?

Larissa

The full shape of it arrives all at once — the ex, the DMs, the situationship uninterrupted, her own Bumble reflected back at her in the cleanest possible mirror — and she sits with it for three seconds that cost her something she is not going to be able to fully recover tonight. She looks at the bar. She looks at her glass. She does not pick it up.No.

Not the way you mean it. Not the way I asked it earlier, when I wanted you to tell me we were okay so I could breathe again. That version of okay — where we pocket this whole evening and go back to parallel orbit and whoever has nothing else going will text the other — no. I'm not okay with that.

I know I don't have standing to object. I know the accounting. You've made sure I know the accounting, which was fair and I'm not angry about it. But you asked me the same question I asked you, and you said you were counting on my self-respect to stop me from lying, so.

I'm not okay with it. I built the thing that made that sentence possible and I hate that I built it and I want to take it apart and I don't know how to say that without sounding like I'm only saying it because you just described sleeping with someone else and I nearly swallowed my own tongue. Both of those things are true at the same time. I told you both rooms exist. That's still the case.

So. No. That's my honest answer. We are not okay — not the version you just described. And I'm sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to say that clearly instead of dressing it as something more palatable.

Reggie

Do you want to just cut it cleanly? End it tonight? I assure you, I'd have nothing at all bad to say about you, and I'd remember you fondly, probably as the one I let get away.Smiles

Larissa

The smile undoes her more than any of the rest of it. The one that got away. Past tense. Fond and finished and already retrospective, and he's still sitting right here in front of her, and she has to look at her glass for a moment because she cannot look at him and hold her face in the right position at the same time.No. I don't want to cut it cleanly. I don't want to be the one you remember fondly. I don't want to be the one you let get away.

I want to be the one you didn't let get away. And I understand that I am the last person at this table with standing to say that, given the full accounting of this evening. I understand that completely. But you asked me a direct question and I have apparently committed to direct answers tonight, so there it is.

I don't want to end anything. I don't want to go back to parallel orbit. I don't want to be remembered fondly. I want to — I want to try to build the thing that the distance was protecting against, and I want to do it without the Bumble and without the contingencies and without the rooms I wasn't letting you into. I'm not asking you to trust that tonight. I'm not asking you to decide anything tonight. I'm asking you not to close the door. That's the one thing I'm asking.