Think, Eric, think.

I have a couple of options here. I could send her a text in line with what Alec had said and start sowing the seeds of distaste for that version of me, but that doesn’t really seem like the right thing to do.

I could tell her that I’m on my way to the party, but again I’d run into the problem of either having to tell her that it’s been me the whole time, or “not show up” and make her think that I’m a flake, but neither one of those options really put me in any different a situation than I’m already in.

Finally, I settle on what seems to be the best version of damage control available to me at the moment, and I write, “Hey, sorry I’m late. I’ve had a bit of a family thing and it’s taking me a bit longer to get out of here than I thought.”

There: no bad clams, no “I’ll be right there,” just a plausible excuse that’s going to let me tell her that I won’t be able to make it with little to no fallout.

Maybe that’s the key. Maybe I just need to keep convincing her on both fronts that I’m a standup guy then, when the moment’s right, I can tell her the truth about everything and it’ll all come out perfectly.

That’s exactly what I need to do: Just keep my plans vague enough that I never actually have to act on any of them and I can just stay here in limbo while I try to figure out just how much I like this woman.

I know that I like her, but that’s about all I know at the moment. Well, and that she constantly looks so good. Every inch of her.

My phone chimes and I look down.

The message reads, “Okay. Well, Kristin and I are going to be here for a while, so just let me know when you’re here and we’ll meet up.”

“All right,” I write back. “Hopefully I shouldn’t be much longer. I’d hate to miss the chance to meet you.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Jessica asks just as I’m sending the text.

“Waiting for the bathroom,” I tell her.

She cocks her head to one side. “It’s upstairs.”

I keep forgetting that she actually knows Irene.

Her phone beeps and she checks it.

“Right,” I tell her. “I must be thinking of my place.”

What the hell kind of excuse was that?

“Oh yeah, fuck me, baby!” Irene shouts from behind the closed door at the end of the hall.

“Well, okay,” Jessica says laughing.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I was going to give you and your—ahem—friends a little privacy,” she answers as her eyes plead for me to let her leave the hallway.

“It’s really not like that,” I tell her. “I just wanted to get a little bit of privacy so I could make a phone call, but it sounds like this really isn’t the best place to do that.”

“I thought you said you were waiting for the bathroom,” she says.

“Yeah, I guess I…” my brain utterly fails me right in this moment where I need it the most. “To be honest, I don’t really know why I said that. I guess I was just looking for a plausible excuse so you wouldn’t think I was just back here to get an earful of whatever it is they do to each other in there.”

“Next time,” she says, “maybe just go for the ‘wanting to make a call’ thing first. That might make it a lot more plausible.”

I’m humiliated, but Jessica gives me a slight, but sincere smile.

“Why did you come back here?” I ask as she turns again to leave the hallway.

“Oh,” she says, “no reason.”

“Well,” I tell her, “you seem to know this house as well as I do and, with what I started to tell you about Irene’s post-keg-stand ritual, I think you knew what you might be walking into if you came down this hallway.”

“No! It’s not that, I was just—you know, I sent a text to that guy and, well, I wanted to be able to hear it when he texted me back, that’s all,” she stammers.

“Uh huh,” I tell her, “and I just wanted to come back here to find a bathroom.”

“I thought you said you were here so you could make a phone call,” she retorts.

“You, my dear, are blushing,” I tell her.

“Oh, I am not,” she says, crossing her arms.

She wasn’t blushing when I said that, but I didn’t really want to answer her question and, in my experience, telling someone that they’re blushing is about the quickest way to get them to blush.

“Really?” I ask. “So, why are you really here in the hallway?”

“Right now, I’m here because you keep stopping me to talk to you,” she says.

“Oh yeah!” Alec shouts in the bedroom and Jessica and I can’t stop ourselves from laughing out loud.

“It was the morbid curiosity, wasn’t it?” I ask her.

She turns her head, but shifts her eyes back toward me. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just been a while, and I wanted to try to convince myself that it’s really not that big of a thing.”

“What a weird justification,” I smile. “Do you want to place a bet?”

“A bet?” she asks. “What are we betting on?”

“How do I put this delicately?” I start. “I was thinking we could bet on who finishes first.”

“Ten bucks says it’s Alec,” Jessica says without any further encouragement.

It’s a reasonable bet.

In a regrettably large portion of sexual relationships, you can bet that the man’s going to come first and most of the time, you’re going to be right.

What Jessica doesn’t know is that Irene won’t let Alec come until she’s gotten hers at least twice.

I take a moment to reflect on how unsettling it is that I know that, but today wasn’t the first time that Irene and I have had a conversation after she’s gotten a few drinks in her.

“Deal,” I tell her and put my hand out to shake it.

“Wait,” Jessica says. “You seem too confident.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I made a bet and you’re just ready to go for it? No haggling, no pressing for odds or anything. You obviously know something that I don’t,” she says. “He’s one of those tantric guys who can have sex for hours, like Sting, isn’t he?”

“I really don’t think that there are any similarities between Alec and Sting,” I tell her. “I can promise you that to the best of my knowledge, Alec doesn’t even know the definition of the word Tantra.”

Jessica peers at me, but she slowly, cautiously extends her hand and shakes mine.

“How are we going to tell who comes when?” she asks.

As if she’d heard the question, Irene starts shouting, “Oh yeah, baby. I’m going to come. Oh fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh, fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-uck!”

“I’d say that’s a pretty good sign,” I laugh.

“Shit,” Jessica says and reaches into her pocket.

“Double or nothing says she goes again before he does,” I tell her.

“You’re on,” she says, putting the cash back in her pocket.

This really isn’t how I saw things going today, but it’s something.

“How long do you think it’s going to take them?” she asks.

“I have no idea,” I tell her.

She pulls out her phone and starts writing a text, and it occurs to me that the whole reason I came over here was to turn the volume down on my notifications, something I didn’t quite get the chance to do.

“Who are you texting?” I ask.

“My sister,” she says. “If I’m going to sit here and listen to other people have all the fun, I’m going to need a drink.”

“Fair enough,” I laugh.

The hornier part of me wants to suggest that we could always throw caution to the wind and see if we can out-volume Irene and Alec, but the more rational part of my brain insists that it might be a bit soon for such a declaration.

“Did you get anything from your friend?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Jessica answers. “He’s caught up with some family thing, but he’s still going to try to make it.”

“Well,” I tell her, “I hope he does.”

“What are you guys doing?” the sister asks, coming around the corner, somehow managing four sixteen-ounce plastic cups of beer.

“We made a wager, and I’m trying to win my money back,” Jessica says. “Oh, Kristin, this is Eric. Eric, this is Kristin, my sister.”