Eric takes me through the extremely tedious meet-and-greet stage of the party. My normal operating procedure at this kind of thing is to skulk back in some corner and only talk to two or three people who I already know.

That won’t do now that I’m with Eric. And it seems like everyone wants to talk to me, so even if I hid in a corner, they’d all just find me anyway.

We go from couple to couple, and Eric introduces me each time. After ten or fifteen couples, it starts to feel like a bad case of déjà vu, having the same conversation over and over. I think I hear the exact question: “You really work in a bike shop?” at least five times.

Most everyone is at least nice to me on the surface. I can tell some of the people resent me for not really fitting in here. Others try to be nice to me without malice, but I can tell that they don’t really know how to talk to me. It’s like when you don’t have kids and run into a kid who is three or four, and you’re not exactly sure how much you’re supposed to humor the kid.

“You must not be used to this kind of thing,” an older man says to me.

I point to the crystal chandelier. “You mean like that kind of thing?” Then I hold up my glass of wine, which I’m sure costs more than my monthly rent. “Or this kind of thing?”

He chuckles and puts a hand on his gut. “You’ll get the hang of it. There’s a lot of new money here, and they all started out with their chin barely above water here, but now you can barely tell they haven’t always been here.”

“Says the new money,” Eric says, grinning.

They clink their glasses together and drink.

I avoid drinking again. I’m trying to take it easy after last night. Whenever I have a hangover, the last thing I want for three or four days is to drink again.

Dmitri and Maya walk in while Eric and I are in a brief break between greeting sessions.

Eric’s body stiffens as he looks at Dmitri, and I feel a similar reaction myself. I hate that I don’t even remember what happened last night, and Dmitri locks eyes with me, as if he were looking just for me.

He grins and waves.

I notice Maya’s shoulders are slumped, and she avoids looking at me. She’s wearing a beautiful dress and her hair is done up, but she doesn’t look at all happy.

“We should just get it over with,” Eric says.

I force a smile, and we walk toward them.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Eric says, raising an eyebrow at Dmitri.

“I wasn’t going to,” Dmitri says smoothly. “But I figured it would help business, if anything.”

I notice that Maya is glaring at Eric. She seems almost pissed off. She seemed fine—as far as I can remember—last night, so why would she suddenly have it out for Eric now?

“Speaking of business,” Dmitri says. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Can it wait?” Eric asks.

Dmitri shakes his head.

“I’ll be back soon,” Eric says.

I smile, and Maya glares at him even more intensely.

When the two men are gone, I look up at Maya. “What is it? What’s your problem?”

Maya looks left and right, then bites her fingernails. Her hands are shaking. ”Come here.”

She grabs my wrist and starts pulling me away, toward a less densely-populated area of the penthouse. She gets me outside, and it’s chilly enough that very few people are out on the roof.

I look over and realize there’s a pool just like Eric has. “Do all these people have these scary-ass infinity pools?”

“Ruth,” Maya says, sliding her fingers from my wrist to my hand. “I know I’ve been a bitch to you before, and I know we aren’t like super good friends... but there’s something I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”

“And you’re going to tell me?” I say. “Is it about Eric?”

Tears well up in her eyes, and she starts breathing heavily as she looks away from me.

“Maya?” I feel my heart pounding. I suddenly don’t want to know whatever she’s going to tell me.

“I’m going to dump Dmitri after I tell you this,” Maya says. “I just want this all to be over. We both were manipulated Ruth, and neither of us belongs here. Okay? So after I tell you this, let’s both just leave together and forget any of this ever happened.”

“Slow down,” I say. “What are you talking about, how was I manipulated?”

“Those assholes had a bet,” Maya says. “A nasty, dirty bet.”

“A bet?”

“Eric bragged to Dmitri that he could get any woman of Dmitri’s choice to win New York’s Best Couple…”

“But... he didn’t…” I trail off, not even sure what I’m saying. Why would Dmitri pick me?

Then it hits me. It hits me hard, like a punch to the gut. Because I was hopeless. I was a lost cause. I was unattractive. Eric bet Dmitri that he could make me into something, which means that he thought less than nothing of me before.

All the little moments start to make sense now. Why would Eric be interested in me? Because of the bet. Why he being so evasive about certain things? Because of the bet. I remember all the times he told me this was “serious” or “long-term,” and I feel my heart start to shrivel up and die inside me.

“I’m going to…” I start to say, anger flaring up in me. “We shouldn’t leave, Maya, we should tear them down—”

“Don’t,” Maya says, grabbing my wrist. “It won’t make you feel any better. Just leave them behind in the dust, never look back, Ruth.”

“I thought he fucking cared about me,” I say. I realize the tears are already streaming hot down my face. My makeup is probably a smeared mess. “I thought I loved him.”

Maya hugs me, but I shove her off me.

“He’s just another piece of fucking trash,” I say, voice shaking. “There’s no good things in this world, just—”

“This world,” Maya says, pointing at the infinity pool and the people inside. “Nothing good is here, which is why we should just leave.”

“You weren’t a bet!” I nearly shout, feeling bad for pointing my anger toward Maya, but she’s the only one here. “You’re beautiful and attractive, and Dmitri didn’t—”

“He only dated me to interfere!” she says. “I was too blind to see it, but I see it now. He just wanted to get information on you, and mess with you through me. They’re both irredeemable pieces of garbage Ruth, don’t let them have any power of you—”

“Oh,” I say. “I won’t. I have the fucking power now.”