When Dmitri is done talking to me, I go to look for Ruth, but I can’t find her.

I make small talk with Aiden, who showed up alone.

“I figured I could meet someone here maybe,” he says, chomping on some bread and cheese. “Mm, this is damn good.”

I keep looking around, but I don’t see Ruth anywhere. Maybe I should check outside? I haven’t seen Maya either.

“You still looking for her?” Aiden asks. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Yeah,” I say, taking a sip of wine. “Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”

Then I see her, coming in from the terrace. She looks somehow... shaken?

“Ruth,” I say, holding up a hand.

“There you are!” an obnoxious Andrea interrupts. Viktor is with her. I do my best to tamp down my irritation, my only concern right now is whatever it is that put that look on my Ruth’s face.

I smile politely, but try to focus on Ruth.

“Ruth,” Viktor says. “Come introduce yourself.”

Ruth looks over at us with a strange look on her face. She doesn’t really even look at me, just through me. She stares for a moment, as if she’s debating to herself whether she should come over at all.

I see Maya enter the doorway behind her, she’s staring at us with a hand over her mouth.

As Ruth gets closer, I see that she’s wiped all the makeup off her face, and her eyes are glassy.

“Introduce myself…” Ruth says woodenly. “Okay.”

I go to put my hand on her waist, but she shoves me back.

Viktor and Andrea look at us with their mouths agape.

Ruth stares at me, trembling. “I’m Eric’s bet.”

That tiny one syllable word cuts into my heart with the force of an atomic bomb. As soon as I hear it, I know that she knows everything. And how could I possibly respond to that?

“I don’t understand…” Andrea says, tilting her head like a confused dog.

“Well,” Ruth says. “You’d have to be pretty fucking twisted to really understand it. Twisted and heartless... like Eric here. You see, he was so fucking cocky and full of himself, that he bet his asshole friend he could make me into the winner of your dumb little popularity contest.”

Her voice gets loud. So loud that everyone around us stops talking. The silence sweeps through the party in waves, until everyone is staring at us in stunned silence, waiting for Ruth to continue.

I consider trying to get a word in, but nothing I say can make this better. This is the punishment I deserve, isn’t it?

I catch a look at Dmitri. His face is all smug satisfaction, and he’s sipping at his wine as if he were drinking in my misery and heartbreak.

“So,” Ruth says. “Maybe you’re thinking that doesn’t sound so bad? But here’s the thing, it’s a bet, right? So if you want to make the bet interesting—challenging—you have to pick someone really shitty. Someone ugly who you would never date in a million years, otherwise where is the challenge? Pick someone beautiful or someone you actually could care about, and it’s not a game worth playing. Right, Eric?”

Every eye in the room is turned toward me now. And I can see in Ruth’s eyes that she wants me to deny it. She wants to believe there is some glimmer of hope, some possibility of a good explanation. Some magical words that could make everything she is feeling go away and give us a fresh start.

But I don’t have any magic words, only the harsh truth. The only silver lining is that I love her. Those are three words I should have said to her before, and words that I can never say to her now.

“Nothing?” She says. “You won’t even deny it?”

Viktor and Andrea look aghast, and Dmitri is trying as hard as he can not to laugh.

Maya comes up behind Ruth and puts her hands onto her shoulders, as if she is going to pull her away.

“Get off,” Ruth says, swatting her away. “I need to hear him say it.”

“What you said is true,” I say.

Hushed murmurs and buzz vibrates out from the crowd. I see people staring daggers at me from every angle.

“But,” I say. “That’s just how it started. Now, I feel—”

Ruth flings a glass of wine into my face. The wine hits me as I’m speaking, and I feel it go right up into my nostrils. The excess liquid spills across the white of my tuxedo, staining it red.

“I never want to see or hear from you ever again,” Ruth hisses.

She grabs Maya by the hand and drags her out, the sea of people witnessing this cluster fuck part wordlessly for the two of them.