The Birthday Bet

Marian put the baby monitor on the table by her bunk and listened for a full minute. Nothing but the sound of breathing from the cabin down the hall. Luna was out. After a whole day of swimming, cake, and a sugar crash that had hit around eight, the kid was going to sleep until noon.

Marian changed out of her swimsuit cover-up into real clothes, because even alone on a yacht she felt weird walking around in a cover-up, and went up to the main deck.

Peyton was there, of course. He was usually there at the end of the day, sitting at the wet bar with a glass of wine, looking out at the water like it owed him money. Tonight was no different. The Wendy was anchored off the Corsican coast, and the sun had just gone down, so the sky was doing that orange to purple thing that never got old no matter how many times you saw it.

"There she is," he said without turning around. "I was starting to think you fell asleep in the kiddie pool."

"Luna fell asleep in the kiddie pool. I fished her out, dried her off, and read her two books. She earned her sleep." Marian went to the bar and poured herself a glass from the open bottle. He always left one out for her, which she pretended not to notice and he pretended not to have done.

"She have a good birthday week?"

"She had a great birthday week. She also threw up a little on the jet ski, but we don't need to tell her parents about that."

Peyton laughed and turned on his stool to face her. He was forty-four, ten years older than her, and had the kind of face that aged well because it had already been a little weathered to begin with. He owned the charter company, which meant he owned the boat, which meant technically she was staying in his house for a week. It had been a strange arrangement from the start. His sister had hired Marian to watch Luna, and the sister had decided the birthday trip should be on Peyton's yacht, and then the sister had bailed at the last minute because of work. So it ended up being Peyton, Marian, a five-year-old, and a crew of two who kept to themselves, out on the water for seven days.

Seven days of Peyton being charming and unbothered and always, somehow, exactly where she was.

"So," he said, "tomorrow morning we dock, the car comes at ten, and that's that."

"That's that," Marian agreed. She sat down across from him at the bar.

"You don't sound broken up about it."

"I'm not broken up about anything. It's been a nice week. I'll see Luna at the park on Thursday like always." She took a drink. "It's not my first job and it's not my last."

"No, I mean about tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Your birthday's at midnight, right? I heard my sister mention it when she booked this whole thing. Thirty-four."

Marian narrowed her eyes at him. "You did your homework."

"I do my homework." He grinned. He had been grinning at her all week in that way that was friendly but also not entirely friendly, and she had spent the week refusing to figure out which one it actually was. "So you've got about four hours left of being thirty-three. You want to spend them sitting at a bar with me looking like you're waiting for the valet?"

"I'm fine right here."

"You're fine everywhere. That's your whole deal. You're the fineest person I've ever met."

"That's not a word."

"You know what I mean. You've got this whole thing where nothing gets to you. I've been watching it all week. Luna dumps a whole smoothie on you, you say no big deal. Dolphin shows up, you say huh, cool. I bet nothing has surprised you in years."

"That's not true," Marian said, and then had to think about whether it was true. There had been a guy in Greece when she was twenty-eight. Six years ago now. She had surprised herself plenty that summer, and then she had come home and closed the whole door on it and not much had gotten through since. She didn't tell him any of that. "What's your point?"

"My point is it's your birthday in four hours and I want to see if I can get one real reaction out of you before you turn into a hundred and thirty-four years old."

"One hundred and thirty-four?"

"You know what I mean."

She laughed, which she'd been doing more of all week than she cared to admit. "Okay. What's the reaction you're going for? You want me to cry? Scream? Hug you?"

"I was thinking poker."

"Poker."

"Strip poker, specifically," he said it the same way he'd said everything else all week, casual, like he was offering her a snack.

Marian set her glass down. "Okay, you've lost it."

"Hear me out."

"No, I heard you. You said strip poker. On your boat. To your niece's nanny."

"Former situation entirely. Luna's asleep, her parents aren't here, nobody's watching, and it's not a work thing. You don't work for me. You work for my sister."

"Same family."

"Different payroll." He held up his hands. "Look, here's the whole deal. One hand. Five cards each. Whoever loses the hand loses one piece of clothing. Then we deal another hand. And whoever loses a hand also has to do a dare. One dare, chosen by the winner. Any dare, winner's call, and if you don't want to do the dare, then the game just ends there and we both go to bed and never talk about it."

"That last part is doing a lot of work in this pitch."

"The last part is the whole point of the pitch. You can stop any time. That's the rule. Rule one, you can stop any time. Rule two, if you stay in, you do the dare."

Marian looked at him. He looked back, easy, not leaning forward, not doing any of the things a guy does when he's trying too hard. That was the annoying part about Peyton. He never tried hard. He just put things out there and let them sit.

"And what if I win?" she said.

"Then I do a dare and I lose a shirt and you get to feel superior about it forever."

"And if you win?"

"Then you lose something and I get to feel superior about it forever. Equal stakes."

"You've had wine."

"Two glasses. You've had one. We're both adults and we're both keeping count." He tapped the deck of cards that had apparently been sitting under the bar the whole time, which meant he'd planned this before she even came up, which meant she should probably be more offended than she was. She wasn't offended. That was the part she was going to have to think about later.

"You had these ready," she said.

"I had cards ready. Could've been go fish."

"It's a deck of cards on a boat. It was always going to be this."

"Fine, it was always going to be this." He spread his hands. "So? Four hours till midnight. One hand, one dare, stop any time. You in or out?"

Marian finished her wine and looked out at the water. The sky was fully purple now, and the lights along the deck were on, and the whole week had been building toward some kind of ending anyway. It was her birthday soon. She was thirty-three for about three and a half more hours. She could be the fineest person in the world starting tomorrow.

"Deal the cards," she said.

Peyton shuffled the cards with a speed that told her he'd spent actual time of his life learning to do it. "Five card draw. Nothing wild. Dealer discards last." He dealt.

Marian picked up her hand and kept her face still, because that was the one skill she had never lost. Two pair. Kings and nines. Not bad for a first hand.

"Discard?" he said.

"One."

He took two. She watched him arrange his cards and nothing in his face moved either, so they were even on that front.

"Kings and nines," she said.

He turned his hand over without a word. Three fives.

"You're kidding."

"House deck," he said, setting the cards down. "House luck."

She stood there and thought about it. Rule one, you can stop any time. It was a cardigan. It was ninety percent of her dignity on a boat where nobody was awake except the two of them and whatever fish were swimming under the lights.

"Cardigan counts as a piece," he said. "Just so we're clear on the math."

"It counts." She pulled it off her arms and folded it over the back of the bar stool, which was a stupid thing to do, folding it, like the game cared about neatness. Under it she had a white tank top and her whole plan for the next three hours, which had been to sit quietly and count down to midnight.

She sat back down. The deck lights caught the water and threw it up on the ceiling in moving lines.

"Your turn to deal," he said.

She dealt. He discarded three, which told her he was chasing something, and she discarded one, holding a pair of queens and hoping. He was chasing a flush, she guessed, and she swore at him in her head while he drew.

He looked at what came. No help, from the way he frowned at it, and then he laid down the pair of jacks he'd been riding.

"Queens," she said, and turned them over, and his frown turned into a laugh.

"Well. One dare, my call," she said, and thought about it. He was sitting there with his shirt still on and a wine glass in his hand and all the patience in the world, waiting for her to come up with something, and she refused to waste the dare on something small.

"Tell me something you've never told anybody."

"That's the dare?"

"That's the dare."

He drank some wine and looked at the water for a while. "Okay. When I got divorced, I told everybody it was because we grew apart. That was the version." He turned the glass in his hand. "Actual version is she asked me to sell the company and I said no. That's it. The entire marriage was encapsulated in that moment. One question and one no."

Marian hadn't expected that. She'd expected a story about some woman in Portofino or a tattoo with a typo on it. "You've never told anyone that?"

"Luna's mom knows. She figured it out on her own. Nobody else got the real version." He shrugged. "You asked for something I never told anybody. I'm gonna need another wine after that."

"Deal the cards."

The third hand she played carelessly, half on purpose, and realized it halfway through discarding and couldn't undo it. He had thrown his shirt for the second hand anyway, losing with a pair of threes against her two pair, and now he was down to his trousers and bare feet and a sunburn line across his shoulders, and she was down to the tank top and her jeans, and the game had stopped feeling like a joke somewhere around the second deal.

"Discard?"

"Two," he said.

She kept her pair of eights and the king. He laid down nothing. She laid down nothing. He laughed at the empty table.

"The king," she said, showing it. "High card."

"High card. Great. You're crushing me."

"Trousers," she said, and pointed at them, and he stood up and stepped out of them without any ceremony at all. Boxer shorts. A man who owned a yacht and a charter company and had a sunburn from his own boat, standing on his own deck in his underwear because a card told him to.

She felt the chill go through her, the good kind, the kind she remembered from a beach in Greece six years ago. Her pulse was doing something it hadn't done in a while and she let it.

"Deal," she said.

The fourth hand took forever. She discarded two, he discarded two, and they both sat there holding their cards longer than the hands deserved. She had the eights again. He had something. She could tell by the way he wasn't frowning.

"Kings up," he said finally.

She turned over the eights. "Pair."

"Two pair beats one."

She looked at her cards, at the king, at the deck, at the water, anywhere but at him. She was in a tank top and jeans and sandals. He was in boxer shorts and nothing else. The math was not hard.

"Jeans," she said.

"Jeans," he agreed.

She stood up and unbuttoned them and realized her hands were not as steady as her face. She got them past her hips and stepped out and put them over the arm of the bar stool next to the cardigan, and then she was standing on the deck of the Wendy in a tank top and her underwear with