Page 99 of Dial F for Finance

Caleb follows my line of sight. “Tokyo still the winning bet?”

“Obviously.”

“Logan had February. He’s bitter.”

“Logan’s always bitter. It’s his resting state.”

Bennett appears with a platter of carnitas, setting it on the counter near us. He looks at me, then at Jenna across the room, then back at me with the kind of assessment that used to make me nervous in business school.

“She’s different,” he says.

“We’re all different. You used to color-code your socks.”

“I mean she’s different with you.” He arranges the limes in a neat arc. “She’s not bracing.”

I open my mouth to argue that Jenna is always bracing, that her entire personality is a series of carefully calibrated defenses, but then I watch her settle onto the couch between Audrey and Nora and I see what Bennett sees. Her shoulders aren’t squared to military specification. Her laugh comes out unmeasured, too loud, and she doesn’t immediately modulate it.

She’s forgetting to be careful.

Caleb produces a betting spreadsheet from his jacket pocket with a flourish. “OK, people—the winning wager, ‘Tokyo, you absolute cowards,’ pays out tonight; Venmo is open.” The room erupts and I watch my wife absorb the knowledge that her friends had eleven hundred dollars riding on her happiness. I prepare myself for the brace. But instead, I see it . . . loosen.

“You bet on us?” she asks, laughing.

“We bet on everyone, Jenna. It’s how we process affection.” Caleb pockets his phone. “I have never been prouder of two people.”

“I want ten percent,” I say.

“You were the asset, Dom. Assets don’t collect.”

Then Layla clears the table and tells us all to gather around—which is when she produces the battered red box.

“Oh no,” David says.

“Bennett tells me you boys had to retire this game after college because you didn’t want to risk the group’s future over a hostile draw-four incident,” Layla announces, fanning a deck of Uno cards across the table.

“To be fair,” David says, “Uno destroyed this group’s first and only book club, two Fourth of Julys, and almost ruined Michaela’s christening. I’m actually surprised Bennett still has the deck. Didn’t we agree it was cursed?”

“I think you decided it was cursed,” Bennett says, lifting a brow. “Logan and I simply stopped speaking for a calendar month.”

“Six weeks,” Logan corrects, and then looks directly at me. “That last Draw Four was unconscionable, Dominic.”

“A man does what he must,” I say, squeezing Jenna’s knee under the table as I take my seat. “And you never forget who showed you the dark side.”

“Is this a normal thing?” Jenna asks, quietly. She’s positioned herself between me and Audrey.

“Here’s the thing about Uno,” I say. “It only seems like a children’s game until entropy itself is on the line.”

“My grandmother plays Uno.”

“Then your grandmother harbors a reservoir of suppressed rage, Jenna. The game reveals the truth about people.”

She looks at the battered, clearly pre-loved deck in Layla’s hands, then back at me. “I’m guessing it gets competitive?”

I can’t contain the laugh that bursts out of my chest. “Competitive is an understatement, sweetheart. Uno for this group is a blood sport.”

Layla raps the table. “House rules: any wild card stacked with a draw card becomes retroactive,” she says, gesturing grandly at the table. “No mercy for spouses. Draw until you play. Standard Uno, but with teeth.”

“Absolutely not,” Logan says, already shuffling the deck with a mathematician’s precision. “Retroactive stacking is an abomination.”