While I was trying to figure out his deeper meaning, he chuckled and shook his head. “Come on, you’re easily the hottest girl in this apartment.”

If I thought I’d been thrilled before, it was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. A flush started at the top of my scalp and went down to my toes—unpainted because I couldn’t afford to get a pedicure. Then I realized that Tyler was quoting back to me what I’d said about him at the charity event. Did that mean . . . it was a joke? A callback and he didn’t really mean anything by it? Or was he trying to butter me up so that he could pry my moisturizer out of my cold, soon-to-be dehydrated hands?

Not willing to be taken in, I said, “You’re not going to flatter me to get me to change my mind. I’ll remind you that I’m the only girl in this apartment.”

“That’s not true. Pidge is here and she’s gorgeous. Aren’t you?” he asked his dog, bending over to pet her. She licked his cheek and I had never felt more of a kinship to her, ever. He turned his attention back to me. “Do you really need it?”

“The only time I get a facial now is when I open the dishwasher midcycle and the steam hits me in my face. I don’t buy the moisturizer every month. I’m really careful with how much I use on a daily basis. But I’ve had to give up so many other things. Let me have this one.”

“All right, all right.” He threw his hands up, as if I’d defeated him. “But there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. If your parents are super wealthy, don’t you have a trust fund?”

“My trust fund is gone.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Not because I spent it all on moisturizer. My parents took it back.”

“Revocable or irrevocable?”

“My understanding was irrevocable for the tax benefits.” I’d overheard Violet and Vanessa discussing their trusts in the past.

“That means they can’t take it away just because they’re mad at you.”

I shrugged. “They employ attorneys by weight and volume, and as you can clearly see, I’m in no financial position to fight them.”

“That sucks.”

I nodded. It did, indeed, suck.

He turned back to the screen. “What about your gym membership? Do you go enough to make that worthwhile?”

“I don’t have a gym membership. I used to, but when I left my parents’ house I called them and canceled.”

“That’s not what your bank account says.”

I’d never really been a going-to-the-gym kind of girl. I’d always preferred my exercising to be things like yoga at a feminine and relaxing studio. Not lifting weights or running on treadmills. I’d joined only because Brad had insisted so we could work out together.

We never had.

And as I thought about when I’d initially signed up, solely to make him happy, I remembered something. “They told me they preferred a debit card.”

“Yeah. So they could keep pulling the money directly from your banking account. It’s harder to prevent than a credit card charge.”

“Those . . . fiends. I am going to cancel it right now.” I couldn’t believe I’d been paying a monthly fee for something I wasn’t even using. It was like they were stealing my hard-earned money from me.

There was a buzz from our intercom and Tyler got up to answer. It was our food. “I’ll go grab it,” he said.

I was intent on calling the gym, but couldn’t help but text Shay first.

 

It felt like her answer arrived only a second after I’d pressed send.

 

I sent her some laughing emojis and put myself back on track. I was going to get rid of this useless membership and then go over my checking account again to see where else I might be hemorrhaging money pointlessly.

Somebody at the gym picked up on the third ring. It was a young woman with a bubbly and high-pitched voice. “Standford Fitness and Training, this is Kiki. How may I help you?”

What kind of made-up Barbie-sounding name was Kiki? “This is Madison Huntington, and I want to cancel my membership with you. I called several months ago and canceled my membership, but you guys are still taking money out of my checking account and I would like that to stop.”

“Do you know who you spoke with?”

“No.” It wasn’t Kiki. Because I was pretty sure I would have remembered. “But I know I did because I lost all my money and I couldn’t afford it anymore.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. But we don’t cancel memberships over the phone. Whoever you talked to must not have known that.”

Wasn’t it the phone answerer’s job to know things like that? How to cancel a membership seemed like first-day training material. “Okay, well, I need to cancel it now. How do I do that?”

“You can do it one of two ways.”

Two ways? Like I was being sent on a quest in Lord of the Rings? “Okay, Gandalf the Grey, what are my options?”

“Um, no, it’s Kiki?” She sounded like it was a question and I could hear her chewing gum while she paused. “The first way is to send in a certified letter.”

“A letter?” I repeated. Why? I hadn’t signed up for my membership during the American Revolution. And I didn’t know if I was even sure what a certified letter actually was, having never sent nor received one. “Then what? I carry it to Mount Doom and throw it into the fires?”

“No, you mail it to us. You need to include all your personal information, name, address, phone number, Social Security number, birth date, along with your membership identification number and your agreement number listed on your contract. Once we have all that information, then it takes us about eight weeks to get everything processed.”

Did they want my measurements and shoe size, too? Sheesh. And two more months of them robbing me blind? No thanks. “What’s the other way?”

“You would need to come to the gym in person and do it manually.”

Manually? What did that even mean? “I will be there tomorrow during my lunch break to cancel.” Then I hung up the phone before I could counsel Kiki to make better life choices and stop working for places that took money away from completely broke teachers.

Tyler returned with the food, putting it on the table. I moved my laptop to the side to make room and then got up to grab some plates and forks.

When I sat back down, he had already opened all the containers, and he asked me, “What are your plans for later tonight?”

I looked down at my outfit. “I have my Netflix pants on. That means I’m planning on being in for the night.”

“I was thinking we could go to that art exhibit after we eat. The one you were talking about with Walter Loveless. You want to come with?”

My heart raced and I had to swallow a couple of times before I did my best nonchalant response. “Sure.”

“Cool. Then it’s a date.”

Was he serious? Teasing? Was it a date? I felt like I didn’t have enough information to suss out whether he was serious or just saying “it’s a date” because in all other ways it would seem like a date only we both understood that it wasn’t really because we were only friends so ha-ha, it was just a joke?